A List of Memoirs

I’ve been asked for a list of memoirs that might be useful to writers who wish to write their own. I have learned a great deal from reading these; dive in anywhere and follow your interests. Happy reading !

• R. Ackerley, My Father and Myself
• Meena Alexander, Fault Lines
• Isabel Allende, Paula
• Andrea Ashford, Once in a House on Fire
• Paul Auster, The Invention of Solitude; Winter Journal
• Kim Barnes, In The Wilderness
• James Baldwin, No Name in the Street; The Fire Next Time; Notes of a Native Son
• Alison Bechdel, Fun Home; Are You My Mother? (graphic memoirs)
• Dwayne Reginald Betts, A Question of Freedom
• Sven Birkerts, My Sky Blue Trades
• Mary Bonina, My Father’s Eyes
• Greg Bottoms, Angelhead: My Brother’s Descent into Madness
• Claude Brown, Manchild in the Promised Land
• Amy Jo Burns, Cinderland
• John Burnside, A Lie About My Father
• James Carroll, An American Requiem
• Lorene Cary, Black Ice
• Mary Childers, Welfare Brat
• Julia Collins, My Father’s War
• Frank Conroy, Stop Time
• Jill Ker Conway, The Road From Coorain
• Bernard Cooper, Maps To Anywhere
• Sam Cornish, 1935
• Anthony D’Aries, The Language of Men
• Deborah Digges, Fugitive Spring
• Izak Dinesen, Out Of Africa
• Mark Doty, Firebird; Heaven’s Coast
• Frederick Douglass, The Life of Frederick Douglass, an America Slave, Written by Himself
• Andre Dubus III, Townie
• Gretel Erlich, A Match To The Heart
• Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts
• Helen Fremont, After Long Silence
• Henry Louis Gates Jr., Colored People
• Mikal Gilmore, Shot in the Heart
• Maxim Gorky, Childhood
• Vivian Gornick, Fierce Attachments; The Situation and the Story
• Edmund Gosse, Father & Son
• Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That
• Lucy Grealey, Autobiography Of A Face
• Karl Taro Greenfeld, Boy Alone: A Brother’s Memoir
• Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler
• Donald Hall, String Too Short To Be Saved
• Meredith Hall, Without A Map
• Hugo Hamilton, The Speckled People
• Patricia Hampl, A Romantic Education; Virgin Time; I Could Tell You Stories; The Florist’s Daughter
• Dermot Healy, The Bend for Home
• DeWitt Henry, Sweet Dreams
• Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation
• Garrett Hongo, Volcano
• Ann Hood, Comfort: A Journey Through Grief; Do Not Go Gentle: My Search for Miracles in a Cynical Time
• Siri Hustvedt, The Shaking Woman
• Harriet Jacobs, Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl
• Mary Karr, The Liars’ Club; Cherry; Lit
• Susannah Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
• Nikos Kazantzakis, Report To Greco
• Ivan Klima, My Crazy Century
• Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle
• Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz; The Reawakening
• Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques
• S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
• Franz Lidz, Unstrung Heroes
• Crabcakes, James Alan McPherson
• Joe Mackall, The Last Street Before Cleveland
• Elaine Mar, Paper Daughter
• Robert Mason, Chickenhawk
• Mark Mathabane, Kaffir Boy
• Joyce Maynard, At Home in the World
• Mary McCarthy Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
• Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes
• David McKain, Spellbound
• Susan J. Miller, Never Let Me Down
• Czeslaw Milosz, Native Realm
• Paul Monette, On Becoming a Man
• Martin Moran, The Tricky Part
• David Mura, Where the Body Meets Memory
• S. Naipaul, Finding the Center
• Judith Nies, The Girl I Left Behind
• Frank O’Connor, An Only Child
• Sidney Offit, Memoir of the Bookie’s Son
• Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family
• Gregory Orr, The Blessing
• William B. Patrick, We Didn’t Come Here for This: a Memoir in Poetry
• Helen Peppe, Pigs Can’t Swim
• Hal Porter, The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony
• Richard Rhodes, A Hole in the World
• Philip Roth, Patrimony
• Richard Russo, Elsewhere
• Kevin Sessums, Mississippi Sissy
• Anthony Shadid, House of Stone
• Lauren Slater, Welcome to My Country; Prozac Diary; Lying; The $60,000 Dog; Playing House
• Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby
• Suzanne Strempek Shea, Songs from a Lead-Lined Room; Shelf Life
• Andrea Simon, Bashert
• Clea Simon, Mad House
• Natalia Rachel Singer, Scraping By in the Big Eighties
• John Skoyles, Secret Frequencies
• Wole Soyinka, Ake
• Mike Steinberg, Still Pitching
• Cheryl Strayed, Wild
• Patrick Tracey, Stalking Irish Madness
• John Updike, Self-Consciousness
• Bruce Weigl, The Circle of Hanh
• Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge
• Francis Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford
• Jeanette Walls, The Glass Castle
• Jerald Walker, Street Shadows
• Joan Wickersham , The Suicide Index
• Geoffrey Wolff, The Duke of Deception
• Tobias Wolff, This Boy’s Life; In Pharoah’s Army
• Adam Zagajewski, Another Beauty
• Zhu Xiao Di, Thirty Years in a Red House