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

An autobiographical account by Zora Neale Hurston that traces episodes from her life, mixing personal memory with material drawn from folklore and the social customs of Black communities.

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 linked-memoir of personal essays in which the author recounts growing up Vietnamese American, arriving as a refugee, and navigating family, race, and literary ambitions.

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

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 personal memoir about the author's relationship with her mother and how food—especially shopping and cooking at a Korean grocery—carries memory and cultural connection.

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 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 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 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 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 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.

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.

Suzanne Simard recounts her career as a forest ecologist and presents her research showing that trees connect and exchange resources through fungal mycelial networks.

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 of Saeed Jones' adolescence and young adulthood, focused on his efforts to find safety, desire, and selfhood as a young Black gay man in 1990s Texas.

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 fictional first-person memoir presenting the life and travels of Estebanico (Mustafa ibn Muhammad ibn Abdussalam al-Zamori), a Moroccan enslaved man who survives the Narváez expedition and recounts his experience in the New World.

A first-person memoir that links the author's history of sexual trauma to long-term weight gain and the ways her body has been treated by herself and others. The book focuses on physical hunger and its emotional roots while situating those experiences within social reactions, stigma, and personal coping.

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.

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.