The Memoir Edit

Disclaimer: This is not meant to be any sort of authoritative list of the ten best memoirs ever, but rather an edit of ten memoirs that I feel embody the best of the genre. I wanted to capture the diversity of the memoir space, and thus I’ve included lighthearted celebrity memoirs, deeply moving activist memoirs, and memoirs by some of my favorite writers and voices about all sorts of subjects. I think the through-line between all of the books on this list is their ability to address trauma and grief unflinchingly. I’ve always found the ability to voice one’s deepest emotions as an essentially powerful and hopeful act, and thus I find uplift in each of these narratives. All of these books have changed the way I think about myself and the world, and offered me a fresh perspective on what it means to be human. There’s something for everyone on this list, and whatever type of memoir you’re looking for, I think any of these ten would be a great place to start.

Anyone who has ever seen a Mindy Kaling project knows that she is hilarious. She’s done a little bit of everything: written and acted in the mega-hit NBC sitcom, The Office, created and starred in her own sitcom, The Mindy Project, appeared in various blockbuster films, and most recently, executive produced the witty and fresh Netflix series, Never Have I Ever (My most recent binge-watch, I highly recommend!). Her 2016 memoir offers some more insight into her career, her love life, and her youth. She writes with trademark candor about how it feels to be in Hollywood when you don’t fit into its traditional rigorous beauty standards—and how she’s combatted her imposter syndrome and become comfortable and confident as a public persona. Kaling writes with sharp wit and affable charm, offering readers deeply personal recollections of her trials and tribulations. This book is a testament to Kaling’s humor and a monument to her well-deserved success. A must read for any television lover, or anyone who needs a laugh really.

In recent years, it feels like there has been a deluge of Silicon Valley books, ones that glamorize or vilify the fascinating culture of tech startups in the Valley. But none feel nearly as accessible as Anna Wiener’s Uncanny Valley, which offers an unflinching look at what it means to be a woman in tech. Wiener describes quitting her literary agency job for an exciting opportunity at a Silicon Valley tech firm, moving her entire life across the country for an new career path and a huge pay raise. She describes the ideological glamor that the Valley ascribes to itself, how it has become an insular culture obsessed with maximizing efficiency and functionality, both professionally and personally. Wiener writes with an incisive wit how she gradually became disillusioned with her professional landscape, citing many incidents of gendered mistreatment in her office, and the overall workplace culture that glorified the genius founder (almost always a white man), and allowed workplace harassment and sexism to run rampant in the office. I’ve included Uncanny Valley on this list because I think its the perfect tech memoir for any reader looking for an accessible but sharply intelligent appraisal of Silicon Valley culture. Read my full review here.

How We Fight for Our Lives is an astounding debut memoir from the celebrated poet Saeed Jones, who writes with emotional clarity about coming of age as a black gay man in the South. Jones describes the early repression of his childhood, the schoolyard bullies who treated him as “other”, and the subsequent struggle to define himself sexually and emotionally in his college years. Jones journey to realize his full selfhood is inextricable from his relationship with his mother, the woman who raised him on her own, and who tragically passed away while Jones was in grad school. Around the same time, Jones was the victim of a violent sexual assault, and it it feels in many ways that this memoir was written as a response to those two traumas, an effort to reclaim his body and his story for himself. This memoir is about writing as a tool from which to find agency, and to fight back against the many perils facing queer individuals of color. Filled with raw and poetic language, Jones has crafted a deftly-written and deeply moving memoir. A quick but unforgettable read, there are many passages in this memoir I, and I’m sure many readers, find myself returning to. Read my full review here.

Roxane Gay’s 2017 memoir, Hunger, is unique in that it focuses specifically on one area of the author’s life: her struggle with weight. This memoir that appears to be about the physical body is actually about much more: it delves into the crucial role that trauma plays in obesity, and the psychologically and physically damaging effects of living in a society that is built to exclude fat people. “When I was twelve years old I was raped and then I ate and ate and ate to build my body into a fortress,” Gay writes early in the memoir, drawing a clear connection between the gang rape that she was a victim of at the age of twelve, and her desire to gain weight and hide her body from potential attackers. Gay writes about her trauma and its far-reaching damage on her mind and body, detailing how difficult a journey it has been to begin to feel comfortable in her body. She writes of what it is like to be a fat person in the world, especially one with a public platform like herself, where her body is treated like public domain free to be ridiculed. She also writes of the everyday injustices of trying to sit in restaurants, or go to meetings, or perform public readings, at tables and chairs where her body cannot fit. Hunger is a deeply moving and visceral portrayal of how anguish and oppression physically manifest in a body. Read my full review here.

In the Dream House is a harrowing recollection of Carmen Maria Machado’s experience as a domestic abuse victim. She writes that this memoir sprang from her desire to end the “archival silence” surrounding queer domestic abuse stories, to share a story of same-sex partner violence, while recognizing that so many others have been silenced. Machado writes with astonishing clarity and depth about “the woman in the dream house”, the emotionally and physically abusive girlfriend that she lived with for a time in her 20s. The memoir’s attention to form is also of note, with chapters entitled, “Dream House as an Exercise in Point of View,” “Dream House as Epiphany,” “Dream House as Legacy,” and “Dream House as Chekhov’s Gun”, Machado plays with a variety of forms to add layers and historicity to her narrative. In the Dream House is a formally experimental and linguistically daring memoir that addresses an important canonical vacuum in the culture, giving voice to queer abuse victims who’ve previously had none. Read my full review here.

In crafting this list, I felt it would be impossible to exclude Joan Didion’s classic memoir of loss and grief, A Year of Magical Thinking. This memoir was completed a year and a day after Didion’s husband passed away, and during the time when her daughter was hospitalized for pancreatitis, a disease that would ultimately take her life before the book was published. Written with Didion’s trademark reportorial distance from her subject, this is a deeply moving memoir that manages to avoid much direct emotional expression. Didion instead focuses on how her behaviors changed following her husband’s death, and how various temporary insanities were important expressions of her grief. This book is a must-read not only for anyone who has mourned a loved one, but for anyone who wants to dive deeper into the mysteries of life and death. A well-researched and expertly crafted portrayal of the psychological and physical effects of grief, Didion has crafted one of the most moving pieces of literature that feels at once deeply personal and staggeringly universal.

Margo Jefferson’s Negroland explores America’s cultural fascination with race, especially how it relates to privilege. Jefferson writes of her upbringing in Chicago in a family of “upper-class Negroes and upper-middle-class Americans”, exploring the complicated nature of the economically privileged black community. She writes about the unwelcomeness of the wealthy person of color in society, the sense that the black upper class could and would always slip back into the base tendencies that society ascribes to their race. She writes of the everyday complications of having a black body in America, when white oppression has taught hatred and shame to people of color on all socioeconomic levels. Negroland is a well-written and charming exploration of black life in the 50s and 60s, and in our temporary era of the Black Lives Matter reckoning, an excellent reminder that economic privilege can only go so far in protecting black individuals in the still racially oppressive America.

Dave Eggers’ debut memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is a sort of postmodern approach to the memoir form. It chronicles the death of Eggers’ parents, both succumbed to cancer within a couple weeks of each other, and being thrust into the parent role to care for his younger brother Christopher, “Toph”. Eggers was twenty one when his parents died and he became Toph’s caretaker, and was forced to become a parent when all he wanted to do was twenty one year-old boy activities like drink and meet girls. With frenetic and wild narration that verges on the David Foster Wallace-esque stream of consciousness, Eggers portrays the psyche of a grief-addled young man thrust into overwhelming responsibility. Eggers manages to convey his immense love for his brother through his neuroses-fueled worries about his health and safety, in a memoir that is uniquely moving and hilarious in its construction.

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2015 epistolary memoir is perhaps the most timely entry on this list, as it has reemerged as a crucial text of the Black Lives Matter Movement. Coates’ memoir, structured as a letter to his young son, details the hardships of growing up as a black man in an America littered with the corpses of unjustly murdered black Americans. Coates writes, “Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage.” Between the World and Me features Coates’ signature incisive voice that cuts to the roots of black culture and identity in America, and is built upon on meticulous research and emotional depth. Coates has emerged as one of America’s foremost cultural critics, especially one the topic of race, and and his memoir offers and emotionally vulnerable framework from which to approach black identity in America.