Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated

Written by: Alison Arngrim

First line: The Los Angeles County Fair is probably not the first place you'd go if you were seeking to be forgiven of your sins, but I have a tendency to find strange things in strange places. 

Why you should read this book: If you were a kid in the '70s and '80s, you probably watched Little House on the Prairie and if you watched Little House on the Prairie, you probably hated that bitch, Nellie Oleson, and considered her the epitome of evil and deserving of any and all abuse heaped upon her by Laura and the show runners, but Nellie Oleson wasn't a real person; she was a conglomerate character brought to life by an earnest, clever, and dedicated child actress named Alison Arngrim, who spent her real life youth taking the lumps earned by a character she portrayed with such natural joy and intensity that people seemed to think Nellie was real and Alison didn't exist. This buoyant and fast-paced memoir tells all about what was going on behind the scenes of the popular, long-running show (Michael Landon never wore underwear, every adult in the cast and crew was drunk at all times, that wig was incredibly painful to wear, and the real bitch was the girl who played Mary) along with her own heart-wrenching stories of abuse and loss. Arngrin is candid and humorous, even when discussing the most painful memories, and illustrates how she managed to survive child stardom relatively unscathed and pivot into adult success in the entertainment industry without compromising her values and beliefs at all. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Trigger warning for candid discussions of child sexual abuse/incest including a somewhat disconcerting confrontation with the abuser in adulthood. 

Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

Written by: Virgina Roberts Giuffre

First line: Picture a girl sitting alone on a curb, her face stained with tears. 

Why you should read this book: This is the brutal and hard-to-read memoir of one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims, who spent several years of her childhood being repeatedly sexually assaulted and trafficked by the notorious billionaire. Giuffre speaks with frank honesty about her history of abuse, beginning with her father and his friend, continued at the facility for troubled youth where she was sent when her psychological issues overwhelmed her parents, and furthered by a different rich man who picked her up by the side of the road before she eventually found employment at Donald Trump's Mar-a-lago resort and was collected by Ghislaine Maxwell. Sometimes, but not always, naming names, Giuffre recounts her painful truths in excruciating details, not only the crimes committed against her by wealthy, powerful men, but her escape from their orbit and her quest to bring her abusers to justice. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's very heavy and almost everything that happens in it is terrible. 

Zarifa: A Woman's Battle in a Man's World

Written by: Zarifa Ghafari and Hanna Lucinda Smith

First line: The men wanted to know everything about Germany.

Why you should read this book: Educated and outspoken from a young age, in a time and place where girls were typically not allowed to be educated or speak in public at all, Ghafari gained fame and notoriety as the little girl who went on national television and demanded answers from the president of Afghanistan as to why her village had no roads and her school had no computers or English classes. Repeatedly blown up by the Taliban, defied by her family, and opposed by ignorant yahoos in her quest to finish school and reform her country, she never backed down regardless of how often people told her she couldn't do the thing she was already doing. Although the Taliban's capture of Kabul in 2021 effectively ended her political career and forced her to temporarily flee the country, she continues to fight for the rights of all Afghan people, and especially for the rights of girls and women to receive an education, to walk freely through their own streets, and to earn their own money.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Ghafari is tough, but she's not made of steel and her distress over the Taliban's murder of her father and their invasion of Kabul is palpable and heart-rending; this is a book about how you can fight your entire life, always do the right thing, and still be overwhelmed by evil. 

Cry for Me, Argentina: My Life as a Failed Child Star

Written by: Tamara Yajia

First line: I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Why you should read this book: This is the type of wickedly funny writing where you feel bad that you can't stop laughing about the insane, unsavory, and sometimes abusive events of the author's recollections, but you still can't stop laughing at them. Young Yajia gets a taste of the spotlight after her wildly successful debut stripping in front of her religious school to Madonna's "Like a Prayer" and pursues it with a passion, almost tasting stardom, until her parents abruptly yank her away from her goals to live in America. She is honest about her family's foibles, her own failures, her sexuality, her struggle with addiction, and a hundred other weird personal details (like the time a cop accused her of soliciting but she countered that the gentleman fingering her in a parked car was, in fact, her own cousin, and then she paid the cop to leave her alone; or all the times her whole family--three generations, led by her grandmother--drove around the red light district to admire how beautiful all the sex workers were) that seem too crazy to be true, but they're marketing this book as a nonfiction memoir so....

Why you should read this book: If you are easily offended, especially by sex, and very particularly if you were easily offended by the end of the film Little Miss Sunshine, definitely this is not the book for you. 

It Won't Always Be Like This

Written by: Malaka Gharib 

First line: Ugh, how lame!

Why you should read this book: Malaka's already out of her element visiting her father in Egypt, where she barely speaks the language, and she doesn't appreciate the fact that he's only telling her about her new stepmother as she's on the doorstep of his house. Who is this strange woman who has captivated her father's attention and how does Malaka fit into her father's world now that he has a new wife? Throughout the years and across the continent, Malaka learns about Hala, and comes to love her, and embrace her as part of her family, and then finally comes to understand her own place in her father's family. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You have very strong feelings about head scarves.

Something in the Woods Loves You

Written by: Jarod K. Anderson

First line: In Ohio, winter is landscape poetry.

Why you should read this book: Magical and heart wrenching, these essays braid the poet's childhood memories of Ohio's plants and animals with his intentional present day reconnection with nature, and its evolution as a tool in his arsenal against depression. This book touched me on a deep level, probably because it resonated with so many of my personal experiences, both beautiful and terrible, but the prose is  also a luscious dive into the wilderness, an immersive experience of midwestern flora and fauna through the lenses of nostalgia, depression, and recovery. This book is for anyone who has ever loved the woods. 

Why you should read this book: You hate the woods. 

The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom

Written by: Shari Franke

First line:

Why you should read this book: In many ways, Ruby Franke was no different from millions of other abusive narcissists whose deranged worldviews and behavior make life hellacious for their families, but there was one way in which she distinguished herself and stood out enough to gain notoriety and reprobation, which is that she filmed herself being a terrible mother, posted the videos on YouTube, and monetized them to the tune of millions of dollars before the world turned on her. As the eldest daughter, Shari Franke was the first of her family to see her mother clearly and understand that what was going on in her house was not normal, or healthy, or, eventually, legal. These are Shari's Franke's memoirs, from her earliest childhood, of what it was like to grow up under the influence and control of an absolute monster who somehow managed to hide her crimes behind the mantle of respectable Mormonism for almost two decades before Shari was able to break away and eventually seek justice for herself and her younger siblings. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: There's some lurid stuff in here.

Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir

Written by: Tessa Hulls

First line: If you had told me five years ago that my mother and I would find ourselves here, traveling back into the past in the hopes of building a bridge between us, the sheer impossibility would have caught in my throat like a bone. 

Why you should read this book: I notice that I read a lot of memoirs written by adult women about their complex relationships with their problematic mothers, but this one seems overwhelming in comparison, almost impossibly complex, and deep, and heart-wrenching. To understand her relationship with her mother, Tessa Hulls must understand who her mother is, and to understand that, she must understand her mother's trauma, and to do that, she must understand her grandmother, who she knew only as a small and crazy Chinese lady who lived in her house in California, physically, but mentally existed in some evanescent slice of world history involving the Communist Revolution. Now grown, her grandmother passed, Hulls takes her mother back to Hong Kong and China in an attempt to recreate the lives of her ancestors while recalling her own childhood and how her American upbringing made her a stranger to the past. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's heavy; no wonder it took the author a decade to write. 

When Stars Are Scattered

Written by: Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed

First line: For me, the first years are lost. 

Why you should read this book: This is an award-winning graphic novel memoir for children, and about children, and so full of tragedy and privation and heartache and loss and suffering and trauma that I personally was crying for about fifty percent of the book. Orphans Omar and his nonverbal brother Hassan have lived in a refugee camp for most of their lives, and the story follows Omar's trials and triumphs when he is persuaded to go to school. It's difficult to succeed academically in a refugee camp, and even if he finishes high school, there's no guarantee that he will ever be able to leave the camp or live a life with any sense of hope or possibility.

Why you should read this book: It does have a happy ending, but that doesn't mitigate the author's pain or make up for the childhood that was stolen from him. 

How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter's Memoir

Written by: Molly Jong-Fast

First line: I am the only child of a once-famous woman.

Why you should read this book: Metaphorically, the experience of reading this book is similar to seeing a horse and a thinking, "that is a cool-looking horse," and then you get on the horse even though you don't really know much about horses, and the horse understands this and takes the opportunity to start galloping through the forest at a breakneck speed and you are dodging branches and hanging on for dear life and yes, it's exhilarating but also terrifying and the horse just keeps going until it's got that all out of its system and then abruptly stops in a beautiful meadow not far from where you parked your car and just acts like everything is copacetic and your nightmare ride never happened. Admittedly, while I was aware of the existence of Erica Jong, the author's once-famous mother, I never actually read any of her books, so all my sympathy and interest was held entirely for Jong-Fast from the beginning, and I both enjoyed and was traumatized by her descriptions of a childhood dictated by her mother's absolute chaotic lifestyle and ability to express love, seamlessly woven together with the story of her adult experience of her mother's dementia and decline. The writing achieves that level of flawlessness that allows you to sink into the narrative without noticing how the author is performing all these magic tricks, and it would have been a good story even if she wasn't a tremendous writer. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're still trying to impress your narcissistic parent. 

Unspeakable: Surviving My Childhood and Finding My Voice

Written by: Jessica Willis Fisher

First line: When I go back to examine the earliest memories of my life, I can distinguish three short scenes.

Why you should read this book: The author recounts the devastating details of her childhood, which involve repeated sexual abuse by her father beginning at a very early age, along with physical, spiritual, and emotional abuse, and the eventual realization that her seven younger sisters were all receiving the same treatment, and that nobody was coming to help or protect them. Meanwhile, Fisher was forced to perform in the family band and held responsible for the family's financial wellbeing, writing most of their music and putting on a brave face for the fans and the television cameras that eventually surrounded her life. While Fisher escaped and lived to speak out about what happened to her and see her abuser incarcerated for his crimes, this narrative also highlights the unknown but assuredly vast number of children who experience the same forms of sexual, physical, spiritual, and emotional abuse do not have the means to escape and never see justice or have a chance to tell their stories. 

Why you should read this book: I think this is the first book I've ever read that included a trigger warning, with page numbers (for the three most shocking incidents of abuse); unlike some survivors, Fisher explains exactly what her father did and it is horrific indeed. 

The Reason I Jump

Written by: Naoki Higashida (translated by KA Yoshida David Mitchell)

First line: When I was small, I didn't even know that I was a kid with special needs. 

Why you should read this book: Perhaps there's never been another book like this one, written by a nonverbal, autistic 13-year-old whose primary method of communication is spelling out words by pointing, one-by-one, at the Japanese hiragana letters on a grid. Most of the book is presented in the form of Q and A, with the author answering questions about why and how he does what he does by explaining his inner experience, along with a few provocative short fiction pieces that also provide interesting insight into a mind that might have once remained forever closed to neurotypical observers. The young author's sensitivity and understanding of his own condition, his relationship with the rest of the world, and his expectations for the future, are delightful and eye opening. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You just find all children annoying. 

Crevice: A Life Between Worlds

Written by: Anna Redsand

First line: We drove across endless white alkaline flats into the Navajo Nation.

Why you should read this book: These thirteen thoughtful, provocative essays detail the relationship between the author, a white woman; and the land and people of Dinetah, the Navajo Reservation where she grew up, which will always remain her "home-not-home." Although this is the land of her childhood and her memories, Redsand's life and experience have always showed her the divide between the rich cultural traditions of her friends and neighbors and the paternalist, colonialist intentions of her missionary parents. Like all "Third Culture Kids," she struggles to locate her own identity, feeling acutely that she does not belong in either world, and it takes the space of thirteen essays to unpack all the knowledge and emotion she has accumulated around the in-between spaces in which she has always existed.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You are a proponent of assimilation. 

Our House Is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis

Written by: Greta Thunberg, Svante Thunberg, Malena Ernman, and Beata Ernman

First line: This could have been my story.

Why you should read this book: Svante and Malena, loving and successful Swedish musicians, understood what it was like to be a little different, but when their two daughters, Greta and Beata, both began exhibiting difficulty moving through the world, they had to stretch their understanding to find ways to accommodate neurodiverse kids in an unaccommodating world. While Beata suffered debilitating intolerance to noise, Greta became increasingly despondent over climate change and the fact that the people who should be doing something about it were not. Of course, at the age of fifteen, Greta's "student strike" outside Parliament turns her into one of the most well-known climate activists and inspires countless young people to join her cause. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's very difficult, emotionally speaking: a lot of the book is about how much Greta and Beata suffer before their parents are able to figure out how to keep their sensitive children healthy, and the rest of it is basically about the very dire situation threatening all life on planet Earth right now. 

I'm Glad My Mom Is Dead

Written by: Jennette McCurdy

First line: It's strange how we always give big news to loved ones in a coma, as if a coma is just a thing that happens from a lack of something to be excited about in your life. 

Why you should read this book: Her entire life, Jennette McCurdy has known that the only important thing in the world is appeasing her mother and doing whatever it takes to keep her happy. When this means becoming an actress and doing everything possible to make it in Hollywood, she becomes an actress and does everything possible to make it in Hollywood; when this means developing an eating disorder, she develops an eating disorder. Although she becomes rich and famous, not until her mother's death does McCurdy start to understand how incredibly mentally ill and abusive her mother was and how much work she has to do to reclaim her life from her tortured upbringing. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: If your mom is a controlling hoarder but she's still alive and you haven't gotten rich or famous and you can't figure out how to escape her abuse, or even if you have, this book might be kind of triggering.

Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal

Written by: Conor Grennan

First line: It was well after nightfall when I realized we had gone the wrong way.

Why you should read this book: In order to mitigate the "unrepentantly self-indulgent" nature of his plan to spend a year traveling the world partying and rubbing up against strange women, Conor Grennan schedules a two-month stint volunteering at an orphanage in Nepal. To his surprise, he falls in love with the orphans of Little Princes, who call him "Brother" and have mastered the art of the tackle-hug, and feels compelled to return to Nepal after his grand tour. When he learns that most of the children aren't truly orphans, and some of them have vanished, he dedicates himself to recovering the lost ones and tracking down all the families who thought they were sending their kids to a better life, combatting Maoist rebels, war, poverty, bureaucracy, the cold, knee pain, inclement weather, language barriers, lack of medical care, and a diet consisting almost entirely of white rice and lentils. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You believe empathy is a weakness. 

The Tryout

Written by: Christina Soontornvat and Joanna Cacao

First line: Breathe... Just breathe...

Why you should read this book: This is a memoir that recounts the trauma of the author's experience. As one of two students of color in her suburban school, Christina has more than the usual reservations about starting middle school, but when she and her best friend Megan decide to try out for the cheerleading squad, she begins to develop a little optimism and self-esteem. Cheerleading is a lot of work, and as she trains, Christina starts to feel Megan slipping away from her, even as she develops a greater understanding of her own cultural heritage and her parents' struggles as a mixed-race couple. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You think more things ought to be popularity contests. 

Not Fade Away

Written by: Rebecca A. Alexander

First line: Even though the doctor's office was warm, I was freezing. 

Why you should read this book: At the age of twelve, Rebecca learns that she isn't just kind of clumsy, but that she is, in fact, losing her sight, and, as she grows, the doctors determine she is losing her hearing as well, because Rebecca suffers from a rare genetic condition known as Usher Syndrome, and can expect to go completely blind and deaf at some point in her life. This memoir details not only Rebecca's journey into disability, but also all the joy and triumph she is able to wring from life despite setbacks and adversity. Although some parts of the story feel like inspiration porn (especially when, at the age of seventeen, she falls out a window and has to spend a year in rehab instead of going to college) a lot of it is simply devoted to the things she loves (a chapter about how much she loves teaching spin class, a chapter about how much she loves her best friend, a chapter about how much she loves her dog), as Rebecca demonstrates that her life is rich and full, and that losing her eyes and ears does not mean giving up on anything. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It might be a bit too chipper and upbeat for some readers. 

Normal Sucks: How to Live, Learn, and Thrive outside the Lines

Written by: Jonathan Mooney

First line: Sons, You have each asked me a question, in different ways, at different times, and, I think, for different reasons.

Why you should read this book: Framed somewhat as a letter to his children, this book braids Mooney's experience growing up with dyslexia and ADHD with an examination of the limiting and historical ideas of normality and a discussion of the power of being different. While he struggles for much of his youth to blend in and succeed according to other people's standards, he comes to understand that the conditions others call disabilities are, for him, wells of strength from which he can draw new ways of being. Through his cultural research, he discovers that there is, scientifically, no such thing as normal after all, that it is our differences that make us human and allow us to thrive, and that viewing differences as problems robs humanity of its fullest potential.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You've never had to work to fit in. 

How We Fight for Our Lives

Written by: Saeed Jones

First line: The waxy-faced weatherman on Channel 8 said we had been above 90 degrees for ten day in a row.

Why you should read this book: Gripping and provocative, this memoir describes the poet's early life, his burgeoning understanding of his own sexuality and what it meant to be queer and Black and smart and sexy and living in Texas. As he grows up, he grapples with how best to express these truths to himself, his family, and to the world. Woven through Jones's coming-of-age is the story of his mother, who raised him as a single mom, and the strength of her heart, along with its weakness.

Why you shouldn't read this book: If you have a problem with promiscuous gay sex, this might not be the story for you.