Sign up to get Today’s Best Articles in your inbox
Join 350,000+ subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of
The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
An account already exists for this email address, please log in.
Laurie Halse Anderson's 6 favorite memoirs
The children and young adults novelist recommends works by Roxane Gay, Amy Tan, and more
Laurie Halse Anderson is the author of the groundbreaking 1999 young-adult novelSpeak, about a teenager who shuts down after being raped by an upperclassman.Shout, Anderson's new memoir-in-verse, revisits the real-life trauma that inspired it.
I avoided reading memoirs while I was writing Shout so I could focus on my own truth. But as soon as I turned in the manuscript, I started devouring them. Reading Tan's memoir-in-essays is like taking a hike in the mountains with her. She skillfully threads connections between her family's past, her own life, and her stories, enchanting and delighting the reader.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
This is the most important, riveting book I've read in the past decade. The first time I read Gay's account of her gang rape at age 12 and its life-defining aftermath, it was with my eyes. Then I reread it with my ears. Gay reads the audiobook herself; her voice adds another layer of power to the narrative.
Westover's parents raised their children in rural isolation, the shifting boundaries of their world determined by her survivalist father's mental illness. The tension between family loyalty and her desire for an education broke my heart. Westover's determination and sensitivity left me awestruck.
Sign up to get Today’s Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the day’s biggest news and analysis – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Woodson is the master of evoking place and time with just a few words. In Brown Girl Dreaming, winner of the 2014 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, she brings the South Carolina and New York City of her childhood to life vividly and uses them as the backdrops of her coming of age during the 1960s and '70s.
Carved from heart and bone, this exquisitely written collection of essays braids together stories of identity and the hunger to write. The essays Chee includes here about confronting the childhood sexual abuse he endured should be read by everyone.
Acclaimed poet and young-adult novelist Grimes focuses her gaze on her New York City childhood in this memoir written in verse. Her powerful story, told with the music of poetry and the blade of truth, will help your heart grow. Make sure you have Kleenex at hand when you read it.
