Book Trailers & Reviews for Memoir Options
Here is a list of book reviews (adapted from Amazon.com) and book trailers to help you decide which
memoir(s) you want to read in addition to Night and MAUS. Although you are only required to read
one, the more memoirs you read, the easier it will be to write your own.
This Boy's Life:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu9Vxeqg0dI
Fiction writer Tobias Wolff electrified critics with his scarifying 1989 memoir, which many deemed as
notable for its artful structure and finely wrought prose as for the events it describes. The story is
pretty grim: Teenaged Wolff moves with his divorced mother from Florida to Utah to Washington
State to escape her violent boyfriend. When she remarries, Wolff finds himself in a bitter battle of wills
with his abusive stepfather, a contest in which the two prove to be more evenly matched than might
have been supposed. Deception, disguise, and illusion are the weapons the young man learns to
employ as he grows up--not bad training for a writer-to-be. Somber though this tale of family strife is,
it is also darkly funny and so artistically satisfying that most readers come away exhilarated rather
than depressed. (review from amazon)
The Glass Castle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE4bwOqrK6M
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse
and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like
nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic,
brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology,
and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand
the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal
that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might
last forever.
Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the
dismal West Virginia mining town -- and the family -- Rex Walls had done everything he could to
escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the
family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one
another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave
home.
What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and
intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity.
Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a
family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on
her own terms.
For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots. Now she tells her own story. A regular contributor to
MSNBC.com, she lives in New York and Long Island and is married to the writer John Taylor. (review
from amazon)
When I Was Puerto Rican:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFjW96AtbK
Esmeralda Santiago's story begins in rural Puerto Rico, where her childhood was full of both
tenderness and domestic strife, tropical sounds and sights as well as poverty. Growing up, she learned
the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the
delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. As she
enters school we see the clash, both hilarious and fierce, of Puerto Rican and Yankee culture. When her
mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children,
Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually take on a new identity. In
this first volume of her much-praised, bestselling trilogy, Santiago brilliantly recreates the idyllic
landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years and her tremendous journey from the barrio
to Brooklyn, from translating for her mother at the welfare office to high honors at Harvard. (from
amazon)
Open:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBvXb8Ly2hQ
“Fascinating. . . . Inspiring. . . . Open describes Agassi’s personal odyssey with brio and unvarnished
candor. . . . [Agassi’s] career-comeback tale is inspiring but even more so is another Open storyline. It
could be called: The punk grows up. . . . Countless athletes start charitable foundations, but frequently
the organizations are just tax shelters or PR stunts. For Agassi helping others has instead become his
life’s calling. . . . Open is a superb memoir, but it hardly closes the books on an extraordinary life.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Honest in a way that such books seldom are. . . . An uncommonly well-written sports memoir. . . .
Bracingly devoid of triumphalist homily, Agassi’s is one of the most passionately anti-sports books
ever written by a superstar athlete.”
—The New York Times
“Not your typical jock-autobio fare. This literate and absorbing book is, as the title baldly states,
Agassi’s confessional, a wrenching chronicle of his lifelong search for identity and serenity, on and off
the court.”
—Los Angeles Times
Falling Leaves: The Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygqz5twXk0A
Snow White's stepmother looks like a pussycat compared to the monster under which Adeline Yen
Mah suffered. The author's memoir of life in mainland China and--after the 1949 revolution--Hong
Kong is a gruesome chronicle of nonstop emotional abuse from her wealthy father and his beautiful,
cruel second wife. Chinese proverbs scattered throughout the text pithily covey the traditional world
view that prompted Adeline's subservience. Had she not escaped to America, where she experienced a
fulfilling medical career and a happy marriage, her story would be unbearable; instead, it's grimly
fascinating: Falling Leaves is an Asian Mommie Dearest. (review from amazon)
Black Boy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USn3Y1BZDqM
Autobiography by Richard Wright, published in 1945 and considered to be one of his finest works. The
book is sometimes considered a fictionalized autobiography or an autobiographical novel because of
its use of novelistic techniques. Black Boy describes vividly Wright's often harsh, hardscrabble
boyhood and youth in rural Mississippi and in Memphis, Tenn. When the work was first published,
many white critics viewed Black Boy primarily as an attack on racist Southern white society. From the
1960s the work came to be understood as the story of Wright's coming of age and development as a
writer whose race, though a primary component of his life, was but one of many that formed him as an
artist. -- The Merriam-Webster Encylopedia of Literature
A Hole in My Life:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY3Jf4PskvU&feature=related
The compelling story of the author's final year in high school, his brushes with crime, and his
subsequent incarceration. Gantos has written much about his early years with his eccentric family, and
this more serious book picks up the tale as they moved to Puerto Rico during his junior year. He
returned to Florida alone, living in a seedy motel while he finished high school and realized that his
options for college weren't great. A failed drug deal cost him most of his savings and he joined his
family, now in St. Croix, where he accepted an offer of $10,000 to help sail a boat full of hash to New
York. He and his colleagues were caught, and as it turns out, he was in more trouble than he
anticipated. Sent to federal prison for up to six years, Gantos landed a job in the hospital section, a post
that protected him from his fellow inmates, yet allowed him to witness prison culture firsthand. Much
of the action in this memoir-some of it quite raw and harsh-will be riveting to teen readers. However,
the book's real strength lies in the window it gives into the mind of an adolescent without strong
family support and living in the easy drug culture of the 1970s. Gantos looks for role models and
guidance in the pages of the books he is reading, and his drive to be a writer and desire to go to college
ultimately save him. -Barbara Scotto, Michael Driscoll School, Brookline, MA Copyright 2002 Cahners
Business Information, Inc.
Kaffir Boy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoUWIconiA4
Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South
Africa's most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of
passage. Like every other child born in the hopelessness of apartheid, he learned to measure his life in
days, not years. Yet Mark Mathabane, armed only with the courage of his family and a hard-won
education, raised himself up from the squalor and humiliation to win a scholarship to an American
university.
This extraordinary memoir of life under apartheid is a triumph of the human spirit over hatred and
unspeakable degradation. For Mark Mathabane did what no physically and psychologically battered
"Kaffir" from the rat-infested alleys of Alexandra was supposed to do -- he escaped to tell about it.
(review from amazon)
personal face to the brutality of civil war, squalor, and the struggle for survival. A few critics
questioned where Deng's story ended and Eggers's literary license began, and the book as a whole
could have been better edited. While visceral and heartrending, Deng's and Eggers's joint story is
ultimately a powerful tale of hope. When both People and the ever-glum Michiko Kakutani of the New
York Times rave, how can one resist? (review from amazon)
The Things They Carried
"They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were
intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They
carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because
they were embarrassed not to."
A finalist for both the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Things They
Carried marks a subtle but definitive line of demarcation between Tim O'Brien's earlier works about
Vietnam, the memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone and the fictional Going After Cacciato, and this sly,
almost hallucinatory book that is neither memoir nor novel nor collection of short stories but rather
an artful combination of all three. Vietnam is still O'Brien's theme, but in this book he seems less
interested in the war itself than in the myriad different perspectives from which he depicts it. Whereas
Going After Cacciato played with reality, The Things They Carried plays with truth. The narrator of most
of these stories is "Tim"; yet O'Brien freely admits that many of the events he chronicles in this
collection never really happened. He never killed a man as "Tim" does in "The Man I Killed," and unlike
Tim in "Ambush," he has no daughter named Kathleen. But just because a thing never happened
doesn't make it any less true. In "On the Rainy River," the character Tim O'Brien responds to his draft
notice by driving north, to the Canadian border where he spends six days in a deserted lodge in the
company of an old man named Elroy while he wrestles with the choice between dodging the draft or
going to war. The real Tim O'Brien never drove north, never found himself in a fishing boat 20 yards
off the Canadian shore with a decision to make. The real Tim O'Brien quietly boarded the bus to Sioux
Falls and was inducted into the United States Army. But the truth of "On the Rainy River" lies not in
facts but in the genuineness of the experience it depicts: both Tims went to a war they didn't believe
in; both considered themselves cowards for doing so. Every story in The Things They Carried speaks
another truth that Tim O'Brien learned in Vietnam; it is this blurred line between truth and reality, fact
and fiction, that makes his book unforgettable. --Alix Wilber (review from amazon)
Stitches (Graphic Novel)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i-_9lo2ICM
Amazon Best of the Month, September 2009: Reading Stitches may feel unexpectedly familiar. Not
in the details of its story--which is David Small's harrowing account of growing up under the watchless
eyes of parents who gave him cancer (his radiologist father subjected him to unscrupulous x-rays for
minor ailments) and let it develop untreated for years--but in delicate glimpses of the author's child'seye view, sketched most often with no words at all. Early memories (and difficult ones, too) often seem
less like words than pictures we play back to ourselves. That is what's recognizable and, somehow,
ultimately delightful in the midst of this deeply sad story: it reminds us of our memories, not just what
they are, but what they look like. In every drawing, David Small shows us moments both real and
imagined—some that are guileless and funny and wonderfully sweet, many others that are dark and
fearful—that unveil a very talented artist, stitches and all. --Anne Bartholomew
The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (Graphic Novel)
Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's wise, funny, and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Iran during the
Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in
Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the
Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of
committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran's last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a
childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country. ~ Publisher’s description
"A memoir of growing up as a girl in revolutionary Iran, Persepolis provides a unique glimpse into a nearly
unknown and unreachable way of life... That Satrapi chose to tell her remarkable story as a gorgeous comic
book makes it totally unique and indispensable." –Time
What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng
Valentino Achak Deng, real-life hero of this engrossing epic, was a refugee from the Sudanese civil war-the
bloodbath before the current Darfur bloodbath-of the 1980s and 90s. In this fictionalized memoir, Eggers (A
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) makes him an icon of globalization. Separated from his family
when Arab militia destroy his village, Valentino joins thousands of other "Lost Boys," beset by starvation,
thirst and man-eating lions on their march to squalid refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, where Valentino
pieces together a new life. He eventually reaches America, but finds his quest for safety, community and
fulfillment in many ways even more difficult there than in the camps: he recalls, for instance, being robbed,
beaten and held captive in his Atlanta apartment. Eggers's limpid prose gives Valentino an unaffected,
compelling voice and makes his narrative by turns harrowing, funny, bleak and lyrical. The result is a
horrific account of the Sudanese tragedy, but also an emblematic saga of modernity-of the search for home
and self in a world of unending upheaval.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo4fNMfPxq4&feature=related
Exploring Indian identity, both self and tribal, Alexie's first young adult novel is a
semiautobiographical chronicle of Arnold Spirit, aka Junior, a Spokane Indian from Wellpinit, WA. The
bright 14-year-old was born with water on the brain, is regularly the target of bullies, and loves to
draw. He says, "I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little
lifeboats." He expects disaster when he transfers from the reservation school to the rich, white school
in Reardan, but soon finds himself making friends with both geeky and popular students and starting
on the basketball team. Meeting his old classmates on the court, Junior grapples with questions about
what constitutes one's community, identity, and tribe. The daily struggles of reservation life and the
tragic deaths of the protagonist's grandmother, dog, and older sister would be all but unbearable
without the humor and resilience of spirit with which Junior faces the world. The many characters, on
and off the rez, with whom he has dealings are portrayed with compassion and verve, particularly the
adults in his extended family. Forney's simple pencil cartoons fit perfectly within the story and reflect
the burgeoning artist within Junior. Reluctant readers can even skim the pictures and construct their
own story based exclusively on Forney's illustrations. The teen's determination to both improve
himself and overcome poverty, despite the handicaps of birth, circumstances, and race, delivers a
positive message in a low-key manner. Alexie's tale of self-discovery is a first purchase for all
libraries.—Chris Shoemaker, New York Public Library
Additional Titles to choose from:
Humorous
Holidays on Ice: by David Sedaris
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
Too Close to the Falls by Catherine Gildiner
Half Broke Horses: Jeannette Walls
The Immigrant Experience
Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat
Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire
Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni
The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy
House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisera
Horrible Childhoods and Family Dramas
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Borrowed Finery by Paula Fox
Jesus Land: A Memoir by Julia Scheeres
Meant to Be: The True Story of a Son Who Discovers He Is His Mother's Deepest Secret by Walter
Anderson
The Liar’s Cub by Mary Karr
The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon
A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer
Celebrities and Sports Figures
Open – Andre Agassi
Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama
Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer by Lynne Cox
It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life by Lance Armstrong
Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival by Anderson Cooper
Wartime experiences
The Land I Lost – Kim
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
Night Elie Wiesel (any student who read this in English 9 can not count it as one of your 3 memoirs but
obviously it can referred to throughout our study).
Personal identity
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
The Color of Water by James McBride
Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robinson
Black Ice by Lorene Cary
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
Born On A Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet
Inspiring Journeys and Lessons Learned
Three Cups of Tea Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin
Mao’s Last Dancer by Li Cunxin
Into Thin Air; Jon Krakauer
Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos
Burned Alive: A Survivor of an "Honor Killing" Speaks Out by Souad
Riding the Bus with my Sister by Rachel Simon
Recommendation from family/friends/the library……