The best memoirs you haven’t read

Viola talent Zarifa Adiba grew up in war-torn Kabul, where girls were expected to marry after completing their schooling. But Adiba went against the expectations of her culture and at the age of just eighteen became the principal violinist, co-conductor, and spokesperson for Zohra, the Muslim world’s first women’s orchestra.

This memoir deals with a situation most people can relate to: caring for aging parents while raising their own children. Cohen experienced many obstacles, but also felt great joy and love as a single mother raising her young daughter Ava while also caring for her father, who suffered from Alzheimer’s. It’s a beautiful story about life at both ends of the journey.

In this powerful account exploring the importance of BIPOC narratives in recovery stories, Hopp exposes the cycles of substance abuse disorder in her family. It’s a deep look into her family history, including her cousin’s death at the beginning of the pandemic and her own recovery, which she kept hidden.

If you enjoy exposing government wrongdoing, this memoir is for you! This is a crazy, compelling book about Iverson, his family, and his neighbors who lived near a secret nuclear facility in Colorado. While the government kept the real operation of Rocky Flats away from citizens for decades, it was poisoning the people, animals, and land all around it.

Maya Shanbaugh Lang grew up in the United States, honoring her brilliant mother, a physician who immigrated from India and raised her family while still working. But as Lange becomes an adult, her mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and she begins to share stories that differ from the ones she told Lange as a child, causing her to wonder if she really knew her mother.

In this poignant memoir, Roberts describes his epic journey across the Atlantic Ocean to help search for the lost ships of the global slave trade. She joined the scuba and underwater archeology group Diving with a Purpose, and worked with divers, scholars, and archaeologists – a work that inspired her to learn about her descendants along the way.

The story of the Central Park Five is one of the most famous cases of wrongful conviction in United States history. Yusef Salaam was one of those who was jailed for a crime he did not commit, spending several years in prison before being acquitted. In this angry and enlightening book, he shares not only his story, but also the country’s long history of wrongful convictions and those who have been failed by a system designed to keep them suppressed.

Marianne Schembri spent the first few decades of her life feeling isolated, wondering why she didn’t behave like other people, and being repeatedly misdiagnosed. It wasn’t until she was 34 that she learned she was autistic, and her life began to make sense. In this enlightening and poignant memoir, Schembri tells how, with the help of her diagnosis, she finally began to understand herself and how she related to the world.