Popular North American Memoir Books
Find memoir books written by authors from North America for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (80)
51.
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes : And Other Lessons from the Crematorium by Caitlin Doughty EN
Country: North America / 
United States of America
United States of America
Description:
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER'Unforgettable . . . a hilarious, poignant and impassioned plea to revolutionise our attitudes to death' Gavin Francis, GuardianFrom her first day at Westwind Cremation & Burial, twenty-three-year-old Caitlin Doughty threw herself into her curious new profession. Coming face-to-face with the very thing we go to great lengths to avoid thinking about she started to wonder about the lives of those she cremated and the mourning families they left behind, and found herself confounded by people's erratic reactions to death. Exploring our death rituals - and those of othe... continue
52.
Country: North America / 
El Salvador
El Salvador
Description:
New York Times Bestseller • Read With Jenna Book Club Pick as seen on Today • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiography • Winner of the American Library Association Alex Award A young poet tells the inspiring story of his migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine in this “gripping memoir” (NPR) of bravery, hope, and finding family. Finalist for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction • One of the New York Public Library’s Ten Best Books of the Year Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence and the PEN/Open B... continue
53.
Solito (Spanish Edition) by Javier Zamora ES
Country: North America / El Salvador
El Salvador
Description:
RECOMENDADO POR JENNA BUSH EN SU CLUB DE LECTURA DEL TODAY SHOW «En esta conmovedora autobiografía que no podrás soltar, un joven poeta relata la inolvidable historia de su desgarradora migración hacia Estados Unidos desde El Salvador a los nueve años, considerada 'el viaje mítico de nuestra era'.» —Sandra Cisneros Viaje. Mis padres empezaron a usar esa palabra hace más o menos un año: “un día vas a hacer un viaje para estar con nosotros. Como una aventura”. La aventura de Javier es una travesía de tres mil millas desde su pequeño pueblo en El Salvador, a través de Guatemala y México, hacia la... continue
54.
Stay True : A Memoir by Hua Hsu EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
From the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art. “This book is exquisite and excruciating and I will be thinking about it for years and years to come.” —Rachel Kushner, two-time National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of The Flamethrowers and The Mars Room In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken—with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity—is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family... continue
55.
Sure, I'll Be Your Black Friend : Notes from the Other Side of the Fist Bump by Ben Philippe EN
Country: North America / 
Haiti
Haiti
Description:
In the vein of 'What Doesnt Kill You Makes You Blacker' and 'We Are Never Meeting in Real Life', Ben Philippes candid memoir-in-essays chronicles a lifetime of being the Black friend (see also: foreign kid, boyfriend, coworker, student, teacher, roommate, enemy) in predominantly white spaces.
56.
Tell Me how it Ends : An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli EN
Country: North America / 
Mexico
Mexico
Description:
A damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the US.
57.
The Book of Rosy : A Mother's Story of Separation at the Border by Rosayra Pablo Cruz, Julie Schwietert Collazo EN
Country: North America / 
Guatemala
Guatemala
Description:
A searing tale of the human lives behind the Trump administration-made immigration crisis, written by two remarkable mothers--a Central American woman whose children were taken from her by the United States government at the southern border, and the American who helped reunite the family--and offers a timely and urgent look at a migrant experience, family separation and reunification, and the power of individuals banding together to overcome even the cruelest and most unjust circumstances. When Rosayra Pablo Cruz made the wrenching decision to seek asylum in America with two of her children, f... continue
58.
The Country Under My Skin : A Memoir of Love and War by Gioconda Belli EN
Country: North America / 
Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Description:
"A passionate, lyrical, tough-minded account of an extraordinary life in art, revolution, and love. It's a book to relish, to read and re-read. Unforgettable." --Salmon Rushdie An electrifying memoir from the acclaimed Nicaraguan writer (“A wonderfully free and original talent”—Harold Pinter) and central figure in the Sandinista Revolution. Until her early twenties, Gioconda Belli inhabited an upper-class cocoon: sheltered from the poverty in Managua in a world of country clubs and debutante balls; educated abroad; early marriage and motherhood. But in 1970, everything changed. Her growing dis... continue
59.
The Day The World Came To Town by Jim DeFed EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
The True Story Behind the Events on 9/11 that Inspired Broadway’s Smash Hit Musical Come from Away, Featuring All New Material from the Author When 38 jetliners bound for the United States were forced to land at Gander International Airport in Canada by the closing of U.S. airspace on September 11, the population of this small town on Newfoundland Island swelled from 10,300 to nearly 17,000. The citizens of Gander met the stranded passengers with an overwhelming display of friendship and goodwill. As the passengers stepped from the airplanes, exhausted, hungry and distraught after being held o... continue
60.
The Erratics by Vicki Laveau-Harvie EN
Country: North America / 
Canada
Canada
Description:
In this award-winning memoir, two sisters reckon with the convalescence and death of their outlandishly tyrannical mother and with the care of their psychologically terrorized father, all relayed with dark humor and brutal honesty. When Vicki Laveau-Harvie and her sister learn their mother has been hospitalized for a broken hip, they return to their parents' home in Alberta, Canada, to put things back in order. Though their parents disowned them years before, the sisters now reassert themselves in the dysfunctional household: their father, undernourished and suffering from Stockholm syndrome i... continue