Memoir Examples: 20 Memoirs to Learn From, by Type

A memoir is a true story about one part of the writer’s own life. If you’re not sure what makes a book a memoir, start with what makes a book a memoir. This list is for reading and for learning: pick the type closest to the book you want to write, read one or two, and watch how the writer handles the problem you’ll face. If you’d rather tell your story and have it written, our memoir ghostwriting services can write it in your voice.

How these 20 were chosen

This isn’t a ranking. The list mixes types, decades and kinds of authors, from a neurosurgeon to a comedian to a falconer. Every book is a memoir by the usual definition: true at its core, about the writer’s own life, and focused on one part of it. Each has facts we checked, such as its first publisher and any major award. Novels, autobiographies and biographies that often turn up on memoir lists are in a separate box near the end.

Coming of age and family memoirs

These cover growing up, usually in a home that was hard or unusual.

1. The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr

Viking, 1995. Karr’s childhood in an East Texas oil town in the early 1960s, in a family full of secrets.

What to learn: a voice so distinct that readers follow it anywhere.

2. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls

Scribner, 2005. Walls grows up with brilliant, unreliable parents who move the family from place to place and often can’t feed them.

What to learn: how to write about people you love without excusing them or condemning them.

3. Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt

Scribner, 1996. A poor childhood in Limerick, Ireland, after the family leaves Brooklyn, up to his return to New York at 19. It won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

What to learn: telling hard years in a child’s voice, so the reader understands more than the narrator does.

4. Educated, Tara Westover

Random House, 2018. Westover grows up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho with no schooling, then goes on to earn a PhD at Cambridge. It was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in autobiography.

What to learn: a clear before-and-after shape, where the whole book builds toward one change.

5. This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff

Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989. Wolff’s boyhood in the 1950s, mainly between the ages of 11 and 16, under a cruel stepfather in Washington State.

What to learn: writing honestly about your younger self’s lies and mistakes.

6. Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner

Knopf, 2021. Zauner writes about her Korean American identity, food and her mother’s death from cancer.

What to learn: using one recurring thing, here Korean food, to hold a whole relationship together.

Grief and illness memoirs

These follow a loss or a diagnosis, and what it changed.

7. When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi

Random House, 2016. A neurosurgeon in training writes about his work and his diagnosis of advanced lung cancer. He died before it was published, and it was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2017.

What to learn: bringing your professional knowledge into a personal story.

8. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion

Knopf, 2005. The year after her husband died suddenly, while their daughter was seriously ill. It won the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

What to learn: how a tight time frame, one year, gives a memoir its shape.

9. H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald

Jonathan Cape, 2014; Grove Press in the US, 2015. After her father’s sudden death, Macdonald trains a goshawk. It won the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Book of the Year.

What to learn: weaving a second thread, here the life of the writer T. H. White, through your own story.

Travel and nature memoirs

These follow a trip or a place that changes the writer.

10. Wild, Cheryl Strayed

Knopf, 2012. At 26, after her mother’s death, Strayed hikes about 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone.

What to learn: letting physical details of the trail, like an overloaded pack and lost boots, show an inner change without stating it.

11. West with the Night, Beryl Markham

Houghton Mifflin, 1942. Markham’s life in Kenya as a horse trainer and bush pilot, up to her 1936 solo flight west across the Atlantic. It went out of print, was reissued in 1983 and later became a bestseller. Some biographers believe her husband, Raoul Schumacher, helped write it.

What to learn: writing about a place as closely as you’d write about a person.

Work and creative life memoirs

These look at a career or an art from the inside.

12. Born Standing Up, Steve Martin

Scribner, 2007. Martin’s early life and his years in stand-up comedy, up to the point he quit.

What to learn: covering just one chapter of a long career, and stopping there.

13. Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain

Bloomsbury, 2000. Bourdain’s years in professional restaurant kitchens, and how they work.

What to learn: an insider’s knowledge, told in a voice that sounds like talking.

14. Just Kids, Patti Smith

Ecco, 2010. Smith’s friendship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in New York, as both were starting out as artists. It won the 2010 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

What to learn: building a memoir around one relationship.

Memoirs that bear witness

These record history the writer, or the writer’s family, lived through.

15. Night, Elie Wiesel

Hill & Wang, English edition 1960. Wiesel’s account of Auschwitz and Buchenwald with his father, in 1944 and 1945. It first appeared in Yiddish in 1956 and in French in 1958.

What to learn: spare, plain language for events too large for decoration.

16. Maus, Art Spiegelman

Pantheon, 1986 and 1991. Spiegelman interviews his father, a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust, and draws both his father’s story and their own strained relationship. It received a Pulitzer Prize special award in 1992.

What to learn: framing someone else’s story through your conversations with them.

Graphic memoirs

These tell a true story in comics form.

17. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

Pantheon, English editions 2003 and 2004. Satrapi’s childhood and teens in Iran around the 1979 revolution, and her years in Austria. It first appeared in French in four volumes.

What to learn: keeping a child’s point of view while history happens around her.

18. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel

Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Bechdel’s childhood in Pennsylvania and her relationship with her father. It won the 2007 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work.

What to learn: how pictures and words can say different things on the same page.

Funny memoirs and essay collections

These use humor, and sometimes short essays instead of one long story.

19. Born a Crime, Trevor Noah

Spiegel & Grau, 2016. Noah grows up mixed race in South Africa under apartheid, when his parents’ relationship was illegal. It won the 2017 Thurber Prize for American Humor.

What to learn: how humor can carry very serious material.

20. Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris

Little, Brown, 2000. Linked essays about his childhood, odd jobs and moving to France to learn French. It won the 2001 Thurber Prize for American Humor. Sedaris has said he exaggerates some details, which makes it a useful case for where memoir ends and embellishment begins.

What to learn: how a memoir can be built from short pieces instead of one continuous story.

Find your model memoir

If you’re writing your own memoir, start with the two closest to your book.

When you’ve chosen your model, our guide on how to write a memoir takes you from idea to finished draft.

Often called memoirs, but aren’t

These turn up on memoir lists, but they’re a different kind of book:

• On the Road, Jack Kerouac (1957). A novel based on his own travels, with real friends renamed as characters.
• Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer (1996). Nonfiction about another person, Christopher McCandless, so closer to biography.
• Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela (1994). An autobiography, covering his life from childhood onward.
• The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien (1990). Linked stories based on his time in Vietnam, but fiction, even though the narrator shares his name.

For how these forms differ, see memoir vs autobiography vs biography.

When to get help

Reading memoirs shows you what’s possible. Writing your own is the next step, and help makes sense at two points:

• You want to write it yourself, with feedback. A book coach reads your pages every two weeks and sets your next deadline. One of our book coaches works with memoir writers. Book coaching is from $849, or try one session for $399.
• You’d rather tell it than write it. A memoir ghostwriter interviews you, learns how you talk and writes the book in your voice, from $13,600. Every word is written by a human writer.

Questions about memoir examples

What is a good first memoir to read?

Pick one close to your own interests. The Glass Castle and Educated are clear, gripping family stories that many readers start with. If you prefer something short and funny, try Me Talk Pretty One Day. If you like comics, Fun Home or Persepolis shows how a memoir works in pictures as well as words.

Are there short memoir examples?

Yes. Joan Didion’s essay “Goodbye to All That” looks back on her years in New York in a few pages. Me Talk Pretty One Day is a whole book of short pieces by one writer, and Crying in H Mart grew out of a shorter essay with the same title. For how to write one, see how to write a short memoir.

Which memoirs on this list were first books?

Several. Educated was Tara Westover’s first book, and Angela’s Ashes was Frank McCourt’s, published when he was in his sixties after decades of teaching. When Breath Becomes Air was Paul Kalanithi’s first and only book. All three found a wide audience.

Which memoirs are often taught in school?

Check your teacher’s list first. Night is widely taught in schools, and Born a Crime has an edition adapted for young readers. Persepolis suits students who like comics. Some memoirs on this list deal with abuse, war or illness in detail, so read a summary before choosing one for a younger class.