Women In Their Own Words

This list highlights memoirs & autobiographies of women throughout history.
Updated September 19, 2022
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Eat, Pray, Love
Elizabeth Gilbert
Paper Book
One of the most iconic, beloved, and bestselling books of our time from the bestselling author of City of Girls and Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert. Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love touched the world and changed countless lives, inspiring and empowering millions...
The Glass Castle: A Memoir
Jeannette Walls
Paper Book
THE BELOVED #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER--FROM THE AUTHOR OF HANG THE MOON The extraordinary, one-of-a-kind, "nothing short of spectacular" (Entertainment Weekly) memoir from one of the world's most gifted storytellers. The Glass Castle...
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou
Paper Book
Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS's American Masters. Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself....
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Azar Nafisi
Paper Book
Dos años de dejar Irán en 1997, Azar Nafisi, la autora y profesora de literatura de la Universidad de Teherán, expulsada de la universidad por negarse a usar velo, reunió en su casa una vez por semana y durante más de dos años, a siete de sus ex alumnas universitarias para leer y comentar algunas de...
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
Marjane Satrapi
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Wise, funny, and heartbreaking, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's acclaimed graphic memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. "A wholly original achievement.... Satrapi evokes herself and her schoolmates coming of age in a...
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Cheryl Strayed
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe--and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the...
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Barbara Kingsolver
Paper Book
Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life—vowing that, for one year, they’d only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal,...
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
Alison Bechdel
Paper Book
A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books. This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic...
Girl, Interrupted
Susanna Kaysen
Paper Book
30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. Her memoir of the next two years is a "poignant, honest ... triumphantly funny ... and...
Becoming
Michelle Obama
Paper Book
An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States   #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * WATCH THE EMMY-NOMINATED NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY * OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER * ONE OF...
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
Malala Yousafzai
Paper Book
A MEMOIR BY THE YOUNGEST RECIPIENT OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE As seen on Netflix with David Letterman "I come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday." When the Taliban took control of the Swat...
Just Kids
Patti Smith
Paper Book
Patti Smith's National Book Award-winning memoir, now richly illustrated with new material and never-before-seen photographs Patti's Smith's exquisite prose is generously illustrated in this full-color edition of her classic coming-of-age memoir, Just Kids....
Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison
Piper Kerman
Paper Book
NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES * #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER   With a career, a boyfriend, and a loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the reckless young woman who delivered a suitcase of drug money ten years before. But that past has caught up with her. Convicted...
Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
Ruth Reichl
Paper Book
GARLIC AND SAPPHIRES is Ruth Reichl's riotous account of the many disguises she employs to dine anonymously. There is her stint as Molly Hollis, a frumpy blond with manicured nails and an off-beige Armani suit that Ruth takes on when reviewing Le Cirque. The result: her famous double review...
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Jeanette Winterson
Paper Book
Jeanette Winterson's novels have established her as a major figure in world literature. She has written some of the most admired books of the past few decades, including her internationally bestselling first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, the story of a young girl adopted by...
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
Roxane Gay
Paper Book
The New York Times Bestseller National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist Lambda Literary Award winner From Roxane Gay, the New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist, a memoir in weight about eating healthier, finding a tolerable form of exercise, and exploring what...
Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography
Zora Neale Hurston
Paper Book
"Warm, witty, imaginative. . . . This is a rich and winning book."--The New Yorker Dust Tracks on a Road is the bold, poignant, and funny autobiography of novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, one of American literature's most compelling and influential...
Men We Reaped
Jesmyn Ward
Paper Book
Named one of the Best Books of the Century by New York Magazine The two-time National Book Award winner and author of Salvage the Bones and Let Us Descend, contends with the deaths of five young men dear to her, and the risk of being a Black man in the...
Angela Davis: An Autobiography
Angela Y. Davis
Paper Book
"An activist. An author. A scholar. An abolitionist. A legend." --Ibram X. Kendi This beautiful new edition of Angela Davis's classic Autobiography features an expansive new introduction by the author. "I am excited to be publishing this new edition of my...
The Truths We Hold: An American Journey
Kamala Harris
Paper Book
The #1 New York Times bestseller From Vice President Kamala Harris, one of America's most inspiring political leaders, comes a book about the core truths that unite us and how best to act upon them.  "A life story that genuinely...
The Cancer Journals
Audre Lorde
Paper Book
Moving between journal entry, memoir, and exposition, Audre Lorde fuses the personal and political as she reflects on her experience coping with breast cancer and a radical mastectomy. A Penguin Classic First published over forty years ago, The Cancer Journals...
Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells
Ebook
"She fought a lonely and almost single-handed fight, with the single-mindedness of a crusader, long before men or women of any race entered the arena; and the measure of success she achieved goes far beyond the credit she has been given in the history of the country."--Alfreda M. Duster ...
More Myself: A Journey
Alicia Keys
Paper Book
An intimate, revealing look at one artist's journey from self-censorship to full expression As one of the most celebrated musicians in the world, Alicia Keys has enraptured the globe with her heartfelt lyrics, extraordinary vocal range, and soul-stirring piano compositions....

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