best biography memoir 2022

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The Best Reviewed Memoirs and Biographies of 2022

Featuring buster keaton, jean rhys, bernardine evaristo, kate beaton, and more.

We’ve come to the end of another bountiful literary year, and for all of us review rabbits here at Book Marks, that can mean only one thing: basic math, and lots of it.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be calculating and revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2022, in the categories of (deep breath): Fiction ; Nonfiction ; Memoir and Biography; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror; Short Story Collections; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime; Graphic Literature ; and Literature in Translation .

Today’s installment: Memoir and Biography .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole (Liveright) 17 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan

“One of the many triumphs of Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves is that he manages to find a form that accommodates the spectacular changes that have occurred in Ireland over the past six decades, which happens to be his life span … it is not a memoir, nor is it an absolute history, nor is it entirely a personal reflection or a crepuscular credo. It is, in fact, all of these things helixed together: his life, his country, his thoughts, his misgivings, his anger, his pride, his doubt, all of them belonging, eventually, to us … O’Toole, an agile cultural commentator, considers himself to be a representative of the blank slate on which the experiment of change was undertaken, but it’s a tribute to him that he maintains his humility, his sharpness and his enlightened distrust …

O’Toole writes brilliantly and compellingly of the dark times, but he is graceful enough to know that there is humor and light in the cracks. There is a touch of Eduardo Galeano in the way he can settle on a telling phrase … But the real accomplishment of this book is that it achieves a conscious form of history-telling, a personal hybrid that feels distinctly honest and humble at the same time. O’Toole has not invented the form, but he comes close to perfecting it. He embraces the contradictions and the confusion. In the process, he weaves the flag rather than waving it.”

–Colum McCann ( The New York Times Book Review )

2. Thin Places: A Natural History of Healing and Home by Kerri Ní Dochartaigh (Milkweed)

12 Rave • 7 Positive • 2 Mixed

“Assured and affecting … A powerful and bracing memoir … This is a book that will make you see the world differently: it asks you to reconsider the animals and insects we often view as pests – the rat, for example, and the moth. It asks you to look at the sea and the sky and the trees anew; to wonder, when you are somewhere beautiful, whether you might be in a thin place, and what your responsibilities are to your location.It asks you to show compassion for people you think are difficult, to cultivate empathy, to try to understand the trauma that made them the way they are.”

–Lynn Enright ( The Irish Times )

3. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton (Drawn & Quarterly)

14 Rave • 4 Positive

“It could hardly be more different in tone from [Beaton’s] popular larky strip Hark! A Vagrant … Yes, it’s funny at moments; Beaton’s low-key wryness is present and correct, and her drawings of people are as charming and as expressive as ever. But its mood overall is deeply melancholic. Her story, which runs to more than 400 pages, encompasses not only such thorny matters as social class and environmental destruction; it may be the best book I have ever read about sexual harassment …

There are some gorgeous drawings in Ducks of the snow and the starry sky at night. But the human terrain, in her hands, is never only black and white … And it’s this that gives her story not only its richness and depth, but also its astonishing grace. Life is complex, she tell us, quietly, and we are all in it together; each one of us is only trying to survive. What a difficult, gorgeous and abidingly humane book. It really does deserve to win all the prizes.”

–Rachel Cooke ( The Guardian )

4. Stay True by Hua Hsu (Doubleday)

14 Rave • 3 Positive

“… quietly wrenching … To say that this book is about grief or coming-of-age doesn’t quite do it justice; nor is it mainly about being Asian American, even though there are glimmers of that too. Hsu captures the past by conveying both its mood and specificity … This is a memoir that gathers power through accretion—all those moments and gestures that constitute experience, the bits and pieces that coalesce into a life … Hsu is a subtle writer, not a showy one; the joy of Stay True sneaks up on you, and the wry jokes are threaded seamlessly throughout.”

–Jennifer Szalai ( The New York Times )

5.  Manifesto: On Never Giving Up by Bernardine Evaristo (Grove)

13 Rave • 4 Positive

“Part coming-of-age story and part how-to manual, the book is, above all, one of the most down-to-earth and least self-aggrandizing works of self-reflection you could hope to read. Evaristo’s guilelessness is refreshing, even unsettling … With ribald humour and admirable candour, Evaristo takes us on a tour of her sexual history … Characterized by the resilience of its author, it is replete with stories about the communities and connections Evaristo has cultivated over forty years … Invigoratingly disruptive as an artist, Evaristo is a bridge-builder as a human being.”

–Emily Bernard ( The Times Literary Supplement )

1. Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

14 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Rundell is right that Donne…must never be forgotten, and she is the ideal person to evangelise him for our age. She shares his linguistic dexterity, his pleasure in what TS Eliot called ‘felt thought’, his ability to bestow physicality on the abstract … It’s a biography filled with gaps and Rundell brings a zest for imaginative speculation to these. We know so little about Donne’s wife, but Rundell brings her alive as never before … Rundell confronts the difficult issue of Donne’s misogyny head-on … This is a determinedly deft book, and I would have liked it to billow a little more, making room for more extensive readings of the poems and larger arguments about the Renaissance. But if there is an overarching argument, then it’s about Donne as an ‘infinity merchant’ … To read Donne is to grapple with a vision of the eternal that is startlingly reinvented in the here and now, and Rundell captures this vision alive in all its power, eloquence and strangeness”

–Laura Feigel ( The Guardian )

2. The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland (Harper)

12 Rave • 3 Positive

“Compelling … We know about Auschwitz. We know what happened there. But Freedland, with his strong, clear prose and vivid details, makes us feel it, and the first half of this book is not an easy read. The chillingly efficient mass murder of thousands of people is harrowing enough, but Freedland tells us stories of individual evils as well that are almost harder to take … His matter-of-fact tone makes it bearable for us to continue to read … The Escape Artist is riveting history, eloquently written and scrupulously researched. Rosenberg’s brilliance, courage and fortitude are nothing short of amazing.”

–Laurie Hertzel ( The Star Tribune )

3. I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys by Miranda Seymour (W. W. Norton & Company)

11 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Pan

“…illuminating and meticulously researched … paints a deft portrait of a flawed, complex, yet endlessly fascinating woman who, though repeatedly bowed, refused to be broken … Following dismal reviews of her fourth novel, Rhys drifted into obscurity. Ms. Seymour’s book could have lost momentum here. Instead, it compellingly charts turbulent, drink-fueled years of wild moods and reckless acts before building to a cathartic climax with Rhys’s rescue, renewed lease on life and late-career triumph … is at its most powerful when Ms. Seymour, clear-eyed but also with empathy, elaborates on Rhys’s woes …

Ms. Seymour is less convincing with her bold claim that Rhys was ‘perhaps the finest English woman novelist of the twentieth century.’ However, she does expertly demonstrate that Rhys led a challenging yet remarkable life and that her slim but substantial novels about beleaguered women were ahead of their time … This insightful biography brilliantly shows how her many battles were lost and won.”

–Malcolm Forbes ( The Wall Street Journal )

4. The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I by Lindsey Fitzharris (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

9 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Grisly yet inspiring … Fitzharris depicts her hero as irrepressibly dedicated and unfailingly likable. The suspense of her narrative comes not from any interpersonal drama but from the formidable challenges posed by the physical world … The Facemaker is mostly a story of medical progress and extraordinary achievement, but as Gillies himself well knew—grappling daily with the unbearable suffering that people willingly inflicted on one another—failure was never far behind.”

5. Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life by James Curtis (Knopf)

8 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Keaton fans have often complained that nearly all biographies of him suffer from a questionable slant or a cursory treatment of key events. With Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life —at more than 800 pages dense with research and facts—Mr. Curtis rectifies that situation, and how. He digs deep into Keaton’s process and shows how something like the brilliant two-reeler Cops went from a storyline conceived from necessity—construction on the movie lot encouraged shooting outdoors—to a masterpiece … This will doubtless be the primary reference on Keaton’s life for a long time to come … the worse Keaton’s life gets, the more engrossing Mr. Curtis’s book becomes.”

–Farran Smith Nehme ( The Wall Street Journal )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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The 20 Best Memoirs of 2022

From marriage to medicine to masculinity, the year's best memoirs dig deep into thorny topics.

Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.

Still, our favorite memoirs of 2022 elevate the form to new heights. They tackle personal, psychological, and philosophical concerns through topics ranging from ancestry to medicine to marriage. With guts and grace, these authors dive deep into their loves and losses, and come ashore with these dazzling treasures for you to read. (Or give ! What better gift than that of a remarkable true story?)

Stay True, by Hua Hsu

When Hsu arrived at Berkeley in the 1990s, a rebellious undergrad obsessed with creating zines and developing “a worldview defined by music,” he made an unexpected friend. At first, Hsu wrote his fraternity brother Ken off as “mainstream,” thinking they had nothing in common beyond their Asian American identities—but soon, an unlikely friendship blossomed, with the two young men penning a screenplay together and discussing philosophy late into the night. It all came crashing down when Ken was murdered in a carjacking, sending Hsu into a decades-long spiral of grief and guilt. Ever since, Hsu has been trying to write Stay True , a wrenching memoir about who Ken was and what Ken taught him. At once a love letter, a coming-of-age tale, and an elegy, it’s one of the best books about friendship ever written.

The Man Who Could Move Clouds, by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

“They say the amnesias were a door to gifts we were supposed to have,” Rojas Contreras muses in this poetic memoir. After a head injury afflicted the author with amnesia, she learned that this had happened before: decades ago, her mother took a fall that left her with amnesia, and when she recovered, she gained access to “the secrets.” The first woman to know “the secrets,” Rojas Contreras’ mother inherited them from her father, known to the family as Nono, a Colombian community healer renowned for his ability to communicate with the dead, predict the future, heal the sick, and move the clouds. After Rojas Contreras’ accident, she and her mother traveled to Colombia to disinter Nono’s remains and tell his story. That quest, recounted here with mesmerizing prose and bracing insight, sent the women on a journey through the brutal colonial history that shaped their family and their nation. Rich in personal and political history, The Man Who Could Move Clouds is an effervescent read.

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man, by Paul Newman

After six decades of Hollywood superstardom, it’s difficult to imagine that anything could remain unknown about Paul Newman . But that’s the particular magic trick of this memoir, assembled by way of a literary scavenger hunt. Between 1986 and 1991, Newman sat down with screenwriter Stewart Stern for a series of soul-baring interviews about his life and career. With the actor’s encouragement, Stern also recorded hundreds of hours worth of interviews with his friends, family, and colleagues. The whole enterprise was destined to become Newman’s authorized biography, but his feelings on the project soured; in 1998, he gathered the tapes in a pile and set fire to them. Luckily, Stern kept transcripts—over 14,000 pages worth. Now, those transcripts have been streamlined into this honest and unvarnished memoir, in which the actor speaks openly about his traumatic childhood, his lifelong struggle with alcoholism, and his tormenting self-doubt. But the highs are there too—like his 50-year marriage to actress Joanne Woodward—as well as the mysteries of making art, and the “imponderable of being a human being.” All told, the memoir is an extraordinary act of resurrection and reimagination.

Bad Sex, by Nona Willis Aronowitz

When Teen Vogue ’s sex columnist decided to end her marriage at 32 years old, chief among her complaints was “bad sex.” Newly divorced, Aronowitz went in search of good sex, but along the way, she discovered thorny truths about “the problem that has no name”—that despite the advances of feminism and the sexual revolution, true sexual freedom remains out of reach. Cultural criticism, memoir, and social history collide in Aronowitz’s no-nonsense investigation of all that ails young lovers, like questions about desire, consent, and patriarchy. It’s a revealing read bound to expand your thinking.

The High Sierra: A Love Story, by Kim Stanley Robinson

A titan of science fiction masters a new form in this winsome love letter to California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range. Constructed from an impassioned blend of memoir, history, and science writing, The High Sierra chronicles Robinson’s 100-plus trips to his beloved mountains, from his LSD-laced first encounter in 1973 to the dozens of ​​“rambling and scrambling” days to follow. From descriptions of the region’s multitudinous flora and fauna to practical advice about when and where to hike, this is as comprehensive a guidebook as any, complete with all the lucid ecstasy of nature writing greats like John Muir and Annie Dillard.

Year of the Tiger, by Alice Wong

In this mixed media memoir, disability activist Alice Wong outlines her journey as an advocate and educator. Wong was born with a form of progressive muscular dystrophy; as a young woman, she attended her dream college, but had to drop out when changes to Medicaid prevented her from retaining the aides she needed on an inaccessible campus. In one standout essay, Wong recounts her struggle to access Covid-19 vaccines as a high-risk individual. The author's rage about moving through an ableist world is palpable, but so too is her joy and delight about Lunar New Year, cats, family, and so much more. Innovative and informative, Year of the Tiger is a multidimensional portrait of a powerful thinker.

My Pinup, by Hilton Als

Has any book ever roved so far and wide in just 48 pages as My Pinup ? In this slim and brilliant memoir, Als explores race, power, and desire through the lens of Prince. Styling the legendary musician in the image of his lovers and himself, Als explores injustice on multiple levels, from racist record labels to the world's hostility to gay Black boys. “There was so much love between us,” the author muses. “Why didn’t anyone want us to share it?” These 48 meandering pages are difficult to describe, but trust us: My Pinup is a heady cocktail you won’t soon forget.

Novelist as a Vocation, by Haruki Murakami

In this winsome volume, one of our greatest novelists invites readers into his creative process. The result is a revealing self-portrait that answers many burning questions about its reclusive subject, like: where do Murakami’s strange and surreal ideas come from? When and how did he start writing? How does he view the role of novels in contemporary society? Novelist as a Vocation is a rare and welcome peek behind the curtain of a singular mind.

Bloomsbury Publishing Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional, by Isaac Fitzgerald

In this bleeding heart memoir, Fitzgerald peels back the layers of his extraordinary life. Dirtbag, Massachusetts opens with his hardscrabble childhood in a dysfunctional Catholic family, then spins out into the decades of jobs and identities that followed. From bartending at a biker bar to smuggling medical supplies to starring in porn films, it’s all led him to here and now: he’s still a work in progress, but gradually, he’s arriving at profound realizations about masculinity, family, and selfhood. Dirtbag, Massachusetts is the best of what memoir can accomplish. It's blisteringly honest and vulnerable, pulling no punches on the path to truth, but it always finds the capacity for grace and joy. “To any young men out there who aren’t too far gone,” Fitzgerald writes, “I say you’re not done becoming yourself.”

Pretty Baby, by Chris Belcher

As a financially strapped PhD student in Los Angeles, Belcher fell into an unusual side hustle: she began working as a pro-domme, fulfilling the fantasies of male clients aroused by feelings of shame and weakness. Belcher found unique power in the work as a queer woman, writing, “My clientele wanted a woman who would never want them in return, and at that, I excelled." But as she illuminates in this discerning memoir, the work had its drawbacks—namely, the brutality and blackmail of men. In a lucid examination of power, sexuality, and class, Belcher tells a gripping story about the performance of identity, inside and outside of the dungeon.

Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me, by Ada Calhoun

When Calhoun once went looking for a childhood toy, she stumbled upon a far greater treasure: dusty cassette tapes of interviews recorded by her father, art critic Peter Schjeldahl, who started but never completed a biography of the gone-too-soon poet Frank O’Hara. As a lifelong O’Hara fan, Calhoun gleefully committed to finishing what Schjeldahl started, but the task proved to be anything but easy. Like her father before her, Calhoun was stonewalled by Maureen O’Hara, the poet’s prickly sister and executor; the project also revealed the faultlines in her complicated bond with Schjeldahl, whom she longs to impress. In this heartfelt memoir, Calhoun recounts how going in search of O’Hara revealed so much more—like the painful complexities of parents, children, art, and ambition.

Because Our Fathers Lied, by Craig McNamara

How do we reckon with the sins of our parents? That’s the thorny question at the center of this moving and courageous memoir authored by the son of Robert S. McNamara, Kennedy’s architect of the Vietnam War. In this conflicted son’s telling, a complicated man comes into intimate view, as does the “mixture of love and rage” at the heart of their relationship. At once a loving and neglectful parent, the elder McNamara’s controversial lies about the war ultimately estranged him from his son, who hung Viet Cong flags in his childhood bedroom as a protest. The pursuit of a life unlike his father’s saw the younger McNamara drop out of Stanford and travel through South America on a motorcycle, leading him to ultimately become a sustainable walnut farmer. Through his own personal story of disappointment and disillusionment, McNamara captures an intergenerational conflict and a journey of moral identity.

The Unwritten Book, by Samantha Hunt

One of our most gifted practitioners of the short story makes her first foray into nonfiction with this shapeshifting volume. Hunt’s many-feathered subject is the things that haunt: art, the dead, the forest, things left unfinished. Her investigation centers on an unfinished novel written by her late father, a Reader's Digest editor; “the dead leave clues, and life is a puzzle of trying to read and understand these mysterious hints before the game is over,” she writes. As she considers the novel, she sifts through her relationship with her father, characterized as it was by his alcoholism and their shared love of story. Eerie, profound, and daring, this is a book only the inimitable Hunt could write.

Roc Lit 101 Shine Bright, by Danyel Smith

Memoir, criticism, and cultural history meet in this masterful study of the brilliant Black women who shaped American pop music, enriched by the author's own experiences and memories. Some of the figures here will be familiar, like Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston, while others are long overdue for the reckoning Smith provides, from the Dixie Cups, a gone-too-soon sixties girl group, to the enslaved poet Phyllis Wheatley, who cleared a path for generations of descendants by singing her poems. In this soulful, enriching portrait of these extraordinary artists’ struggles and triumphs, Smith widens the canon to usher in new luminaries.

Lost & Found, by Kathryn Schultz

Eighteen months before Schultz’s father died after a long battle with cancer, she met the love of her life. It’s this painful dichotomy that sets the foundation for Lost & Found , a poignant memoir about how love and loss often coexist. Braiding her personal experiences together with psychological, philosophical and scientific insight, Schultz weaves a taxonomy of our losses, which can “encompass both the trivial as well as the consequential, the abstract and the concrete, the merely misplaced and the permanently gone.” But so too does she celebrate the act of discovery, from finding what we’ve mislaid to lucking into lasting love. Penetrating and profound, Lost & Found captures the extraordinary joys and sorrows of ordinary life.

Ecco Press South to America, by Imani Perry

The American South is often cast as a backwater cousin out of step with American ideals. In this vital cultural history, Perry argues otherwise, insisting the South is, in fact, the foundational heartland of America, an undeniable fulcrum around which our wealth and politics have always turned. Fusing memoir, reportage, and travelogue, Perry imparts Southern history alongside high-spirited interviews with modern-day Southerners from all walks of life. At once a love letter to “a land of big dreams and bigger lies” and a clarion call for change, South to America will change how you understand America’s past, present, and future.

Admissions, by Kendra James

When James enrolled at Connecticut’s prestigious Taft School at fifteen years old, she had no idea that, as the predominantly white boarding school’s first “Black American legacy student to graduate since 1891,” she would become its involuntary poster child for diversity. James’ hopes for a positive high school experience were dashed by “a swamp of microaggressions,” ranging from a student who accused her of stealing $20 to an article in the student newspaper blaming students of color for the segregation of campus. Determined that students after her wouldn’t suffer the same fate, she became an admissions officer specializing in diversity recruitment, but soon felt that she was “selling a lie for a living.” Frank and devastating in its candor, as well as incisive in its critique of elite academia, Admissions is a poignant coming-of-age memoir.

The Invisible Kingdom, by Meghan O'Rourke

“I got sick the way Hemingway says you go broke: ‘gradually and then suddenly,’” O’Rourke writes in The Invisible Kingdom , describing the beginning of her decades-long struggle with chronic autoimmune disease. In the late nineties, O’Rourke began suffering symptoms ranging from rashes to crushing fatigue; when she sought treatment, she became an unwilling citizen of a shadow world, where chronic illness sufferers are dismissed by doctors and alienated from their lives. In this elegant fusion of memoir, reporting, and cultural history, O’Rourke traces the development of modern Western medicine and takes aim at its limitations, advocating for a community-centric healthcare model that treats patients as people, not parts. At once a rigorous work of scholarship and a radical act of empathy, The Invisible Kingdom has the power to move mountains.

Read an exclusive interview with O'Rourkre here at Esquire.

Ancestor Trouble, by Maud Newton

Who are our ancestors to us, and what can they tell us about ourselves? In this riveting memoir, Newton goes in search of the answers to these questions, spelunking exhaustively through her frustrating and fascinating family tree. From an accused witch to a thirteen times-married man, her family tree abounds with stories that absorb and appall, but taxonomizing her family history doesn’t satisfy Newton’s hunger for meaning. Just what do the facts of a life tell us about who we are or where we come from, and what can our personal histories tell us about our national past? Carefully blending memoir and cultural criticism, Newton explores the cultural, scientific, and spiritual dimensions of ancestry, arguing for the transformational power of grappling with our inheritances.

Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage, by Heather Havrilesky

No one writes about the agony and ecstasy of relationships with as much gutsy grace as Havrilesky, who has long counseled troubled lovers under the guise of Ask Polly . In Foreverland , Havrilesky turns the microscope on her own relationship, illuminating the joys and exasperations of her fifteen-year marriage. From parenting to quarantining together to bristling at her husband’s every loud sneeze, Havrilesky proves that forever is hard, wonderful work.

Read Havrilesky’s column about her husband here at Esquire.

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Best of the Year: The 15 Best Bios and Memoirs of 2022

From ruminations on addiction and recovery to genre-bending blends of biography and cultural criticism, these are 2022's best memoirs.

This list is part of our Best of the Year collection, an obsessively curated selection of our editors' and listeners' favorite audio in 2022. Check out The Best of 2022 to see our top picks in every category.

There are few stories more compelling or more intimately told than those soul-baring memoirs that seek not just to recount the experiences of one's own life but to draw some greater commentary on the big existential questions. What does it mean to be human? What is our purpose in being here? How much of who we are is purely self-determined? How much is an amalgamation of all those who have left an impact on us? Like all great autobiographies, the very best memoirs of 2022 muse on those questions, contemplating everything from the impact of art and culture on identity to navigating the labyrinthine worlds of grief and illness, addiction and recovery. Exceptional in both their prose and narration, these listens represent a few of the year's best memoirs.

Save this list to your Library Collections now.

Constructing a Nervous System

Audible's Memoir of the Year, 2022 To call Margo Jefferson’s exquisite Constructing a Nervous System a memoir is a bit of a misnomer. After all, this skillfully crafted autobiography dances between genres so fluidly, leaping from the personal to deft cultural analysis in a dazzling display of narrative choreography. Jefferson constructs this stunner of a memoir through a literary lens, one that all but embodies the artists she riffs off of and analyzes, developing a story of the self through the creations, personalities, and perspectives of other artists. In a totally unique style that splinters the form of memoir altogether and frequently sees the text in dialogue with itself, this sharp listen illuminates that so much of who we are is built upon what we love and the things we encounter—be it the lasting presence of a late family member or a voice rising from a turntable. — Alanna M.

Told through the perspective of his nine-year-old self, Javier Zamora’s Solito is a moving account of his perilous, exhausting solo journey from El Salvador to the United States, where his parents awaited him. Zamora was entirely reliant on the support and compassion of his fellow migrants to survive—a story that is both his own and shared by many. Zamora is a poet first, and his delivery is pitch-perfect, lending a lyrical cadence and a well of emotion to an already beautifully crafted memoir. His voice, at times quivering, small, or uncertain, much like his young self, is wielded as an instrument of the story, not an appendix, reminding the listener of the human beings behind the statistics and political platforms. — A.M.

Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?

There are some sounds I consider synonymous with my Irish heritage: the slap of ghillies and the clack of reel shoes, the melodic jaunt of lilting or swell of an accordion, and the entrancing lull of a good story. The latter is embodied in Séamas O’Reilly’s tender retrospective on grief, family, and childhood, all amidst the din of the Troubles. However, a dry tearjerker this is not. Instead, whether musing on his father’s unmatched haggling abilities or offering asides on the oddities of death’s theatrics, O’Reilly brings so much joy and soul into his story that it’s impossible not to smile along. There is simply so much love, life, and heart in this rich memoir that you can almost hear it breathing. — A.M.

The Invisible Kingdom

In this deeply researched and insightful memoir, author Meghan O’Rourke illuminates how chronic illness has become the defining medical mystery of our times, and the source of a painful dissonance between the promises of modern medicine and the lived experiences of so many. Drawing on her own health issues as well as her background as a poet, O’Rourke weaves insights from doctors, patients, researchers, and other experts into a captivating and lyrical narrative. The current spotlight that long COVID has thrown on autoimmune and other “invisible” conditions is a central focus of the memoir, and many people will feel seen—and hopefully heard—by the eloquent voice O’Rourke gives to a monumental challenge. — Kat J.

Lost & Found

I’ve always found something peculiar about “loss” as a euphemism for death. Even still, it feels so apt—that sense that something is missing, at first an acute awareness and in time, an understanding of that absence’s permanence. Kathryn Schulz pulls on this thread in her gorgeous memoir Lost & Found , an account of the universality and ubiquity of those two most human experiences—love and death—as filtered through the loss of her father and the life she built with her wife. As someone muddling through a similar grief journey while trying to nurture a relationship of my own, I found a resonant comfort and hope in Schulz’s thoughts on bereavement and all the life there is still left to lead. — A.M.

What My Bones Know

As someone with a mood disorder, I find solace in listens that take new avenues for exploring the complicated and often isolating side effects of mental health conditions. Reconstructing her experiences with guided meditation and using recordings from real therapy sessions, Stephanie Foo takes a highly journalistic approach to dissecting her CPTSD diagnosis in this vulnerable and intelligent memoir. Unpacking how and why her trauma affects her the way it does, What My Bones Know is not only uniquely suited for audio but constructs a creative audio experience that challenged me as a listener in unexpected and illuminating ways. — Haley H.

Quite the Contrary

This juicy and culturally significant listen, which happens to be the memoir of one of my Audible colleagues, is one of the best I’ve had the pleasure of gulping down. In Quite the Contrary, Yvonne Durant gradually unfurls the mother of all cocktail-party stories—the intimate account of her love affair with jazz legend Miles Davis—against her equally compelling career trajectory as a rare Black woman making waves in advertising’s competitive heyday. Witty, poignant, and funny, Durant lets us into secret spaces of celebrity, culture, and bygone New York, unforgettably brought to life by narrator Allyson Johnson. — K.J.

His Name Is George Floyd (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

This landmark biography from Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa is built on more than 400 interviews conducted in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, offering the most complete portrait of Floyd’s life and legacy to date. Star narrator Dion Graham pairs with the authors to create a powerhouse performance that moves from Floyd’s ancestral roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina to the housing projects of Houston and his death at the hands of Minneapolis police, paying homage to his life while revealing its deep intersections with America’s history of racism and inequality. — H.H.

To fans of Brandon Stanton's street photography project and bestselling book Humans of New York, Stephanie Johnson—better known as Tanqueray—is nothing short of a superstar. So, to finally hear the septuagenarian share more unfiltered, incredible stories about being a burlesque dancer in 1970s New York City—and many other necessary reinventions to survive life's ups and downs—in her own feisty, raunchy, badass way is a milestone storytelling event that is at times hilarious as well as heartbreaking. Millions fell in love with her indomitable spirit by reading about her life on social media, but listening to this legendary lady is unforgettable. As she says: "Make room for Tanqueray, because here I come." — Jerry P.

The Book of Baraka

Told in collaboration with renowned journalist Jelani Cobb, The Book of Baraka combines poetry and prose with the history that helped to shape Ras Baraka, the current mayor of Newark, New Jersey, into the man he is today. It’s the story of a young Black boy’s coming of age as the son of one of the most influential and controversial poets and revolutionaries of the era but also of how that boy would later shape his city—first as a poet, then as an educator, and now, as mayor. As a former resident of Newark myself, I have nothing but praise for Baraka’s accomplishments. But don’t just take it from me. His is a story you definitely don’t want to miss out on, and it should be heard from the mayor himself. — Michael C.

Full disclosure: I’m a sucker for any story involving animals, particularly when those little critters are of the motley variety. Needless to say, I was drawn to Laurie Zaleski’s Funny Farm immediately. An account of running a rescue for beasties ranging from cats to horses? That ridiculously cute cover? Sign me up. What I didn’t expect, however, was a truly affecting memoir that extended far beyond barnyard antics, exploring the depths of Zaleski’s difficult childhood, her mother’s remarkable strength, and carrying on a mission inherited. So sure, come for the adorable furry and feathered friends, but stay for the author’s graceful, heartrending tribute to her late mother and a testament to the redemptive power of caring for others, four-legged or otherwise. — A.M.

Fatty Fatty Boom Boom

If you’re a fan of true crime podcasts, you probably already know Rabia Chaudry’s euphonic voice—as host of both Undisclosed and Rabia and Ellyn Solve the Case , her skills behind the microphone are well documented. Chaudry's gifts for performance and storytelling shine the clearer in her deeply personal debut memoir. So named in reference to Chaudry’s childhood nickname, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom is an immensely relatable listen for anyone who has ever battled body image issues, a rumination on those most complicated relationships (with both food and family), and a love letter to Pakistani cuisine. — A.M.

Also a Poet

A true blend of biography and memoir, Ada Calhoun’s Also a Poet is a fascinating gem of a listen. Calhoun, the author behind nonfiction listens like Why We Can’t Sleep and St. Marks Is Dead , turns her eye toward a subject matter far closer to home. In examining her strained, complicated relationship with her father, the acclaimed art critic Peter Schjeldahl, Calhoun comes across an unexpected connection between them: the late bohemian poet Frank O’Hara. Twisting in its exploration of family, legacy, and art, this Audible Original—which features exclusive archival audio of artistic giants—is an evocative act of catharsis. — A.M.

Corrections in Ink

Journalist Keri Blakinger has dedicated much of her career to shining a light on the stark realities of criminal justice in America. Her ongoing work with nonprofit news collective The Marshall Project aims to provide a better quality of life for prisoners, with Blakinger advocating for inmate safety and well-being while underscoring their oft-disregarded humanity. But Blakinger’s focus isn’t merely academic—as detailed in Corrections in Ink , she’s lived through the prison system herself. Employing well-crafted, blazing prose and narration marked by an uncommon frankness, she recounts her battle with addiction and subsequent incarceration. Listening to her story is sometimes difficult, painful even, but that’s part of its power—this is a courageous, contemplative memoir poised to change the conversation. — A.M.

Dirtbag, Massachusetts

Kidlit author Isaac Fitzgerald rocketed into the capital-L literary landscape with this astounding memoir-in-essays, its instantly iconic title matched by an unforgettable voice. With his origins firmly in Massachusetts, Fitzgerald grew up with a love of literature and a bohemian sensibility that transcended his rough-and-tumble background and its narrow presentation of masculinity. That foundation serves him well in this fiercely honest, vulnerable, and rowdy collection of reminiscences that range from Boston to Burma (now Myanmar), connecting the dots from Fitzgerald’s former lives as an altar boy, fat kid, and small-time criminal to lightning-bolt musings on religion, race, body image, and family. Both literally and literarily speaking, his voice is one to savor. — K.J.

Best of the Year: The 14 Best Celebrity Memoirs of 2022

Despite the glitz and glamour, these celebrity memoirs take us through the highs and lows of the human experience.

Editors Select: April 2024

14 editors, 14 new listens—from fiction to memoirs to thrillers, check out our most anticipated listens of the month.

The birth of "Quite the Contrary"

Debut memoirist and Audible editor Yvonne Durant goes behind the scenes of how the true story of her great love and pioneering career came to life as an Audible Original.

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The Best Memoirs of 2022

Personal history meets a careful analysis of the cultural forces that inform it in these standout books..

In 2022, we continued to expand our idea of what a memoir can be. Call it hybrid memoir, memoir-plus, researched memoir — the industry hasn’t quite decided — but the blending of personal history with careful analysis of the cultural forces and institutions that inform it has exploded the genre with possibility. What better way to learn about issues like the immigration crisis, the effects of gentrification, the long-lasting repercussions of colonialism, or the function of art in human connection than through the stories of those who live within them? Here are some of the year’s best.

10. Solito, Javier Zamora

On April 6, 1999, 9-year-old Javier Zamora traveled with his grandfather from his home in El Salvador to Guatemala, where his grandfather would say good-bye and send him off on a seven-week journey to his parents in San Francisco. Solito reads like a diary of the trek, recounting the strange, immediate intimacy born from sharing the experience with other immigrants, the physical and emotional toll of daily slogs through dangerous terrain and waters, the disorientation of never really knowing who to trust. Choosing to tell a childhood story from the perspective at the time can go horribly wrong, but Zamora nails the tone and mind-set of his youth. His vulnerability, yearning, insecurities, and hope are vivid. It’s a journey that would test anyone’s mettle, let alone that of a child on his own, but during those seven weeks Zamora sees some of the best humanity has to offer: solidarity, bravery, sacrifice. He’s created something quite rare here — an account of the high-stakes journey to a better life as experienced, moment to moment, by one of the most vulnerable travelers. It’s a story told by the person who owns it , from a point in time where he’s able to understand just how precarious the endeavor was and how afraid his family must have been.

9. The Man Who Could Move Clouds, Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s memoir is as much about her grandfather as it is about herself. After a bicycle crash throws her into weeks of amnesia, she relies on her family to piece her memory back together. Through this lens, Rojas Contreras brings us along as she is guided through the mesmerizing journey of her family history, which is defined both by the guerrilla warfare that eventually drove them out of Colombia when she was 14 and the lineage of supernatural gifts that she traces back to her grandfather, a curandero, or shaman. Rojas Contreras’s talent as a fiction writer comes through in her lyrical prose and her ability to craft clear scenery and narratives. She juggles colonial criticism, explorations of marginalized cultures, and intricate analyses of family dynamics and makes it look easy.

8. Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School, Kendra James

Kendra James’s memoir recounting her experience as the first Black legacy student at a prestigious Connecticut boarding school is as juicy as it is enlightening. It’s also as infuriating as anyone who lives outside those rarefied circles might expect — years of dealing with wealthy white teens who would balk at the idea of their privilege, an administration that doles out discipline with bias, clueless (but well meaning … maybe?) teachers who diversify their syllabi but then alienate students of color in their execution, countless microaggressions and belittling assumptions. It isn’t until James leaves the school — and, years later, becomes an admissions officer doing outreach with Black and Latinx families, selling them the dream and potential of prep schools — that she really starts to process and grapple with the racism she experienced.

7. This Boy We Made: A Memoir of Motherhood, Genetics, and Facing the Unknown, Taylor Harris

Taylor Harris’s debut is as much about motherhood as it is about our broken health-care system. Harris identifies a clear divider in her life — there’s before she woke up one morning to find her son Tophs, two months shy of 2 years old, awake but unresponsive, and then there’s after. Harris connects the two eras in unexpected ways, jumping back and forth between the onset and development of her generalized anxiety disorder and her experience navigating Tophs’s mysterious illness. She carries the tools that were necessary for her survival from the before to the after — her faith in God, her trust in those who love her, her willingness to advocate for herself and her family, her ability to sit in discomfort while “feeling out the boundaries of fear” — and we’re with her as she endures a mother’s worst nightmare, grappling with the inevitable mom guilt that comes with it. It’s an illuminating and empowering story, beautifully rendered.

6. Feral City: On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York, Jeremiah Moss

Jeremiah Moss arrived in the East Village in the early 1990s as a transgender man searching for his people. In the 20-odd years since, he’s watched as his home turned hostile, distorting to accommodate the super-wealthy “hypernormal” transplants — he calls them New People — and sterilizing everything that made the city open, liberating, and a haven for outsiders. When 2020 hits and the city goes into lockdown, something changes. The New People flee, the others stay, and the New Yorkers who truly consider the city home reclaim it. Moss describes a complicated ambivalence as he bikes from neighborhood to neighborhood, reveling in the sense of unity and resilience, while grieving for everything and everyone lost. Feral City is often exuberant, but the reading experience is bittersweet, knowing that the city is by and large rushing past the freedom of that “feral” moment and back to soaring rents and inhumane policing. But these forces are being challenged by many of the groups Moss describes so lovingly. His academic background comes through in his integration of psychoanalysis, sociopolitical theory, and queer theory. This is a must-read for New York transplants — newcomers to any city really — who want to support their new community rather than displace it.

5. Essential Labor: Mothering As Social Change, Angela Garbes

Angela Garbes’s 2019 debut, Like a Mother , was an intimate, feminist analysis of pregnancy. Essential Labor is the follow-up, building on the themes of the first book, so it’s no surprise it’s been a best seller. Part personal history, part sociopolitical analysis, part manifesto, the genre-bending memoir examines the role and work of motherhood as revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In all the discourse about essential workers, mothers have largely been ignored, and Garbes investigates the reasons — why do we resist the classification of motherhood, and caretaking in general, as labor? Garbes places the American treatment — and devaluing — of motherhood in context with the culture of motherhood around the world. Pulling from her Filipino family’s history, she highlights the profound responsibility and power of motherhood, especially as a tool toward creating a better, more empathetic and community-based future.

4. I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy

No one anticipated the overwhelming response to child actor Jennette McCurdy’s provocative memoir — all major retailers sold out within a day of its release — and the hype proved to be warranted. You never know what you’re going to get with celebrity memoirs, but McCurdy’s is beautifully executed — poignant, illuminating, and well crafted at the line level. Her recollection of growing up with an abusive mother intent on making her a star (and succeeding) balances dark humor with heartbreak. You feel McCurdy yearning for a relationship with her mother that you know, as an outside observer, is just impossible, and the pain is palpable. My guess is I’m Glad My Mom Died will be a pivotal text in the increasingly relevant discussion of the ethics of child celebrity, from Hollywood to TikTok.

3. Lost & Found, Kathryn Schulz

Pulitzer Prize winner Kathryn Schulz’s New Yorker essay “ When Things Go Missing ” nestled into some far corner of my brain when I read it in 2017 and has come back to mind every now and then ever since. How exciting, then, to learn she had expanded her investigation into the many connected definitions and experiences of loss into this deeply affecting memoir. Schulz seamlessly weaves philosophy, psychology, and history with the death of her father, keeping the heart of the story close at all turns. Most impressive is her ability to describe her father’s decline as both traumatic and mundane, walking a tightrope between emotions that shift as arbitrarily as the directions in which one might stumble. That merging of seemingly conflicting experiences — lightness and heaviness, significant and trivial — is a consistent theme throughout the book, handled masterfully.

2. Stay True, Hua Hsu

Hua Hsu’s writing in his debut memoir flows gracefully, hypnotically, propulsively. His ode to his college friend Ken, and the specificity of college friendships in general, shifts into meditations on selfhood and identity, and how art and family history inform both. That this transformative friendship was cut short by Ken’s murder during a hijacking before they’d even graduated lends a poignancy to the lessons Ken helped him realize, the lessons that stayed with him as he figured out who he was. Decades later, Hsu shares those lessons with us. We see the way his comfort zone expands as his worldview does, too. In welcoming someone who seemed at first to embody everything he resented about American culture — Ken loved baseball, Hua wrote zines; Ken’s Japanese family had spent generations assimilating, Hua was the son of Taiwanese immigrants and he still felt like an outsider although he was born in the US — Hua slowly broadens his definition of meaning. It’s a story about art, America, and what it was like to be Asian American in the Bay Area in the ’90s, but more than that, it’s about human connection.

1. Easy Beauty , Chloé Cooper Jones

Pulitzer Prize finalist, doctor of philosophy, and general multi-hyphenate Chloé Cooper Jones’s debut shifted my understanding of a world I’ve only experienced while able-bodied. Easy Beauty follows the author — who was born with a rare congenital condition known as sacral agenesisa, a disability that visibly sets her apart from the general population and which has caused a lifetime of underlying pain— through a year of traveling in pursuit of meaning, both personal and existential. This narrative propels the book while providing detours for exploration of her coming-of-age, family history, motherhood, and theories about beauty, a concept that has defined the bulk of her life. It’s heady but accessible. The through line of this story is the titular theory and its opposite — i.e., easy versus difficult beauty; i.e., beauty that is obvious versus beauty that makes you work for it — and the genius of Easy Beauty is in its functioning as the latter. Cooper Jones puts us through the wringer a bit, trusting us to keep up with her analyses and forcing us to stay close to her physical and emotional pain, but the result is extraordinary.

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12 New 2022 Memoirs to Add to Your TBR Pile

From Kendra James's 'Admissions' to Viola Davis's 'Finding Me.'

Sometimes the best way to feel seen is by reading an incredible memoir and realizing, through another person's story, we're not alone in our thoughts and feelings. This year's exciting new memoirs can help us do just that. From Viola Davis's Finding Me to Selma Blair's Mean Baby , find Marie Claire 's running list of highly-anticipated 2022 memoirs to order, below. Bookmark this page for updates throughout the year!

Kathryn Schulz, a staff writer at  The New Yorker  and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, wrote a moving memoir about loss and discovery. In Lost & Found , she traces some of the important relationships in her life—and illustrates simultaneous feelings of grief, love, and heartbreak—after meeting the person she would marry 18 months before her father died.

If you need further proof of the elitism that plagues the education system, read Kendra James’s Admissions, where James reflects on the years she spent at The Taft School as the first African-American legacy student.

In Miss Me With That , Rachel Lindsay shares her full story for the first time, letting readers inside her world both inside and outside of The Bachelor franchise.

In an expansion of her New York Times piece , Tiffanie Drayton explores the Black American experience and the nuances of the American Dream as she details her early memories of moving from Trinidad and Tobago to the States—and what life entailed after that.

Following the highly-acclaimed release of Girlhood , Melissa Febos returns with Body Work . Here, Febos explores the art of writing about ourselves—quite a meta topic, if we do say so ourselves!—and how it impacts our lives.

Where are my Drake and Josh fans at?! Josh Peck is set to release Happy People Are Annoying that explores his coming of age story—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and how he’s finally living the life he’s always wanted.

Delia Ephron—sister of the late Nora Ephron and a You’ve Got Mail screenwriter—tackles grief, love, and loss in a moving memoir that details her experience losing her sister and her husband, then being diagnosed with leukemia.

In Hello, Molly! Molly Shannon opens up about how she became the celebrated, hilarious actress she is after an early life filled with tragedy and grief.

The highly-anticipated memoir from Viola Davis will tell the award-winning actress' life story in her own words. “This is my story...straight, no chaser,” she said in a statement, per  the Associated Press , so you can expect this to be a good one.

Danica Roem, the first openly transgender person elected to U.S. state legislature, takes readers inside her political journey and the challenges she’s overcome.

Minnie Driver fans will want to pick up this memoir immediately to learn more about the actress’ upbringing, career path, and family.

If you thought you knew Selma Blair, think again. Here, the actress opens up about being a “mean baby” and the evolution of her life throughout the years.

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Rachel Epstein is a writer, editor, and content strategist based in New York City. Most recently, she was the Managing Editor at Coveteur, where she oversaw the site’s day-to-day editorial operations. Previously, she was an editor at Marie Claire , where she wrote and edited culture, politics, and lifestyle stories ranging from op-eds to profiles to ambitious packages. She also launched and managed the site’s virtual book club, #ReadWithMC. Offline, she’s likely watching a Heat game or finding a new coffee shop. 

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A landmark biography about George Floyd, an unprecedented work from Alice Walker, and a first for a Missouri political figure are among the highlights of the best memoirs of 2022.

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Climate activist Aguon expertly intersects environmental justice with Indigenous rights in this heartfelt, cogent collection of prose and poetry. In only 128 pages, readers are informed, inspired, and hopefully ignited to boldly do their part to improve the world.

Bush, Cori. The Forerunner: A Story of Pain and Perseverance in America. Knopf. ISBN 9780593320587.

This memoir from the first Black woman from Missouri elected to represent her state in Congress is the epitome of what can happen if one follows their desire to actually do something about injustices in the United States. It’s a call to action, told in first person, that openly displays the reality and struggles many Black people face daily.

Chaudry, Rabia. Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family. Algonquin. ISBN 9781643750385.

Chaudry’s book is highly relatable to anyone who has ever thought about their relationship with food and the power its consumption has on one’s self-image and others’ perceptions of one’s intake and body image. Intimate and honest, this memoir compels readers to root for the author—and maybe even for themselves.

Elmore, Phyllis Biffle. Quilt of Souls. Imagine. ISBN 9781623545161.

Elmore, in vivid portrayals of extraordinary Black women born shortly before and after the Civil War, pays dazzling tribute to the storytellers, quilters, and healers in her family. This book doesn’t stop at examining racism and sexism; it also paints accounts of strength and pride in an exquisite big picture of history and its relation to the present.

Notaro, Laurie. Excuse Me While I Disappear: Tales of Midlife Mayhem. Little A. ISBN 9781542033503.

A great pick for readers seeking a laugh. Notaro has a fascinating perspective on why gray hair should be viewed as a superpower; after all, everyone must age, and this book offers laugh-out-loud reasons why society should welcome that.

Patterson, Juliet. Sinkhole: A Legacy of Suicide. Milkweed. ISBN 9781571311764.

Patterson looks head-on at the disturbing pattern in her family, many of whose men (her father and both of her grandfathers) die by suicide. She makes a heartbreaking, haunting, and tremendously touching argument for openly discussing the painful realities that few want to talk about or remember.

Ryan, April. Black Women Will Save the World: An Anthem. Amistad. ISBN 9780063210196.

It’s fitting that journalist Ryan, a trailblazer herself, is the author of this book that provides numerous examples of the Black women—sheroes, as she calls them—who, like her, have refused to stay in the boxes that society tries to keep them in. Instead, they’ve risked much to use their talents, voices, and grit to make the world better—and not just for themselves. This is a remarkable tribute and history lesson for all audiences.

Samuels, Robert & Toluse Olorunnipa. His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice. Viking. ISBN 9780593490617.

All the world knows about George Floyd’s murder. Samuels and Olorunnipa conducted hundreds of interviews with Floyd’s family and friends to show readers Floyd as a three-dimensional man. This landmark biography also puts the systemic racism Floyd endured his entire life on full, unflinching display. 

Shakur, Prince. When They Tell You To Be Good. Tin House. ISBN 9781953534422.

Shakur explores the depths of the Black experience in this riveting exploration of what it means to live in a society that envisions so little for its oppressed. Young, Black, and queer, Shakur puts his self-realization, his reckoning about identity, and his observations about immigration on the page for all to see. What a wonderful and bold voice.

Walker, Alice. Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker. S. & S. ed. by Valerie Boyd. ISBN 9781476773155.

In this unprecedented work, readers are given the rare treat of significant insight into literary legend Walker. The journal entries are a dynamic blend of Walker’s thoughts, dreams, experiences, and work as a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist, civil rights activist, wife, lover, mother, daughter, and observer of the world. The result is a stunning picture of a complex, vibrant woman.

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