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.

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.

An eighteen-year-old narrator lives with her agoraphobic sister and ailing uncle in an isolated family home long shunned by their village after a past tragedy. The novel records how the household maintains rituals and defenses while outside hostility and the characters’ secrets exert pressure on daily life.

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

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

A first-volume autobiographical account of Maya Angelou’s early life, following her from early childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, through adolescence and into young motherhood. The narrative traces how encounters with racism, personal trauma, and steady literary influences shape her sense of self and dignity.

A first-person account of growing up between Chinese folktales and American life, where family history and mythic stories intertwine with recollections of childhood.

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.

Jill Ker Conway recounts her childhood on a vast sheep station in western New South Wales and the disruptions—most notably drought and her father's death—that forced her family to leave for Sydney.

A collection of interlinked short stories drawn from Tim O'Brien's Vietnam War experience, following a platoon of American soldiers. Each chapter focuses on material items, personal recollections, or specific incidents that reveal how memory, fear, and obligation shape their daily lives and relationships.

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.

Mary Karr recounts her 1960s childhood in a small industrial town in Southeast Texas, centered on a troubled family life and the group of men her father called the Liars' Club.

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.

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

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 first-person account of the year after Joan Didion's husband died, recording the small, persistent thoughts and rituals that accompany sudden bereavement. The narrative tracks how memory, habit, and formal thinking shape a surviving spouse’s attempt to understand loss and the quotidian aftermath of grief.

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 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.

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 memoir tracing the author's journey from an abusive childhood through competitive swimming, substance use, and sexual exploration toward eventual stability in adult life.

A linked memoir of personal and communal loss: the author recounts the deaths of five Black men connected to her across roughly four years and situates those deaths within family history, local conditions, and systemic forces.

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

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