78 books like The Truth of Memoir

This is quite possibly my favourite memoir ever written. It made me laugh, cry and scream. Never have I seen such a clearly dysfunctional family that didn’t even realize they were dysfunctional.

I loved them because they embraced life no matter what and hated them because they didn’t see how bad what they were doing to one another was. Full of elements and emotions from my own childhood, this book made me feel deeply and emotionally.  

Melissa Febos’ book Body Work provides encouragement to writers who are considering the memoir genre by highlighting the importance of storytelling as central to human experience. 

Memoir writing is like magic; unique in its ability to shine a light on stories of survival, perseverance, and resilience. Febos’ book beautifully portrays the power of memoir as a tool to prompt growth, pulling back façades in ways that are both personally empowering and enriching for readers and writers alike.

“We are telling the stories that no one else can tell, and we are giving this proof of our survival to each other.” (p. 27)

Dr. Pennebaker describes writing as a mechanism for wellness – highlighting the power of prose in solving puzzles, bringing secrets into the light, as we seek to understand ourselves and others.

Keeping secrets, according to Pennebaker, is physical work with negative implications (often across a lifetime) potentially impacting long-term physical and mental health due to stress.

I’ve returned to Opening Up by Writing it Down many times in my career in order to tap into the wisdom to write about my mother’s complicated life and to better understand the pain she carried into her adult years. It’s a terrific tool for writers curious about the memoir genre.

Good Morning, Monster is a beacon of a book. Bolstering my interest in writing about mental health, resiliency, and survivorship. Dr. Gildiner showcases five compelling case studies of patients she’s served. 

Written with candor and compassion, Good Morning, Monster provides encouragement to writers to engage in their own storytelling to uncover tales of triumph in the face of individual or family mental health challenges.  Each case study provides a glimpse of vulnerability, demonstrating the unique human capacity for healing.

Despite the heaviness of the topics, Dr. Gildiner gives the reader rare insight into trauma and recovery buoyed by love and hope.

I really enjoyed this book because it was the first narrative I read about a woman who was only a sex addict. Sex addiction is primarily viewed as something men (and out-of-control celebrities) deal with. I thought I was alone as a female sex addict until I read about Cohen’s life.

Her book helped me feel less alone, and it showed me that I shouldn’t be ashamed to tell my story. I saw myself in each of her experiences, especially when she described being a sex-craved teenager. 

Well, there’s an obvious reason, I was born in Travnik, a small town in the very heart of Bosnia and Hercegovina. Despite being a small place, it is immensely important—especially if you ask people who were born and raised there ☺  

This book is a novel by one of the greatest European writers of the mid-twentieth century, Ivo Andrić, and it is one (of two) of his best novels. Apart from being written in a beautiful and unique (“Andrić’s”) style, it is also one of the best resources for understanding the cultural, social, and religious dynamic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, not only during the Ottoman times. If one wishes to get an insight into the culture and “mentality” of the people who traditionally inhabited the region, Chronicles of Travnik (often, curiously enough, translated into English as Bosnian Chronicle) can serve better than most sociological studies. It’s better, of course,… show more.

Capturing the spirit of Maya Angelou’s work, Renee Watson expertly chronicles Maya’s life with evocative poems. This book is a rhythmic tribute to the first Black person and the first woman to recite a poem at a presidential inauguration. Bryan Collier’s collage art perfectly complements each poem.

I especially love the poem called “Brother Jimmy, Brother Martin,” which highlights Maya’s deep love for James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr.

My favorite lines: “Jimmy was light in the darkest of rooms. Martin was water in a parched desert.”   

Kit and I share some life similarities, she’s a working-class girl with a Birmingham background, published later in life, and I was keen to read her story. Written as scenes from childhood with sharp observation and wit, her book illustrates an unpredictable childhood. The daughter of an Irish mother and Caribbean father in a large and sometimes chaotic family, where there is love in the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but not always at home. There are the familiar places, the family dynamics observed with the clarity of a child, and the tit-for-tat games her parents play - dad buys a new car, the next week, mum a harmonica and Davy Crockett hat. All quirks observed and challenging situations related with a lightness of touch and wit, a genuine pleasure to read.

I didn’t think I could appreciate this memoir of a son searching for his imprisoned father in Gaddafi’s Libya until, suddenly, I did. This book showed me that the bonds between all fathers and their sons transcend things like nationality and religion. It is part of the core of what it means to be human.

I knew from the very first pages that the author would never again see his father, even as he tirelessly spends most of his adult life trying to. By extension, I understood that as much as we want to, we can never really know our fathers.

I raced through the pages.

The Cry of the Lake was published in 2020, the same year as my book, and around that time, I had gotten to know many authors, including Charlie.

From the first line, I was drawn into the story which is told with impeccable detail, its characters clearly defined to create the dark and mysterious tale.