Why am I passionate about this?

I am a reader, writer, and professor specializing in memoir writing. I think every single person has a fascinating life. But, when writing it down, it can be difficult to find a narrative structure that allows the story to feel as unique as the human being writing it. I am drawn to memoirs that have fresh, creative ways of organizing their material—memoirs that go beyond or subvert the conventional, straightforward, chronological approach. After all, our memories are often scattered, fragmented, interrupted, non-linear, or just bizarre; memoirs that capture not only the person’s lived experience but also the messiness of memory itself feel more powerful and true to me. 


I wrote

Book cover of Sounds Like Titanic

What is my book about?

When aspiring violinist Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman lands a job with a professional ensemble in New York City, she imagines she…

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman Why did I love this book?

Kingston’s classic opens with one of the best first lines of all time: You must not tell anyone,” my mother said, “what I am about to tell you.” When I teach this book in my memoir writing classes, my students and I spend a long time discussing the implication of this first sentence—what it means for Kingston’s work, but also what it means for us, as memoirists, to tell stories we’ve been forbidden, in some way, to tell. The beating heart of this memoir is the idea that making art—literary or otherwise—is the process of saving your own life.     

By Maxine Hong Kingston,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked The Woman Warrior as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • With this book, the acclaimed author created an entirely new form—an exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities—immigrant, female, Chinese, American. 

“A classic, for a reason” – Celeste Ng via Twitter

As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” The fierce and wily women warriors of…


Book cover of Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood

Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman Why did I love this book?

Because my first introduction to bell hooks was through her scholarly writing, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this memoir. A few pages in, I was already dazzled, challenged, and addicted to her storytelling genius—I read it in one sitting and immediately began reading it again. The perfect memoir for those who are looking for unconventional storytelling, hooks uses techniques like point-of-view shifts to paint a realer-than-real-life portrait of her childhood in rural Kentucky.  

By bell hooks,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bone Black as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Stitching together girlhood memories with the finest threads of innocence, feminist intellectual bell hooks presents a powerfully intimate account of growing up in the South. A memoir of ideas and perceptions, Bone Black shows the unfolding of female creativity and one strong-spirited child’s journey toward becoming a writer. She learns early on the roles women and men play in society, as well as the emotional vulnerability of children. She sheds new light on a society that beholds the joys of marriage for men and condemns anything more than silence for women. In this world, too, black is a woman’s color—worn…


Book cover of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman Why did I love this book?

This memoir is so important to me that I included a scene of me reading it in my own memoir! To this day, when I find myself doubting the power of writing and literature, I return to this book; reading it is akin to sitting in the world’s most interesting and urgent literature class. Set in Tehran during the Iranian Revolution, this memoir is organized by the banned works of classic Western Literature Professor Nafisi discusses with a clandestine, all-women’s book group. The women in the group come from drastically different religious and socio-economic backgrounds, but through the reading and discussion of these books they are better able to understand one another, and navigate their own chaotic time and place.

By Azar Nafisi,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Reading Lolita in Tehran as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When Azar Nafisi was fired from Tehran University (where she was teaching English literature) because she refused to wear a veil, she gathered a group of her female students and resumed her classes at home, privately and discreetly. There, a group of young women discussed, argued about and communed with Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Henry James, Nabokov and others in the canon of English writers. The surreal picture of reading "Lolita", weighing the sexuality of Jane Austen or the American authenticity of Gatsby in the severe aftermath of Iran's Islamic Revolution was not lost on either Nafisi or her students. The…


Book cover of Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life

Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman Why did I love this book?

As someone who teaches memoir writing for a living, I’ve read a lot of memoirs. Safekeeping is my all-time favorite. Each semester I assign it to my students, thinking this time I will finally grow tired of it. But I never do. To me, this book is the pinnacle of the memoir genre and I think it should get more attention as a masterpiece. While it has an unconventional, non-linear structure with multiple points of view (sometimes written in first person, sometimes in third, sometimes as an epistolary address to Thomas’s deceased second husband, sometimes as a meta-conversation about the book itself via the author’s conversations with her sister) its brilliance lies in its simplicity. Chapters are extremely short, sometimes no longer than a sentence. And yet they contain everything. 

By Abigail Thomas,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Safekeeping as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A beautifully crafted and inviting account of one woman’s life, Safekeeping offers a sublimely different kind of autobiography. Setting aside a straightforward narrative in favor of brief passages of vivid prose, Abigail Thomas revisits the pivotal moments and the tiny incidents that have shaped her life: pregnancy at 18; single motherhood (of three!) by the age of 26; the joys and frustrations of three marriages; and the death of her second husband, who was her best friend. The stories made of these incidents are startling in their clarity and reassuring in their wisdom.

This is a book in which silence…


Book cover of Things We Didn't Talk about When I Was a Girl: A Memoir

Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman Why did I love this book?

The best memoirs, to me, are not only records of past events. They are also the record of a writer grappling with how best to tell the story. Jeannie Vanasco takes this idea to an entirely new level in this brilliant meta-memoir that not only chronicles a sexual assault she experienced in college, but also her present-day investigation into her rapist’s memories of the event, his motives, and his present-day thoughts about what happened. This book challenged me to think in new ways—not only about sexual assault, but also about the ways we remember it and write about it. 

By Jeannie Vanasco,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Things We Didn't Talk about When I Was a Girl as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A New York Times Editors’ Choice and Best Book of the Year at TIME, Esquire, Amazon, Kirkus, and Electric Literature


Jeannie Vanasco has had the same nightmare since she was a teenager. It is always about him: one of her closest high school friends, a boy named Mark. A boy who raped her. When her nightmares worsen, Jeannie decides—after fourteen years of silence—to reach out to Mark. He agrees to talk on the record and meet in person.


Jeannie details her friendship with Mark before and after the assault, asking the brave and urgent question: Is it possible for a…


Explore my book 😀

Book cover of Sounds Like Titanic

What is my book about?

When aspiring violinist Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman lands a job with a professional ensemble in New York City, she imagines she has achieved her lifelong dream. But the ensemble proves to be a sham. When the group “performs,” the microphones are never on. Instead, the music blares from a CD. The mastermind behind this scheme is a peculiar and mysterious figure known as The Composer, who is gaslighting his audiences with music that sounds suspiciously like the Titanic movie soundtrack. On tour with his chaotic ensemble, Hindman spirals into crises of identity and disillusionment as she “plays” for audiences genuinely moved by the performance, unable to differentiate real from fake.

Sounds Like Titanic is a surreal, often hilarious coming-of-age story. Written with precise, candid prose and sharp insight into ambition and gender.

You might also like...

What You Made Me Do

By Barbara Gayle Austin,

Book cover of What You Made Me Do

Barbara Gayle Austin Author Of What You Made Me Do

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Barbara's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

Willem and Jurriaan have a miserable childhood thanks to their cruel, controlling mother—Louisa Veldkamp, a world-renowned pianist. Dad turns a blind eye. One day, Louisa vanishes without a trace during a family vacation.

Adoptee Anneliese Bakker survives a toxic childhood and leaves home, vowing never to return. While searching for her biological mother, she meets the adult Willem, and they fall in love. Pregnant and engaged, she moves into the family mansion, wanting nothing more than to create a loving family for her child. But the Veldkamps are cold and distant. And why is Louisa a taboo subject?

As Anneliese…

What You Made Me Do

By Barbara Gayle Austin,

What is this book about?

An expectant mother gets more than she bargained for when she marries into a seemingly perfect family in this gripping debut novel–a must read for fans of A. J. Finn and B. A. Paris.

After surviving a nightmarish childhood, Anneliese Bakker is on the mend and searching for her birth mother. But when she meets Willem, she falls madly in love and finally finds a safe place to land. Engaged and expecting her first child, she moves into the Veldkamp mansion on a stately, tree-lined avenue in Amsterdam. And yet, nothing about Willem’s family is as it seems. Instead of…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in magical realism, widows, and childhood?

Magical Realism 466 books
Widows 85 books
Childhood 196 books