Must-Read
Best Literary Memoirs of the Last Decade
Memoir done at literary quality is its own subgenre. The right memoir is sentence-level prose first and confessional second. These six are the books our editors recommend most when readers ask for memoir that reads like literature.
6 books on this list.
Crying in H Martby Michelle Zauner
5.0“Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner 2021 review. Michelle Zauner's memoir about her Korean mother's death from pancreatic cancer and the Korean food that connected them. The breakout literary commercial memoir of 2021.”
Solitoby Javier Zamora
5.0“Solito by Javier Zamora 2022 review. The 1999 migration of a nine-year-old Salvadoran boy on foot and by sea across two months. The canonical contemporary memoir of unaccompanied minor migration to the United States.”
Educatedby Tara Westover
5.0“Educated by Tara Westover 2018 review. The memoir of growing up in a survivalist Idaho family that kept her out of school until age seventeen, and her subsequent education through Brigham Young University and Cambridge. The PEN/Bingham winner and one of the canonical contemporary memoirs.”
Becomingby Michelle Obama
5.0“Becoming by Michelle Obama 2018 review. Michelle Obama's memoir, from her South Side Chicago childhood through the Obama White House. The political memoir that sold seventeen million copies, and the one that genuinely earns its bestseller status.”
A Promised Landby Barack Obama
5.0“A Promised Land by Barack Obama 2020 review. The first volume of Barack Obama's presidential memoirs, covering his early political life through the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. The most thoroughly written contemporary presidential memoir in modern American letters.”
The Anxious Generationby Jonathan Haidt
4.0“The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt 2024 review. The smartphone-and-social-media-driven youth mental-health crisis and a four-point reform proposal. The most-cited contemporary book on adolescent psychology.”