Category Archives: Memoir

Priestdaddy

I loved Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This when I read it last year, and that love led me to pick up her much-praised memoir Priestdaddy. It didn’t park itself in my brain and start transforming it the way No One Is … Continue reading

Posted in Memoir | 4 Comments

Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

My future was a matter of complete indifference to me. I felt neither anxiety or fear. In any case there was nothing I could do. In my mind I retraced my strange journey from Moscow, always south, always further south, … Continue reading

Posted in History, Memoir, Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration | 2 Comments

Hyperbole and a Half

Ten years ago, it seemed like everyone on the internet was in love with the art and storytelling of Allie Brosh. I certainly was. Like so many others, I was a faithful reader of her blog, Hyperbole and a Half, where … Continue reading

Posted in Graphic Novels / Comics, Memoir | 7 Comments

In the Dream House

Bluebeard’s greatest lie was that there was only one rule: the newest wife could do anything she wanted—anything—as long as she didn’t do that (single, ordinary) thing; didn’t stick that tiny, inconsequential key into that tiny, inconsequential lock. But was … Continue reading

Posted in Memoir, Nonfiction | Leave a comment

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery in North Carolina and escaped to the North in 1842. In 1861, this book, recounting her experiences in slavery and eventual escape was published under the pseudonym Linda Brent (and, as Linda is the … Continue reading

Posted in History, Memoir | 6 Comments

Twelve Years a Slave

Solomon Northup was a free black man who lived his whole life in New York until, in 1841, he took a job as a traveling musician. This job landed him in Washington, DC, where, despite possessing papers showing he was … Continue reading

Posted in Classics, Memoir, Nonfiction | 4 Comments

Educated

Tara Westover grew up in the mountains of Idaho. Suspicious of the government and committed to an extreme version of the Mormon faith, her parents home-schooled Tara and her siblings, although there was little structure or actual education to their … Continue reading

Posted in Memoir, Nonfiction | 9 Comments

Narrative of Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth was born a slave named Isabella in — or around, there weren’t records kept — 1797, in Ulster County, New York. She was owned by a Dutch family until she was nine, and when she was sold to … Continue reading

Posted in Memoir, Nonfiction | 9 Comments

Just Mercy

I read Just Mercy with my book group, but I’ve been wanting to read it for quite a while. This is Bryan Stevenson’s memoir about how he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, which struggles against racial injustice in the criminal … Continue reading

Posted in Memoir, Nonfiction | 5 Comments

Brown Girl Dreaming

Brown Girl Dreaming is only the second book I’ve read by Jacqueline Woodson. (The first, her spectacular picture book Show Way, is about seven generations of the women of an African-American family, from slavery through civil rights, and the instructions … Continue reading

Posted in Children's / YA Lit, Memoir, Nonfiction, Poetry | 11 Comments