Writers and Editors

As time permits, I'll post reading lists of memoirs of interest in various categories -- both as good reading material and as models for those who are practicing life story writing. Let Pat know if any other titles are good candidates, or if any titles appear on the wrong lists. Happy reading.

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COMING-OF-AGE MEMOIRS
• Allison, Dorothy. Bastard Out of Carolina (semi-fictionalized)

• Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

• Baker, Russell. Growing Up

• Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son

• Barber, Phyllis. How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir (a Mormon childhood in Nevada)

• Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

• Beard, Jo Ann. The Boys of My Youth

• Carr, Mary. The Liar’s Club

• Charyn, Jerome. The Dark Lady of Belorusse (the Bronx in the 1940s)

• Coetzee, J. M.. Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (South Africa)

• Cofer, Judith Ortiz. Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood

• Conroy, Frank. Stop-Time A Memoir

• Cunningham, Laura Shaine. Sleeping Arrangements

• Edise, Faith & Nina Sichel, Eds.. Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing Up Global

• Ellroy, James. My Dark Places (crime writer explores mother’s murder)

• Fuller, Alexandra. Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

• Gates, Henry Louis. Colored People: A Memoir

• Hampl, Patricia. A Romantic Education

• hooks, bell. Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood

• Hotchner, A.E.. King of the Hill (St. Louis during the Depression)

• Jordan, June. Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood

• Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

• Knopp, Lisa. Flight Dreams: A Life in the Midwestern Landscape

• Lauck, Jennifer. Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found

• Lorde, Audre. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

• Mathebane, Mark. Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa

• McCarthy, Mary. Memories of a Catholic Girlhood

• McCourt, Frank. Angela’s Ashes (Irish poverty)

• McLain, Paula. Like Family: Growing Up in Other People’s Houses (foster care)

• Monette, Paul. Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story

• Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi (black in the South in the 1940s and 1950s)

• Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak Memory

• Rios, Alberto. Capirotadas: A Nogales Memoir (an Arizona border town with an interesting cultural mix)

• Rodriguez, Richard. Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez

• Simon, Kate. Bronx Primitive (growing up in a Jewish immigrant family)

• Stevens, lan. On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language (how language and literature shape identity)

• Strauss, Jean. Beneath a Tall Tree (adoption)

• Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle

• Wolff, Geoffrey. The Duke of Deception: The Memories of My Father (about their con-man father Duke Wolff)

• Wolff, Tobias. This Boy’s Life (about life with his abusive stepfather)

• Wright, Richard. Black Boy

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MEMOIRS AND PERSONAL ACCOUNTS OF
VOCATION, AVOCATION, OCCUPATION, PROFESSION, "CALLING"

• Abbott, Shirley. The Bookmaker’s Daughter: A Memory Unbound

• Ashton-Warner, Sylvia. Teacher (most memorable scenes: teaching children how to read)

• Baryshnikov, Mikhail. Baryshnikov at Work

• Cherry, Mike. On High Steel

• Conover, Ted. Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing

• Conroy, Pat. The Water Is Wide (early Conroy nonfiction, about teaching Gullah children on a South Carolina island)

• Cowser, Robert. Dream Season: A Professor Joins America’s Oldest Semi-Pro Football Team

• Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (a journalist’s account of trying to live on what she makes as a waitress, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a Wal-Mart employee)

• Gandhi, Mahatma. Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

• Gawande, Atul. Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science

• Gawande, Atul. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

• Griffin, Gail. Calling: Essays on Teaching in the Mother Tongue

• Grim, Pamela. Just Here Trying to Save a Few Lives: Tales of Life and Death in the ER

• Groopman, Jerome. Second Opinions: Stories of Intuition and Choice in the Changing World of Medicine

• Hamper, Ben. Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line (a shoprat’s life on the General Motors assembly line)

• Kirkland, Gelsey. Dancing on My Grave (about her life as a ballerina and her struggles with eating disorders and drug addiction)

• Kirkland, Gelsey. The Shape of Love: The Story of 'Dancing on My Grave' (about her return to dancing)

• Konner, Melvin. Becoming a Doctor: A Journey of Initiation in Medical School

• Lynch, Thomas. The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

• Lynn, Loretta, with George Vecsey. Coal Miner’s Daughter (from her childhood in Butcher Holler to a life in country music)

• Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X (as told to Alex Haley)

• Moody, Ralph. Little Britches, Man of the Family

• Moody, Ralph. Horse of a Different Color: Reminiscences of a Kansas Drover (ranching in the early 20th century)

• Neville, Susan. Iconography: A Writer’s Meditation

• Ofri, Danielle. Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue

• Rafkin, Louise. Other People’s Dirt: A Housecleaner’s Curious Adventures

• Reichl, Ruth. Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table

• Reichl, Ruth. Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise (memoirs of the New York Times food critic)

• Sacks, Oliver. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

• Seltzer, Richard. Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery; Confessions of a Knife

• Smith, Dennis. Firefighters: Their Lives in Their Own Words

• Sterling, Joy. A Cultivated Life: A Year in a California Vineyard

• Stone, John. In the Country of Hearts: Journeys in the Art of Medicine

• Teresa of Avila. The Way of Perfection

• Unger, Zak. Working Fire: The Making of a Fireman (a rookie’s year in the Oakland Fire Department)

• Vertosick, Frank. Why We Hurt: The Natural History of Pain

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