My Favorite Women’s Stories
Eight gripping memoirs for your reading pleasure
Long time readers of this blog know how much I love memoirs and many of my all-time favorites are by women, telling their stories. In honor of Women’s History Month, I’ve collected eight of the best reads from women sharing the most intimate details of their lives. As always, I recommend listening to memoirs that are read by the author themselves to hear the story as it’s intended to be told.
Happy Reading!
Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness
By Catherine Cho | Published 2020 (Henry Holt & Co.)
Postpartum is an intense time for any new mom, but for Catherine Cho, it was mind-altering. In her memoir Inferno she tells the story of succumbing to post-partum psychosis during the early months of her sons’ life. Weaving in and out of time between the psych ward and her life before she disconnected with reality, her story is an intimate look into the life of a typical mom in an atypical situation, just trying to figure it out. It’s a brilliant, uncomfortable, and terrifying read.
Beautiful Country: A Memoir
By Qian Julie Wang | Published 2021 (Doubleday) | Read my review
Beautiful Country by is a stunning memoir of a Qian Julie Wang’s experience immigrating from China to the United States as a little girl offering a moving perspective of one of the varied realities that is living in the US. Qian’s early childhood story is also a great showcase of the nuance and variety of immigrant experiences and becoming racialized upon arrival to America – a country that has made race such a central feature of people’s identity. It’s stories like these that more folks should read to get a deeper and more accurate perspective on the diverse experiences of living in America. This is a book I couldn’t put down but couldn’t seem to read fast enough.
The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir
By Samantha Power | Published 2019 (William Collins)
Samantha Power’s memoir is a powerful read about her journey from Ireland to America as a girl all the way to the political world stage advocating for human rights. Her memoir documents her career journey and life education beginning as a war correspondent in Bosnia in the early 1990s. Her work then took her to DC after catching the eye of Barak Obama where she was part of his administration, eventually making her debut globally as a US Ambassador to the United Nations during Obama’s tenure. Her story gives a deep look into navigating a high stakes political area, one’s human rights ideals, and her personal life as a woman and mother.
On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist
By Clarissa Ward | Published 2020 (Penguin Press)
Clarissa Ward tells her story of her telling others’ stories during her 15+ year career as a foreign correspondent. Ward delivers an emotional and informative memoir that is so good you can’t put it down. Ward has spent much of her career in the post 9-11 Middle East, providing an on the ground and behind the camera look into some of the war zones that most readers could never imagine living in. I highly recommend listening to this book on audio as I did. Given Ward’s skilled verbal delivery refined from being in front of the camera for over a decade, her performance is excellent.
Not Quite Not White: Losing and Finding Race in America
By Sharmila Sen | Published 2018 (Penguin Press)
Sharmila Sen tells her story of coming to America. As so many non-European immigrants seem to learn during this life-changing experience is that America is hyper-obsessed with race. Coming from India, she was unsure of how to racially identify being “not quite” white, black, or Asian. Sen’s story recounts her life of trying to blend into the default whiteness of America while learning that our diversity is what makes one American.
Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir
By Padma Lakshmi | Published 2018 (Ecoo) | Read my review
I’m not always a fan of celebrity memoirs, but there’s something very endearing about Padma Lakshmi. Her memoir is classic in that it covers her whole life. Her story as she tells it is intimately entwined with her romantic relationships. From her early European boyfriends to her marriage in her 30s that ended in divorce, to the subsequent drama between her two lovers that gave rise to her daughter in 2010 – a tense situation indeed. But what struck me about Padma was her femininity, at least that what came away to me from reading her story. Something about her experiences, relationships, and perspective felt authentically feminine in a way that I haven’t seen in other women’s memoirs that I’ve read. It’s a great read.
Sociopath: A Memoir
By Patric Gagne | Published 2024 (Simon & Schuster) | Read my review
Gagne always knew she was different from other kids, but didn’t quite know why. Throughout her life she began to learn more about her mind and her diagnosis as a sociopath. Sociopath tells not just one’s story of childhood misbehavior, young adulthood realization of a diagnosis, and Patric Gagne’s journey to “normal”, but also psychiatric history and research. This book is an excellent memoir but also teaches one a lot about the (newly proposed?) disorder of sociopathy. Gagne struggled to find appropriate therapists and so became one herself. She’s married and has kids. Her goal is to help destigmatize sociopathy and help those who are high-functioning cope with their anxiety and live full lives.
My Remarkable Journey: A Memoir
By Katherine Johnson | Published 2021 (Amistad)
In My Remarkable Journey Kathrine Johnson chooses to focus more on her personal rather than professional life, despite making history as a human computer for NASA during the space race with Russia. As she says throughout her memoir, after all, her incredible mathematics work was “just a job”. Her memoir reflects this sentiment as she writes at length and with great emotion about all the personal aspects of her life. She grew up as a black woman in trying times here in the United States, yet approached her life and experiences with unrelenting poise, confidence, and class. Highly recommend this book, and the audio version narrated by Robin Miles was delightful to listen to.
I read Powers’s Education of an Idealist last year and looooved it. Great list!