My favorite memoirs

Perusing my bookshelves and trying to figure out what to keep and not to keep, as well as buying various gifts and stealing glances at other people's bookshelves this weekend, I thought I'd throw in a few of my favorite memoirs:

The Glass Castle

This is the book that I really won't shut up about. SO brilliant. She'll be at BEA so if you're there go get a free signed copy.

Queen of the Oddballs

Also check out www.queenoftheoddballs.com for all sorts of oddball fun.

Drugs Are Nice

Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. I found the writing here so brililant and she's someone, like all these women, who really went out of her way to create something new - new surroundings, new ways of creating art, new ways of seeing the world, that had major impacts not only on herself but on a whole community of people. She chronicles that experimentation as well as its repercussions and takes responsibility for her own choices while painting a really vivid portrait of the various scenes she was involved in, addressing selling out and the energy of creating her zine Rollerderby.

How I Became Hettie Jones

Why I like this book is encapsulated by the title. "How I Became" implies that she was not born Hettie Jones, and she wasn't, both literally (her birth name was Hettie Cohen) nor figuratively - she became the wife of LeRoi Jones, aka Amiri Baraka, and consciously separated herself from her family, choosing an unconventional, not always plesant life, but one that followed both her heart and her conscience, even if it meant fallout from her family. She details that transformation, including its joys and its dramas, and offers an example of someone who defied the norms and standards set out for her.