I’ve never been much of a fiction reader, so I tend to gravitate towards books and stories about real people and real things that are going on in the world. Lately, I’ve been on a biography kick that started with thumbing through books profiling classic rock musicians, and that then forayed into reading accounts by real people of their own lives.
Here are 3 of the memoirs I’ve read over the years that have penetrated my spirit, flung open the doors of my mind and generally done all the stuff that books are supposed to do.
Somaly Mam, The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine, $15.00 from Amazon
Reading Somaly Mam’s autobiography of her childhood mired by the horror of rape and sex slavery opened my eyes to how far our world still has to come with women’s (and human) rights. I can’t tell you how many times I teared up on the subway while reading this, totally stricken by how fortunate I was to live in a country where women are able to receive educations and aren’t treated like worthless prostitutes. Mam’s book even inspired me to start volunteering with an anti-sex trafficking organization. A truly soul-shattering read.
David Carr, The Night of the Gun: A reporter investigates the darkest story of his life: his own, $15.00 from Amazon.
Before David Carr had a family, a house and his prestigious job as a business reporter and columnist for the New York Times, he battled decades of cocaine addiction and was in and out of rehab and jail. In one of the book’s most chilling moments, Carr is smoking crack with his girlfriend, who was pregnant with twins, when her water breaks; later, he leaves his young twin girls in the car outside a crack house to go in and get his fix. Harrowing yet strangely sympathetic, Carr’s memoir is a poignant, page-turning journey through addiction’s grasp that gave me tremendous insight into both the psyche of an addict and of the troubles we all face at large. I’m still brought to tears each time I reread this.
Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth, $4.99 from Amazon.
Gandhi’s book is not a true autobiography in this sense of framing each moment of his life for the sake of chronology, but rather a retelling of key events in his quest for truth and compassion. Gahndi’s voice as a writer is lucid and compelling, and if you don’t know much about his life yet, this is a great place to start. In this first-person account, you get a sublime look at Gandhi as a person, and not just a timeline of his great deeds.
What memoirs or autobiographies have touched you?
guest
frank mcCourt’s “angela’s ashes” about an irish immigrant’s childhood stories about growing up in poverty and his mother’s difficult life. Sometimes when youre reading you think it cant get any worse and then it does and youre just like wow. Im also not that big on fiction so ur not alone
guest
I read the David Carr book. My husband is an addict and it helped me view addicts in a very different light. The part where he leaves his daughters out in the cold car in the middle of winter so he could snort coke at his dealer’s house really got to me. It was also very sad when he turned to alcohol right after it seemed like he had beaten his addiction.
I’ll have to check out the other two.
Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally and On the Road by Jack Kerouac were good too
daffodil / 1615 posts
This is kind of straying from biography and autobiography, but Righteous Dopefiend by Philippe Bourgois and Jeffrey Schonberg was one of the assigned readings in one of my anthropology classes, and it’s an ethnography that follows the lives of about homeless 24 heroin addicts in San Francisco over a 12-year period. Many of the stories are extremely sad, but it definitely opens your eyes to a whole new dimension of human suffering, and it’s just a phenomenal book. There were definitely parts that were hard to read, but it’s so worth it.
rose / 795 posts
Great reads! I remember when I read Memoirs of a Geisha, loved it, and found out it was fiction after I finished it. Complete letdown.
guest
@ashleya - you can read the memoir of the geisha who inspired it, though! it is called ‘geisha of gion’ by mineko iwasaki.
rose / 795 posts
@haltija@xanga - Oh yay! I’m going to put it on my Amazon wish list now. Thanks!
orchid / 242 posts
I’m a sucker for Holocaust lit (weird, I know), and Night by Elie Wiesel was amazinggg. The Things They Carried (which is technically fiction, but based on the author’s life) was amazing as well.
guest
@Joobie82@xanga -
On the Road
is loosely based on Kerouac’s experience, fictionalized.
What is the What is a good fictionalIZED account of experiences of at least one of the Lost Boys from the Sudan.
Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah was an eye-opener from the point-of-view of a former child soldier from Sierra Leone.
guest
all souls by michael patrick mcdonald, night elie wisel, and escape from slavery by francis bok <3
all extremely well written true stories =]
guest
Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
guest
I think I may have to start reading more books like this.