Memoirs

1. Memoirs Grade 10 2013-2014

2. Overcoming Challenges

3. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan One day in 2009, twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a strange hospital room, strapped to her bed, under guard, & unable to move or speak. A wristband marked her as a "flight risk," & her medical records--chronicling a month long hospital stay of which she had no memory at all--showed hallucinations, violence, & dangerous instability. Who was the stranger who had taken over her body? What was happening to her mind? In this swift & breathtaking narrative, Susannah tells the astonishing true story of her inexplicable descent into madness & the brilliant, lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn't happen. 264 pages

4. A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard The memoir of Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped on June 10, 1991 from a school bus stop within sight of her home in Tahoe, California, when she was 11 years old. She was held prisoner by convicted sex offender Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy Garrido…for over eighteen years, all the while living in a tent on the Garrido property. 279 pages

5. STICK FIGURE: A DIARY OF MY FORMER SELF BY LORI GOTTLIEB After happening upon the diary she kept when she was 11 years old, Gottlieb was moved to publish this chronicle of her struggle with anorexia nearly 20 years after she wrote it. In the late1970s, she lived with her parents and brother in Beverly Hills, where Gottlieb's loneliness and concern about looking attractive to boys swiftly transformed into an obsession with dieting, although she had never been overweight. 222 pages

6. UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS: A STORY OF LOSS AND GAIN BY PORTIA DE ROSSI “I didn't decide to become anorexic. It snuck up on me disguised as a healthy diet, a professional attitude. Being as thin as possible was a way to make the job of being an actress easier….” Portia de Rossi weighed only 82 pounds when she collapsed on the set of the Hollywood film in which she was playing her first leading role....On the outside she was thin and blond, glamorous and successful. On the inside, she was literally dying. In this searing, unflinchingly honest book, Portia de Rossi captures the complex emotional truth of what it is like when food, weight, and body image take priority over every other human impulse or action. 308 pages Available at the Voorheesville Public Library 921 DEROSSI

7. Devil in the details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood by Jennifer Traig “Gives a rare inside look at obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is a funny, touching tale of a not-so-normal girl and her brave battle with a not-so-normal disease.” 256 pages

8. Devoted: the Story of a Father’s Love for His Son by Dick Hoyt 203 pages

9. A THREE DOG LIFE BY ABIGAIL THOMAS When Abigail Thomas's husband, Rich, was hit by a car, his brain shattered. Subject to rages, terrors, and hallucinations, he must live the rest of his life in an institution. He has no memory of what he did the hour, the day, the year before. This tragedy is the ground on which Abigail had to build a new life. 182 pages Available at the Voorheesville Public Library 921 THOMAS

10. Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter Taken from her mother when she was scarcely four years old, Rhodes Courter spent the next nine years in foster care with “more than a dozen so-called mothers.” “Some were kind,” she acknowledges, “a few were quirky and one . . .was as wicked as a fairy-tale witch.” 301 pages

11. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls A memoir of resilience amid a deeply dysfunctional childhood. 288 pages

12. Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff Book 1: The author details his immersion in a world of hardcore drugs, revealing the mental and physical depths of addiction, and the violent relapse one summer in California that forever changed his life, leading him down the road to recovery. Mature content. 337 pages

13. We All Fall Down: Living with Addiction by Nic Sheff Book 2: About Sheff’s continued efforts to stay clean, Nic writes candidly about eye-opening stays at rehab centers, devastating relapses, and hard-won realizations about what it means to be a young person living with addiction. Mature content. 345 pages

14. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch 206 pages

15. Titanic Survivor: the Newly Discovered Memoirs of Violet Jessop who Survived both the Titanic and Britannic Disasters She survived the sinking of the TITANIC. For most people one sinking would be enough. But Violet also survived the sinking of the hospital ship BRITANNIC and her, this disaster was even more horrifying. 238 pages Available at the Voorheesville Public Library 363.123 JES

16. The Year We Disappeared: a Father-Daughter Memoir by Cylin Busby 329 pages

17. Iron Heart: the True Story of How I Came Back From the Dead by Brian Boyle 248 pages

18. SOUL SURFER BY BETHANY HAMILTON After a horrific shark attack during which she loses an arm, Bethany finds the courage and faith to surf again. 222 pages

19. THE BURN JOURNALS BY BRENT RUNYON Brent was 14 years old when he set himself on fire. This is a true story. In The Burn Journals, Runyon describes that devastating suicide attempt and his recovery over the following year. He takes us into the Burn Unit in a children's hospital and through painful burn care and skin-grafting procedures. Then to a rehabilitation hospital, for intensive physical, occupational, and psychological therapy. And then finally back home, to the frightening prospect of entering high school. 374 pages Available at the Voorheesville Public Library YA 921 RUNYON

20. Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston 352 pages

21. Grief Girl: My True Story by Erin Vincent At age 14, Vincent lost both parents in a traffic accident. This is a gripping memoir of the aftermath of their deaths. 306 pages

22. A Child Called It by Dave PelzerBook 1 Dave Pelzer's Autobiographical account of his alleged abuse as a child by an alcoholic mother. 160 pages

23. The Lost Boy by Dave PelzerBook 2 The book discusses Pelzer's struggling with his ability to fit in and adapt to the new environment around him as he is put into foster care. It also talks about the kindness of his foster parents and other people around him as well as his inability to brush his mother aside. 294 pages

24. A Man Named Dave by Dave PelzerBook 3 In this follow-up to A Child Called "It" and The Lost Boy, which detailed the abuse Pelzer endured as a child, he explains how he grew beyond it. 284 pages 

25. The Privilege of Youth by Dave PelzerBook 4 From high school to a world beyond the four walls that were his prison for so many years. A continuation of Dave Pelzer’s story. 230 pages

26. Breaking Night: a Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, & My Journey From Homeless to Harvard by Liz Murray A memoir of a young woman living on the streets at age 15 and who eventually made it into Harvard. 334 pages

27. She’s Not There: a Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan The story of a person changing genders, the story of a person bearing and finally revealing a complex secret. 300 pages Interlibrary Loan at the Voorheesville Public Library

28. Look Me in the Eye: my Life with Asperger’s by John Elder Robison 288 pages

29. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local "powhitetrash." At eight years old and back at her mother's side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age-and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. 289 pages