A series of personal essays by George M. Johnson that trace growing up as a Black queer youth in the U.S., linking autobiographical scenes to direct address to younger Black queer readers.

Lucy Grealy recounts her life before and after a childhood diagnosis of Ewing's sarcoma, describing the medical treatments that altered her face and the social and emotional consequences that followed.

A first-person memoir by Qian Julie Wang about arriving in the United States as a child with her parents and living undocumented. The narrative follows her family's struggle with poverty, precarious work, and the constant fear and limitations that come with noncitizen status.

A nonfiction letter from Ta‑Nehisi Coates to his teenage son that explains what it feels like to be Black in the United States.

A first-person account by Suleika Jaouad of surviving serious illness and the aftermath, tracking the author's time as a patient and the challenges of rebuilding life afterward. The book situates medical experience within social and psychological questions about identity, belonging, and self-recovery.

Richard Wright's Black Boy is a memoir of his childhood and early adulthood, following life in the segregated American South and his later move to Chicago where he begins a writing career and political engagement.

A biographical memoir by Paula Fox that collects memories and impressions from her early life and career as an American novelist. The book orients around formative childhood experiences and episodes from a writer’s life, using anecdote and recollection to sketch how personal history shaped a literary trajectory.

Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming is a verse memoir that records her early childhood and adolescent memories growing up African American in the 1960s.

A firsthand memoir of growing up Black and poor in mid-20th-century rural Mississippi, following the author's life from childhood into her twenties.