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 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.

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.

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 memoir that follows a woman raised in a survivalist, home‑schooled household who leaves that insular world to attend college and later pursue advanced academic study.

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 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 first-person memoir about a First Nation woman's passage through a troubled childhood, early and fraught motherhood, and ongoing struggles with mental health and identity. The narrative pieces together memory, family history, and personal reflection to show how past trauma informs present life and relationships.

A first-person memoir in which the author confronts his upbringing, family relationships, and struggles with body weight and compulsive behaviors while placing those personal troubles against broader questions of race, responsibility, and belonging.

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

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 poet-turned-memoirist looks closely at the death of her mother and the aftermath for the daughter left to piece together memory, legal facts, and family history.

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.