Memoir Book List ·

BitterSweet

The Memoir of a Chinese Indonesian Family in the Twentieth Century

Millions of Chinese have left the mainland over the last two centuries in search of new beginnings. The majority went to Southeast Asia, and the single largest destination was the colony of the Dutch East Indies, now known as Indonesia.…

Body Story

Something other than a memoir of a life well lived, Body Story conveys Julia K. De Pree's troubling journey from adolescence to adulthood and from anorexia to health. For De Pree, between being a girl and being a woman, there was starvation.…

Catching Stories

A Practical Guide to Oral History

In neighborhoods, schools, community centers, and workplaces, people are using oral history to capture and collect the kinds of stories that the history books and the media tend to overlook: stories of personal struggle and hope, of war and peace, of family and friends, of beliefs, traditions, and values—the stories of our lives.…

The Creative Journal

The Art of Finding Yourself

A recognized classic in the field of art therapy and creativity, this book is a perfect guide to discovering and releasing your inner potential through writing and drawing. It contains over 50 writing and drawing exercises to help you find and love one's self, get in touch with ones' feelings, and dreams.…

Evidence of My Existence

From a leper colony in India to an American research station on the Antarctic Peninsula, from the back rooms of the White House to the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, Evidence of My Existence tells a unique and riveting story of seventeen years spent racing from one photo assignment to the next.…

Expecting Teryk

An Exceptional Path to Parenthood

The period just prior to the birth of a child is a time of profound personal transformation for expectant parents. Expecting Teryk: An Exceptional Path to Parenthood is an intimate exploration, written in the form of a letter from a parent to her future son, that reclaims a rite of passage that modern society would strip of its magic.

Guest Appearances and Other Travels in Time and Space

Peter Rose has spent a lifetime exploring patterns of culture, examining issues of race and ethnicity, working with refugees, teaching sociology, and roaming the world. In Guest Appearances and Other Travels in Time and Space, he reflects on his adventures and the formative experiences that led him to a fascination with lives that seem quite unlike our own.…

The Heritage

A Daughter's Memoir of Louis Bromfield

Louis Bromfield, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, established one of the most significant homesteads in Ohio on his Malabar Farm. Today it receives thousands of visitors a year from all over the world; once the site of the wedding of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, it was a successful prototype of experimental and conservation farming.…

The Last of His Mind

A Year in the Shadow of Alzheimer's

Joe Thorndike was managing editor of Life at the height of its popularity immediately following World War II. He was the founder of American Heritage and Horizon magazines, the author of three books, and the editor of a dozen more.…

Legacy

A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Personal History

“Spence creates a compelling context for recording the stages of one’s life. In each section, from childhood through grandparenting, Spence compiles a wealth of penetrating questions to help guide the novice and more skilled writer alike.”—Booklist

Loving Mountains, Loving Men

Loving Mountains, Loving Men is the first book-length treatment of a topic rarely discussed or examined: gay life in Appalachia. Appalachians are known for their love of place, yet many gays and lesbians from the mountains flee to urban areas. Jeff Mann tells the story of one who left and then returned, who insists on claiming and celebrating both regional and erotic identities.

The Memoir and the Memoirist

Reading and Writing Personal Narrative

The memoir is the most popular and expressive literary form of our time. Writers embrace the memoir and readers devour it, propelling many memoirs by relative unknowns to the top of the best-seller list.…

Memoirs of a Bookman

These memoirs are the reminiscences of Jack Matthews: his adventures in seeking out, collecting, and reading old and rare books, along with reflections upon time, memory, and other mysteries. In one piece, he measures the psychological distance from when he first saw Lake Erie at the age of four—the sight of which “took his breath away”—to many decades later, when, as he was flying from Detroit to Cleveland, Lake Erie revealed both shores and gave his breath back, depriving him of the first absolute he can remember.…

Memoirs of an Indo Woman

Twentieth Century Life in the East Indies and Abroad

The memoirs of Marguérite Schenkhuizen provide an overview of practically the whole of the twentieth century as experienced by persons of mixed Dutch and Indonesian ancestry who lived in the former Dutch East Indies.…

Ohio Volunteer

The Childhood and Civil War Memoirs of Captain John Calvin Hartzell, OVI

When his captain was killed during the Battle of Perryville, John Calvin Hartzell was made commander of Company H, 105th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He led his men during the Battle of Chickamauga, the siege of Chattanooga, and the Battle of Missionary Ridge.…

On the Fringes of History

A Memoir

In the 1950s, professional historians claiming to specialize in tropical Africa were no more than a handful. The teaching of world history was confined to high school courses, and even those were focused on European history, with a chapter added to account for the history of East and South Asia.…

Paper Sons and Daughters

Growing up Chinese in South Africa

This memoir attracted considerable attention when it was first published in South Africa in 2011, and it will resonate with anyone interested in the worldwide Chinese diaspora. It tells the story of a stowaway, Ho Sing Kee, who hid for long weeks aboard a ship crossing the Indian Ocean.…

Available August 2012 (est.)

Power in the Blood

A Family Narrative

Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative traces Linda Tate’s journey to rediscover the Cherokee-Appalachian branch of her family and provides an unflinching examination of the poverty, discrimination, and family violence that marked their lives.…

Prosperity Far Distant

The Journal of an American Farmer, 1933–1934

Fresh from receiving a doctorate from Cornell University, but unable to find work, Charles Wiltse returned to his family’s 42-acre farm in southern Ohio. There, the Wiltses scratched out a living selling eggs, wood, corn, and other farm goods at prices that were barely enough to keep the farm intact.…

Available August 2012 (est.)

R. F. D.

Charles Allen Smart

“This book,” the author tells us in his preface, “is intended to be a picture of life on a farm in Southern Ohio in the 1930s.” It is a faithful portrait of farm life as thousands of men and women experienced it from one end of the country to the other and from pioneering times to the present century.…