Memoir Books
My Lobotomy
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It’s hard to beat a title like this! Happily, My Lobotomy does not disappoint.
In 1960, at the age of twelve, the author was given a transorbital lobotomy,
The Invisible Wall
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Bernstein was 93 years old when he wrote this memoir (his first book) of his childhood in an English mill town. For those readers who require that their books be firmly grounded in time and place,
Tales of Wonder
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Huston Smith’s bestseller, The World’s Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions, was published in 1958 and remains (with over 2.5 million copies sold) one of the best-loved books on religion that has ever been written.
Cartwheels in a Sari
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In the memoir category, stories of being brought up in a cult are hard to beat. The craziness surpasses anything one would find in a really good, regular crazy-family-memoir (Running with Scissors for example) because there is an entire community of people, thousands of people, participating in the madness.
When All the World Was Young
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This intelligent, literary memoir is about childhood during much simpler times—the 1940s, though it could easily have taken place any time pre-80s, before urban sprawl and recent child-rearing fashions took hold. Indeed
Losing Mum and Pup
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Buckley’s memoir about his famous father and socialite mother tends to engender either appreciation (for a witty, interesting story about losing one’s parents) or scathing condemnation (for a cruel and heartless portrayal of a much-loved couple).
Twenty Chickens for a Saddle
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I definitely recommend this book for anyone who is fond of memoirs about growing up in an exotic locale with an eccentric family. The author writes about her childhood in Botswana in the ’80s,
Finding Mañana
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There was so, so much I didn’t know about Cuba. Considering that the country is only ninety miles away and intricately tied in many historically significant ways to the U.S., this book really should be required reading in our schools.
The Only Girl in the Car
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This book has much in common with the memoir Lucky. Both authors describe a rape in excruciating detail, while at the same time writing about their families and their years growing up with great humor and affection. In addition,
Wasted
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“It was that simple: One minute I was your average nine-year-old, shorts and a T-shirt and long brown braids, sitting in the yellow kitchen, watching Brady Bunch reruns, munching on a bag of Fritos, scratching the dog with my foot.