Collection: Autobiography & Memoir

Combining trenchant philosophy with lyrical memoir, Afropessimism is an unparalleled account of Blackness. Why does race seem to color almost every feature of our moral and political...

It took me a lifetime to have the courage and the clarity to write my memoir. I want to tell the story of the moments...

Austin Channing Brown’s first encounter with a racialized America came at age seven, when she discovered her parents named her Austin to deceive future employers...

An emergency room physician explores how a life of service to others taught her how to heal herself.Michele Harper is a female, African American emergency...

“How brown is too brown?”“Can Indians be racist?”“What does real love between really different people look like?”Like many six-year-olds, Mira Jacob’s half-Jewish, half-Indian son, Z,...

Blood In My Eye was completed only days before its author was killed. George Jackson died on August 21, 1971 at the hands of San...

Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on...

In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed Black son to a complicated and brilliant Black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his...

“People don’t just happen,” writes Saeed Jones. “We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The ‘I’ it...

"This is a narrative that describes the urgency that compels me and millions more to push for a different American story than the one being...

  During André Leon Talley’s first magazine job, alongside Andy Warhol at Interview, a fateful meeting with Karl Lagerfeld began a decades-long friendship with the enigmatic, often...

A New York Times Bestseller and the #1 Most Challenged Book in America according to the American Library AssociationIn a series of personal essays, award-winning author and...

Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part...

From the eponymous star of the most popular reality show in Fuse TV’s history, this no-holds-barred memoir tells the story of a gay, self-proclaimed mama’s...

  On May 2, 1973, Black Panther Assata Shakur (aka JoAnne Chesimard) lay in a hospital, close to death, handcuffed to her bed, while local,...

2019 National Book Award Winner In 1961, Sarah M. Broom’s mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East...

Whitney Houston is as big a superstar as the music business has ever known. She exploded on the scene in 1985 with her debut album...

In Akilah Hughes's world, family—and life—are often complicated, but always funny. Through intimate and hilarious essays, Akilah takes readers along on her journey from the...

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As...

Tina Turner—the long-reigning queen of rock & roll and living legend—sets the record straight about her illustrious career and complicated personal life in this eye-opening...

  For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in his explorations of history answers to the...