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by Heather Gay
Born and bred to be devout, Heather based her life around her faith. She attended Brigham Young University, served a mission in France, and married into Mormon royalty in the temple. But her life as a good Mormon abruptly ended when she lost the marriage and faith that she had once believed would last forever.
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by Trevor Noah
Trevor Noah's unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents' indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away.
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by Jenny Lawson
With people experiencing anxiety and depression now more than ever, Jenny Lawson humanizes what we all face in an all-too-real way, reassuring us that we're not alone and making us laugh while doing it.
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by Sâeamas O'Reilly
Séamas O'Reilly's mother died when he was five, leaving him, his ten (!) brothers and sisters, and their beloved father in their sprawling bungalow in rural Derry. It was the 1990s; the Troubles were a background rumble, but Séamas was more preoccupied with dinosaurs, Star Wars, and the actual location of heaven than the political climate.
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by Phoebe Robinson
Phoebe Robinson is ready to share everything she's experienced in the hope that, if you can laugh at her topsy-turvy life, you can laugh at your own. Written in her trademark unfiltered, witty style, Robinson's latest essay collection is a call to arms. She tackles a wide range of topics, such as intersectional feminism, beauty standards, and toxic masculinity. A candid perspective for a generation that has had the rug pulled out from under it too many times to count.
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by Louis Onuorah Chude-Sokei
The astonishing journey of a bright, utterly displaced boy, from the short-lived African nation of Biafra, to Jamaica, to the harshest streets of Los Angeles--a searing memoir that adds fascinating depth to the coming-to-America story.
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by Jeannette Walls
When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family.
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by David Sedaris
Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.
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by Jennette McCurdy
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother's dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy.
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by Tiffany Haddish
Growing up in one of the poorest neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles, Tiffany learned to survive by making people laugh. If she could do that, then her classmates would let her copy their homework, the other foster kids she lived with wouldn't beat her up, and she might even get a boyfriend. Or at least she could make enough money -- as the paid school mascot and in-demand Bar Mitzvah hype woman -- to get her hair and nails done, so then she might get a boyfriend.
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by Viet Thanh Nguyen
At the age of four, Nguyen and his family are forced to flee his hometown of Ban Mê Thuột and come to the USA as refugees. After being removed from his brother and parents and homed with a family on his own, Nguyen is later allowed to resettle into his own family in suburban San José. But there is violence hidden behind that sunny façade.
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by Lara Love Hardin
No one expects the police to knock on the door of the million-dollar two-story home of the perfect cul-de-sac housewife. But soccer mom Lara Love Hardin has been hiding a shady secret: she is funding her heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors' credit cards.
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by Issa Rae
My name is "J" and I'm awkward-and black. Someone once told me those were the two worst things anyone could be. That someone was right. Where do I start?
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by Tan France
In this heartfelt, funny, touching memoir, Tan France tells his origin story for the first time. With his trademark wit, humor, and radical compassion, Tan reveals what it was like to grow up gay in a traditional South Asian family, as one of the few people of color in South Yorkshire, England. He illuminates his winding journey of coming of age, finding his voice (and style!), and marrying the love of his life--a Mormon cowboy from Salt Lake City.
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by Liz Scheier
On an otherwise uneventful afternoon when Scheier was eighteen, her mother sauntered into the room and dropped two bombshells. First, that she had been married for most of the previous two decades to a man Liz had never heard of and, second, that the man she had claimed was Liz's dead father was entirely fictional. She'd made him up--his name, the stories, everything.
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by Bess Kalb
Even after she left home for Hollywood, Emmy-nominated TV writer Bess Kalb saved every voicemail her grandmother Bobby Bell ever left her. Bobby was a force -- irrepressible, glamorous, unapologetically opinionated. Bobby doted on Bess; Bess adored Bobby. Then, at ninety, Bobby died. But in this debut memoir, Bobby is speaking to Bess once more, in a voice as passionate as it ever was in life.
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by Phuc Tran
For anyone who has ever felt like they don't belong, Sigh, Gone shares an irreverent, funny, and moving tale of displacement and assimilation woven together with poignant themes from beloved works of classic literature.
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by Jenny Pentland
Growing up, Jenny Pentland's life was a literal sitcom. Many of the storylines for her mother's smash hit series, Roseanne, were drawn from Pentland's early family life in working-class Denver. But that was only the beginning of the drama.
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by Andrew Rannells
Rannells takes us on the journey of a twentysomething hungry to experience everything New York has to offer: new friends, wild nights, great art, standing ovations. At the heart of his hunger lies a powerful drive to reconcile the boy he was when he left Omaha with the man he desperately wants to be.
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by Danielle Henderson
"If you fight that motherf**ker and you don't win, you're going to come home and fight me." Not the advice you'd normally expect from your grandmother -- but Danielle Henderson would be the first to tell you her childhood was anything but conventional.
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