A first-person memoir that follows the author's experience growing up as the child of an incarcerated parent and the personal consequences that unfolded in family life, identity, and adulthood. The book situates intimate recollection alongside social context to reckon with shame, longing, and the search for belonging.

A first-person life account that traces a Black lesbian’s development from childhood into adulthood, attending to family, work, lovers, and the communities that shaped her.

A first-person memoir of growing up and working in colonial East Africa, told through episodic accounts of life on farms, training racehorses, and learning to fly.

A first-person memoir about growing up Black and queer in rural Ohio, charting the author's struggles with family conflict, physical violence, and the search for an affirmed sense of manhood.

A first-person memoir that looks closely at a relationship Machado calls the Dream House and how that relationship involved psychological abuse.

A linked essay collection blending memoir and criticism in which the author uses personal anecdotes, cultural analysis, and literary reflection to name and look closely at 'minor feelings'—ambivalent, often-dismissed emotions that arise from living as an Asian American in the United States.

A first-person memoir by Chanel Miller recounting her sexual assault at Stanford in 2015 and the consequences that followed, including the legal case People v. Turner. The book traces the personal aftermath, public attention, and interactions with the justice system as the author reclaims voice and identity.

A father and his young son travel over months through a devastated landscape after an unspecified cataclysm. Their trek focuses on survival: finding food and shelter, avoiding hostile encounters, and preserving the child's safety and moral education amid widespread collapse.

A Cup of Water Under My Bed is a memoir in linked essays about growing up Colombian–Cuban in a working-class immigrant family.

An author convalescing with a chronic illness observes and cares for a wild snail that becomes a daily companion. The book records close, patient attention to the snail’s behavior and anatomy while using that relationship to reflect on bodily experience, time, and recovery.

A first-person account by a clinician-scholar describing living with schizophrenia while pursuing an academic career. The book presents personal episodes of illness and recovery alongside reflections on diagnosis, treatment, and maintaining work in higher education.

A Moveable Feast is Ernest Hemingway’s memoir of his years as a young expatriate writer in Paris during the 1920s. The book collects episodic recollections—personal scenes, interactions, and snapshots of everyday life—anchored around his marriage at the time and his early literary friendships and work habits.

A linked collection of personal essays in which the author describes living with schizophrenia and related diagnoses, linking firsthand memoir to discussion of clinical diagnosis, treatment, and the social realities of mental illness.

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.

A first-person graphic memoir recounting George Takei's childhood experiences during the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II. The book focuses on family life inside the camps and traces how those early events shaped the author's later path in theater and public life.

A writer trains and lives with a hawk as she processes bereavement, using close attention to the bird and falconry practice as a way to reckon with grief.

A compact memoir in essay form that traces the author's coming-of-age moments, friendships, and cultural touchstones while reflecting on identity and belonging.

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.

Two linked essays presented as letters that question the place of race and religion in American life.

Set in the violent 1850s, the novel follows Henry Shackleford, a young enslaved boy who becomes involved with abolitionist John Brown.

Janet Mock recounts her path to womanhood from childhood through young adulthood, focusing on the realities of growing up transgender and multiracial in Hawaii and negotiating family, community, and medical systems.

A first-person memoir recounting the author's migration from El Salvador to the United States as a child. The narrative follows the physical and emotional journey, the dangers and practical hurdles of traveling undocumented, and the ongoing effects of displacement on family and identity.

A memoir of a childhood spent in unstable, often impoverished circumstances, told from the author's adult vantage. The account focuses on a family marked by vivid highs and dangerous lows: parental idealism and promises alongside episodes of neglect and homelessness.

A multigenerational family saga that traces a Greek-American family's migration, domestic life, and inherited biology which shapes one child's unusual development.