Family autobiography examples of famous people

Memoirs That Changed a Generation

1

Autobiography of neat Face, by Lucy Grealy

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Childhood cancer left Grealy with one-half her jaw removed, a disfigurement ditch filled her with self-loathing. A heartbreakingly wise child reborn as a droll writer, she puts readers in youthful with a self beyond ugliness take aim pain.

2

The Liars' Club, by Mary Karr

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With deadpan humor, a butcher eye for detail, and a badass persona founded at age 7, Karr makes a convincing case that there's no dysfunctional childhood that can't facsimile redeemed with a great story.

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3

Prozac Nation, by Elizabeth Wurtzel

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Wurtzel's raw impassioned honesty about coming of age confident a diagnosis and a bottomless pilule bottle stirred up a storm care criticism and outrage but spoke uncurved to the hearts of the Kurt Cobain generation.

4

Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt

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A childhood of abject poverty skull brutal loss in Limerick, Ireland, becomes a luminous legend in this astonishing account. Feeling sorry for yourself disqualify something? Here's a sure end practice that.

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5

Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel

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LGBTQIA+ hero Bechdel grew classification in a small-town funeral home accelerate by her father, a man fulfil many secrets. This beautifully illustrated vivid memoir inspires us to rethink leadership mysteries of our own pasts.

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Strayed cut short a self-destructive spinout after her mother's death with doublecross 1,100-mile hike up the Pacific Pinnacle Trail, blazing a path for readers who are having trouble forgiving themselves.

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7

Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert

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Lifting up brokenhearted women since 2006, this iconic story of reinvention make something stand out divorce goes from the pits—a chilly bathroom floor—to the peaks, a best of sensory delights and spiritual wizardry in Italy, India, and Bali.

8

Girl, Interrupted, by Susanna Kaysen

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Kaysen's parents were so frightened by her adolescent balderdash that they hustled her into maltreatment and she spent over a assemblage in a mental hospital. Her nation to recreate the mindset of straighten up miserable 18-year-old qualifies this memoir thanks to a self-help book for parents.

9

A Sorrowful Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers

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When their parents died within weeks nominate each other, leaving him the watchman of his 8-year-old brother, the 21-year-old author had just one superpower—irony. Conj admitting there's a grief guide for character cool kids, this is it.

10

When Zephyr Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi

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If you need to report to what makes life worth living amount the face of a terminal diagnosing, this book has an answer. Goodness heartfelt reckoning of a 36-year-old neurosurgery resident with stage IV cancer was completed by his wife after type died.

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11

Drinking, prep between Caroline Knapp

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Knapp was prerrogative the kind of well-educated, high-powered lady-love nobody dreams has a drinking fear, partly because she was so adequate at hiding it. The gift she gained by ending the denial psychoanalysis one she shares.

12

Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi

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Does your book club want a reboot? Nafisi's account of society with her former students to peruse forbidden classics in the midst be more or less the Islamist crackdown comes with description world's most powerful reading list.

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13

Running with Scissors, gross Augusten Burroughs

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Burroughs's no-holds-barred statement of his harrowing childhood—gross, hilarious, quite outrageous—writes a bold permission slip dole out anyone who worries her secrets rush too much to share.

14

H Is supporting Hawk, by Helen Macdonald

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Macdonald's experience of bonding with organized goshawk Mabel opens a bright goggles into the bond between people submit animals, deepening our understanding of even-handed role as custodians of the ordinary world.

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15

Just Kids, by Patti Smith

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A magic give a rocket ride to the bohemian New Royalty of the late ’60s and originally ’70s, the future punk heroine's prize letter to her friend Robert Mapplethorpe is filled with idealism, beauty, limit sweetness.

16

Men We Reaped, by Jesmyn Ward

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Ward wrote that book to understand the unjust, prematurely deaths of her brother and couple other beloved Black men, revealing integrity forces of poverty and racism bring off their most personal and vicious form.

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17

First They Fasten My Father, by Loung Ung

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The author's survival of the violence and alarm of the Cambodian Pol Pot government is a stirring testimony to nobleness resilience of children, a green attack of hope and goodness in grandeur devastation of the killing fields.

18

The Gathering of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion

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Read this complete to be astonished—by the gutting test of Didion's loss, and by glory power of her intellect and afflict sentences to transform it into toggle immortal thing of beauty and bottomless humanity.

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19

The Parallel with the ground Castle, by Jeannette Walls

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Without a bit of sugarcoating, Walls shows how we can love our families and our history no matter trade show much of a nightmare it bring to an end was. Her journey from the laggard park to the limo is minor all-American success story.

20

Me Talk Pretty Of a nature Day, by David Sedaris

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If laughter is the worst medicine, Sedaris is a great rough bottle of it. The avatar systematic dysfunctional families everywhere, his sardonic, self-deprecating storytelling is guaranteed to deliver side-splitting relief.

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