Some memoirs offer us more than the voyeuristic pleasure of a peek behind the curtain into someone else’s life. Some of them will make you think about your own life, or the world you live in, or the way it works. Here are fifteen memoirs that will make you think.
Educated by Tara Westover
Educated, first published in 2018, is Westover’s account of her remarkable life: growing up in a family of survivalist Mormons, leaving them to step foot in a classroom for the first time as a university student, and going on to complete a PhD at Cambridge University. It’s a memoir about shame, understanding, and the transformative power of education, and it will prompt you to think about the role that each of these has played in your own life. Read my full review of Educated here.
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
When Breath Becomes Air follows the unusual situation of a doctor becoming a patient, when 36-year-old Paul Kalanithi is diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. It’s “an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both”. Kalinithi sadly passed away in 2015 before his memoir was complete, but his words live on in his best-selling memoir and continue to inform and inspire millions of readers around the world. Read my full review of When Breath Becomes Air here.
I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai survived a gunshot wound to the head – that would be enough to make anyone stop and think about the fragility of life and the beauty of second chances. In I Am Malala, she tells the story of how she not only overcame the physical and emotional trauma of that experience, but went on to win a Nobel Prize for her efforts to ensure every girl gets an education. She refused to be silenced, and her miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York.
Paula by Isabel Allende
Everyone loves Isabel Allende’s magical realism and historical fiction, but Paula is her most raw and revealing work. It’s a memoir about the “darkest experience of her life”, losing a child, written by the deathbed of her daughter Paula Frías Allende (for whom the book is named). Paula fell into a porphyria-induced coma in 1991, and died the following year. Allende initially began writing as a letter to Paula, explaining what she had missed while she was ill, but as it became clear that Paula would not recover, Allende began to weave in other stories, from her own life and from the worlds she imagined.
The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule
The Stranger Beside Me is unique in that it is both biographical and autobiographical, existing in the weird gray area between journalism and memoir. See, Ann Rule wasn’t just any crime writer who picked up the Ted Bundy story: she was his friend, before his crimes came to light. She met Bundy in 1971, when he was a psychology student at the University of Washington, and they volunteered together manning the phones of a suicide crisis line. This memoir will make you think about whether you can ever truly know the people in your life. Read my full review of The Stranger Beside Me here.
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
Chanel Miller does remind us at intervals in her story (though she shouldn’t have to) that Know My Name exists for so many people. One in five women have a version of this story that they could tell. What happened to Miller is not an isolated incident, it was not an extraordinary once-off. It happens every day, in every part of the world. This is an incredible read, on every level: as a tool for dismantling the patriarchy, as a masterfully-crafted narrative, as an account of crime and justice, and as a radical testament to the costs of survival. Read my full review of Know My Name here.
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings depicts a radical transformation, from a nervous young girl subjected to racism and abuse to a self-possessed young woman with hope and determination. At many critical junctures, books and literature provide solace to Angelou, and it’s through the power of the written word that she reclaims her own agency and makes sense of her bewildering world. It’s a powerful coming-of-age story, especially for fellow bookworms, and it’s impossible to read this one without feeling uplifted in some way (despite the traumatic content). Read my full review of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings here.
In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
In The Dream House is an intimate, horrifying, beautiful, defiant, heartfelt, multi-dimensional account of Carmen Maria Machado’s formative – and abusive – love affair with a partner she calls only “the woman in the Dream House”. This is a Rubik’s cube of a book, examining the subject from every possible angle, twisting and turning upon itself until all the edges line up. It’s a memoir that will make you think about the way we tell our own stories, and how we understand the things that shape us. Read my full review of In The Dream House here.
The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do
Anh Do is one of those “boat people” our government has been trying to make us fear for the last decade or so, and his memoir The Happiest Refugee will make anyone who’s ever bought a ‘Fuck Off We’re Full’ bumper sticker think hard about their choices. He was born in Vietnam in 1977, and his family fled by boat to Australia in 1980. As heart-wrenching as his story can be, it’s all told with Do’s characteristic and eternal optimism, and it will make you think about how you overcome your own challenges and obstacles, as well as the challenges and obstacles faced by others unseen by you. Read my full review of The Happiest Refugee here.
The Gap by Benjamin Gilmour
The Gap takes its name from a notorious suicide spot, a clifftop at Sydney’s Watson’s Bay. For the summer of 2008, Benjamin Gilmour worked as a paramedic based out of the nearest ambulance station. Gilmour wrote this book, from his detailed notes and diaries, at the urging of fellow paramedics, who want to open a conversation about suicide and mental health in this country. It’s a shocking and eye-opening account that will make you think hard about the toll that being the knight in shining armour can take. Read my full review of The Gap here.
The Love That Remains by Susan Francis
The story that unfolds in The Love That Remains is not the one that you’d expect. In it, Susan Francis discovers new truths that challenge everything she thought she knew about the man she married, after he has died and can no longer explain for himself. She’s forced to confront uncomfortable questions, and her memoir will make you think about them too: how well can we ever really know a person? Where are love’s bounds? Should we seek out our past to find peace, or focus on the present? Read my full review of The Love That Remains here.
Sociopath by Patric Gagne
‘Sociopath’ is an overused word (that appears nowhere in the DSM-5, by the way), yet it’s extremely rare to hear someone self-identify that way in earnest. That makes Sociopath an unusual read if nothing else – the honest-to-goodness memoir of a 21st century self-identified sociopath. She writes this book because, she says, “the lived experience of sociopathy deserves to be illustrated”. Reading it is a powerful exercise in expanding the horizons of our empathy for others who live and think differently than we do. Read my full review of Sociopath here.
The Vitals by Tracy Sorensen
Tracy Sorensen is a carrier of the BRCA1 gene mutation (yes, the same one that Angelina Jolie has), and it manifested as peritoneal cancer in 2010. She underwent treatment, and thankfully went into remission for eight years. Her memoir, though, isn’t really about that, largely because of the unique perspective from which she writes. The Vitals is narrated by (get this) her internal organs. It’s a wildly inventive way to write a cancer memoir, and one that will make you think about your body and the way it fights disease differently. Read my full review of The Vitals here.
You Talk We Die by Judy Ryan
Judy Ryan was awarded an OAM for her “service to community health through a range of programs” – chief among them, campaigning for the first-ever safe injecting facility in Melbourne. You Talk We Die is her memoir, a personal and practical account of what it takes to effect progressive change, even when the odds are stacked against you. It’s a straightforward no-nonsense testament to the power of simply taking action. It’s also a wonderful reminder that humanity and compassion should be front and center in any legislation around drugs and addiction. Read my full review of You Talk We Die here.
Good Morning, Destroyer Of Men’s Souls by Nina Renata Aron
Good Morning, Destroyer Of Men’s Souls is an incredible memoir about love and addiction, from the perspective of the one who loves the addict. As Aron herself points out, the literature on addiction written by addicts is vast and varied, with her role too-often relegated to that of “supporting cast”. She joins the dots between her experience of co-dependency with the broader view of the historically gendered labour of addiction, and her memoir will make you think about the wider impact of substance abuse. Read my full review of Good Morning, Destroyer Of Men’s Souls here.
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