Why We Write About Ourselves: Twenty Memoirists on Why They Expose Themselves (and Others) in the Name of Literature
10 best books like Why We Write About Ourselves: Twenty Memoirists on Why They Expose Themselves (and Others) in the Name of Literature (Meredith Maran): The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life, The Art of Memoir, Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life, Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage, Devotion: A Memoir, The Primal Wound: Understanding The Adopted Child, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story
The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
| Author | Toni Morrison |
| ISBN | 0525521038 |
Arguably the most celebrated and revered writer of our time now gives us a new nonfiction collection--a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades.
The Source of Self-Regard is brimming with all the elegance of mind and style,...
"Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. This is what I've always thought it meant to be a writer. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them." — Create Dangerously
In this deeply personal...
Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
| Author | Dani Shapiro |
| ISBN | 0802121403 |
"Everything I know about life, I learned from the daily practice of sitting down to write."
From the best-selling author of Devotion and Slow Motion comes a witty, heartfelt, and practical look at the exhilarating and challenging process of storytelling. At once a memoir, meditation on the...
| Author | Mary Karr |
| ISBN | 0062223062 |
Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well.
For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning...
Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life
One of the world’s leading artists—a living legend—and bestselling author of The Creative Habit shares her secrets for harnessing vitality and finding purpose as you age. From insight to action, Keep It Moving is a guidebook for expanding one’s possibilities over the course of a lifetime....
Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage
| Author | Dani Shapiro |
| ISBN | 0451494482 |
The best-selling novelist and memoirist delivers her most intimate and powerful work: a piercing, life-affirming memoir about marriage and memory, about the frailty and elasticity of our most essential bonds, and about the accretion, over time, of both sorrow and love.
Hourglass is an...
| Author | Dani Shapiro |
| ISBN | 0061628344 |
“Devotion’s biggest triumph is its voice: funny and unpretentious, concrete and earthy—appealing to skeptics and believers alike. This is a gripping, beautiful story.” —Jennifer Egan, author of The Keep
“I was immensely moved by this elegant book.” —Elizabeth Gilbert,...
The Primal Wound: Understanding The Adopted Child
| Author | Nancy Verrier |
| ISBN | 0963648004 |
"The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child", by Nancy Verrier, is a challenging and courageous work. A book which adoptees call their "bible," it is a must read for anyone connected with adoption: adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, therapists, educators, and attorneys. In its application...
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
The acclaimed spiritual memoir from the author of The Secret Life of Bees.
I was amazed to find that I had no idea how to unfold my spiritual life in a feminine way. I was surprised and, in fact, a little terrified when I found myself in the middle of a feminist spiritual reawakening.
Sue...
The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story
| Author | Edwidge Danticat |
| ISBN | 1555977774 |
At once a personal account of Edwidge Danticat's mother and a deeply considered reckoning of how to write about death, The Art of Death moves outward from her mother's cancer diagnosis and sifts through Danticat's writing life. Danticat circles the many forms death takes, shifting fluidly from examples...
| Author | Meghan O'Rourke |
| ISBN | 1594487987 |
What does it mean to mourn today, in a culture that has largely set aside rituals that acknowledge grief? After her mother died of cancer at the age of fifty-five, Meghan O'Rourke found that nothing had prepared her for the intensity of her sorrow. In the first anguished days, she began to create a record...
| Author | Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
| ISBN | 1401340997 |
An acclaimed novel by the author of The Mistress of Spices, and Before We Visit the Goddess. Jhumpa Lahiri praises: "One Amazing Thing collapses the walls dividing characters and cultures; what endures is a chorus of voices in one single room."
Late afternoon sun sneaks through the windows...
| Author | Marion Roach Smith |
| ISBN | 0446584843 |
A recent study revealed that the Number 1 thing that baby boomers want to do in retirement is write a book....about themselves. It's not that every person has lived such a unique or dramatic life, but we inherently understand that writing memoir-whether it's a book, blog, or just a letter to a child-is...
In the tradition of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, a critically acclaimed National Book Award finalist shares inspiration and practical advice for writing a memoir.
Writing memoir is a deeply personal, and consequential, undertaking. As the acclaimed author of five memoirs spanning significant...
| Author | A.M. Homes |
| ISBN | 0670038385 |
The acclaimed writer A. M. Homes was given up for adoption before she was born. Her biological mother was a twenty-two-year-old single woman who was having an affair with a much older married man with a family of his own. The Mistress's Daughter is the ruthlessly honest account of what happened when,...
Healthy Healing: A Guide to Working Out Grief Using the Power of Exercise and Endorphins
| Author | Michelle Steinke-Baumgard |
| ISBN | 0062656031 |
From the creator of the One Fit Widow community comes a unique plan that uses the healing power of exercise and fitness to strengthen body, mind, and spirt and help anyone work through grief and loss
At thirty-five, Michelle Steinke-Baumgard became a widow in an instant when she lost her husband...
What I Am Living For: Lessons from the Life and Writings of Thomas Merton
| Author | Jon M. Sweeney |
| ISBN | 1594717419 |
"If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for."—Thomas Merton
Some of today's most popular spiritual writers—including...
The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's "1984"
| Author | Dorian Lynskey |
| ISBN | 0385544057 |
The author has written a study that places George Orwell's 1984 in a variety of contexts: the author's life and times, the book's precursors in the science fiction genre, and its subsequent place in popular culture. Lynskey delves into how Orwell's harrowing Spanish Civil War experiences shaped his...
