While biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs take different approaches, they have the same goal — sharing the experiences of an individual. Memoirs do this rather intimately: they typically focus on a slice of a person’s life and are written by that person. Here are nine new memoirs you might enjoy, all available for check out at the Orem Library.
Between Two Kingdoms: a Memoir of a Life Interrupted
By Suleika Jaouad
Adult Nonfiction
A writer and activist describes the harrowing years she spent in early adulthood fighting leukemia and how she learned to live again while forging connections with other survivors of profound illness and suffering.
Buses Are a Comin’: A Memoir of a Freedom Rider
By Charles Person
Adult Nonfiction
Person colorfully evokes his impoverished childhood in Atlanta’s Buttermilk Bottom neighborhood, his introduction to the civil rights movement at Morehouse College, and his shading of the truth (“It’s not going to be dangerous”) in order to get his father to sign a permission slip so he could participate in the inaugural Freedom Ride from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans. He also offers intimate sketches of his fellow Riders, including future congressman John Lewis. Shot through with vivid details of beatdowns, arrests, and awe-inspiring bravery, this inspirational account captures the magnitude of what the early civil rights movement was up against.
Easy Crafts for the Insane: Mostly Funny Memoir of Mental Illness and Making Things
By Kelly Williams Brown
Adult Nonfiction
The New York Times best-selling author of Adulting describes how she used crafting to help her cope with a series of negative events in her life, including a failed marriage, unrelated bodily injuries, and her father’s cancer diagnosis.
Featherhood: A Memoir of Two Fathers and a Magpie
By Charlie Gilmour
Adult Nonfiction
H is for Hawk meets the Duke of Deception in this wry, moving story of a young man who, as his estranged father is dying, saves a baby magpie that in fact, saved him.
The Magical Language of Others: A Memoir
By E.J. Koh
Adult Nonfiction
Left behind when work requires her parents to return to Korea, a teen poet reconnects with family history to manage the impact of absent caregivers on her sense of self.
Broken: In the Best Possible Way
By Jenny Lawson
Adult Nonfiction
Longtime fans of the author’s prose know that the destinations really aren’t the point; it’s the laugh-out-loud, tears-streaming-down-your-face journeys that make her writing so irresistible. This book is another solid collection of humorous musings on everyday life, or at least the life of a self-described “super introvert” who has a fantastic imagination and dozens of chosen spirit animals. While Furiously Happy centered on the idea of making good mental health days exceptionally good, her latest celebrates the notion that being broken is beautiful—or at least nothing to be ashamed of.
Little and Often: A Memoir
By Trent Preszler
Adult Nonfiction
Trent Preszler thought he was living the life he always wanted, with a job at a winery and a seaside Long Island home, when he was called back to the life he left behind. After years of estrangement, his cancer-stricken father had invited him to South Dakota for Thanksgiving. It would be the last time he saw his father alive. Preszler’s only inheritance was a beat-up wooden toolbox that had belonged to his father, who was a cattle rancher, rodeo champion, and Vietnam War Bronze Star Medal recipient. Little and Often is an unflinching account of bereavement and a stirring reflection on the complexities of inheritance.
Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger: A Memoir
By Lisa Donovan
Adult Nonfiction
Lisa Donovan is anyone’s definition of a strong woman. She has built several lauded restaurants from the ground up; she raised two brilliant children with no money; she is a rape survivor; she is a profoundly talented artist. Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger is Donovan’s reclaiming of her own story and of the story of the women who came before her. It’s also an unforgettable Southern journey of class, gender, and race as told through food.
Speak, Okinawa: A Memoir
By Elizabeth Miki Brina
Adult Nonfiction
A searing, deeply candid memoir about a young woman’s journey to understanding her complicated parents–her father a Vietnam veteran, her mother an Okinawan war bride–and her own, fraught cultural heritage.
Written by Annette
