For women’s history month, here are twenty memoirs/autobiographies/biographies, written by and about women that I’ve read over the years, all rated 5 stars at the time I read them
Memoirs
- Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi
- An account of growing up before and after the fall of Soviet-style socialism in Albania
- Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
- A memoir in poetry about Woodson’s childhood between South Carolina and New York, between vestiges of the Jim Crow South and the burgeoning Civil Rights movement
- The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
- This one is famous–do you need me to tell you about it?
- The Gossamer Years: The Diary of a Noblewoman of Heian Japan by Michitsuna no Haha
- The least famous one on this list, and the oldest. Chronicling 20 years of the author’s tempestuous marriage in the 900s, it’s truly breathtaking to me that someone so distant could feel so relatable.
Biographies about Historical Women
- Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott
- A socialite, a farmgirl, an abolitionist, and a widow who used vastly different methods, from seduction to assuming a male identity, to spy during the American Civil War
- The Mistress of Paris: The 19th Century Courtesan Who Built An Empire on a Secret by Catherine Hewitt
- A conwoman fights her way from poverty to fake-nobility as the most infamous courtesan in nineteenth-century Paris
- Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America by Mayukh Sen
- Seven immigrant chefs who left their mark on American cuisine–it will make you hungry!
- Diamonds and Deadlines: A Tale of Greed, Deceit, and a Female Tycoon in the Gilded Age by Betsy Prioleau
- A forgotten female tycoon who ran a publishing giant for 20 years, making a fortune and becoming a national celebrity
- Grasping Mysteries: Girls Who Loved Math by Jeannine Atkins
- A middle grade biographical collection told in poetry about seven groundbreaking women in math and science
- Shakespeare’s Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance by Ramie Targoff
- An account of female English writers during the 15-1600s, now much less well-known than their male counterparts
One Topic Memoirs
- You Wanna be On Top?: A Memoir of Makeovers, Manipulation, and Not Becoming America’s Next Top Model by Sarah Hartshorne
- Chronicling her time on America’s Next Top Model, reveals the wild story of how things worked behind the scenes
- There is No Ethan: How Three Women Caught America’s Biggest Catfish by Anna Akbari
- Three women find each other after being lured into fake relationships with the same anonymous person online, and band together to find and expose them
- Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite by Suki Kim
- About the author’s time teaching at an elite boy’s boarding school in North Korea
- The Catch Me If You Can: One Woman’s Journey to Every Country in the World by Jessica Nabongo
- Travel stories, reflections, and gorgeous photos of the author’s quest to visit every country
- An Age of License: A Travelogue by Lucy Knisley
- Really, I would recommend any of Lucy Knisley’s graphic memoirs for this. Her art style is cute and her travels are always interesting
Memoirs in Essays
- Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh
- The funniest one on this list, and it’s not close. There’s a sequel called Solutions and Other Problems that I also recommend.
- The Folded Clock: A Diary by Heidi Julavits
- An essay a day about something that happened in the author’s life that day, a diary with more cohesion than usual by a writer skilled enough to keep it together
- Where Am I Now?: True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame by Mara Wilson
- Autobiographical essays about being a child actor from the star of Matilda
- Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West
- A series of essays about coming of age in a society hostile to women, especially fat, funny women by a fat, funny woman