Women's Stories Matter: 5 Powerful Memoirs
Before starting the Badass Women’s Book Club, I was not a big fan of memoirs. So it was a total surprise to me how popular they are with our members (books like Educated, Know My Name , Becoming, Untamed and more).
Now I just realize that it wasn’t that I didn’t like memoirs – it was more that I hadn’t read a lot of them. Because now – after having read more than a few of them – I realize they have all the drama, self-help advice, and inspirational empowerment I crave in other books.
Plus, the act of capturing and sharing one’s story is powerful and important. It’s powerful for those who do it – and equally powerful and important for those of us who read it.
Below are 5 powerful memoirs that I’ve recently enjoyed. In fact, I’ve had the honor of interviewing most of these authors as part of my Books to Badass IGTV series. I have been moved and impacted by their stories – and I hope you will be, too.
For 50 years, Stephanie Plymale kept her past a fiercely guarded secret. No one outside her immediate family would have guessed that her childhood was fraught with every imaginable hardship: a mentally ill mother who was in and out of jails and psych wards throughout Stephanie's formative years, neglect, hunger, poverty, homelessness, truancy, foster homes, a harrowing lack of medical care, and worse.
Stephanie, in turn, knew very little about the past of her mother, from whom she remained estranged during most of her adult life. All this changed with a phone call that set a journey of discovery in motion, leading to a series of shocking revelations that forced Stephanie to revise the meaning of almost every aspect of her very compromised childhood.
American Daughter is at once the deeply moving account of a troubled mother-daughter relationship and a meditation on resilience, transcendence, and ultimately, redemption.
Sarah Jackson once thought immigration justice was administered through higher walls and longer fences. Then she met an immigrant--a deported young father separated from his US-citizen family--and everything changed. As Sarah began to know fractured families ravaged by threats in their homeland and further traumatized in US detention, biblical justice took on a new meaning.
As Sarah opened her heart--and her home--to immigrants, she experienced a surprising transformation and the gift of extraordinary community. The work she began through the ministry of Casa de Paz joined the centuries-old Christian tradition of hospitality, shining a holy light on what it means to love our neighbor.
The dilemma of undocumented people continues to hover over America. Sarah addresses this issue by sharing profound and tender stories, placing readers in the shoes of individuals on every side of the issue--asylum seekers torn from their families, the guards who oversee them, ordinary people with lapsed visas, the families left to survive on their own, the unheralded advocates for immigrants' rights, and the government officials who decide the fates of others.
Ultimately, Sarah's journey illuminates how hope can be restored through simple yet radical acts of love.
Natasha’s Not My Name introduces readers to the complex underground of the strip club industry from the perspective of a sixteen-year-old. Groomed by her cousin, supported by older dancers, and paid by strangers, this memoir follows Isabella Grosso's adolescence and young adult years as she questions, struggles, and ultimately survives as a child-turned-adult with a double life.
Natasha's Not My Name dives deep into the dark pockets of sexual abuse, suicide, drug use, and exploitation. It uncovers the inner strength it takes for a wounded child to blossom into the empowered woman she was born to be, and explores how she found refuge in a love for dance and the arts.
Introspective, unapologetic, and brave, Natasha's Not My Name is rooted in a desire to share in heartache and success with other girls on a journey of self-discovery. It is inspirational reading for all women.
How do I tell my kids--just nine and eleven--that the doctors can't fix their dad's cancer? How do I navigate eight months of caregiving so my husband's terminal illness doesn't destroy the rest of us, too? Will my kids be OK someday?
These are just some of the questions Jenny Lisk was asking herself when her forty-three-year-old husband, Dennis, was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. This health crisis turned her world inward and upside down and thrust her into a role she never expected--that of cancer caregiver.
In between surgeries, ER visits, thousands of pills, and ultimately, hospice at home, Jenny kept her corner of the world updated through a CaringBridge online journal.
In Future Widow, Jenny goes behind the scenes of her journey through those tumultuous and heartbreaking months. She reflects on the community who showed her how to be an ally in a crisis, her search for guides on how to parent grieving children, and the dual reality of having to choose--and getting to choose--what her future will look like.
Rebecca Carroll grew up the only black person in her rural New Hampshire town. Adopted at birth by artistic parents who believed in peace, love, and zero population growth, her early childhood was loving and idyllic—and yet she couldn’t articulate the deep sense of isolation she increasingly felt as she grew older.
Everything changed when she met her birth mother, a young white woman, who consistently undermined Carroll’s sense of her blackness and self-esteem. Carroll’s childhood became harrowing, and her memoir explores the tension between the aching desire for her birth mother’s acceptance, the loyalty she feels toward her adoptive parents, and the search for her racial identity. As an adult, Carroll forged a path from city to city, struggling along the way with difficult boyfriends, depression, eating disorders, and excessive drinking. Ultimately, through the support of her chosen black family, she was able to heal.
Intimate and illuminating, Surviving the White Gaze is a timely examination of racism and racial identity in America today, and an extraordinarily moving portrait of resilience.
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