🧲 Books like this
Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence, A True Story in Black and White
Geoffrey Canada · back to the book
What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Hide books by the same authorThe Basketball Diaries
Jim Carroll · 210 pages
The Basketball Diaries is a 1978 memoir written by author and musician Jim Carroll. It is an edited collection of the diaries he kept between the ages of twelve and sixteen. The original classic story about growing up with drugs and sex and about learning to survive on the streets of New York--once again in print. An urban classic of coming of age.
Cancer Vixen
Marisa Acocella Marchetto · 224 pages
A New York City cartoonist recounts her eleven-month bout with breast cancer, from initial diagnosis to cure, chronicling her high-powered Manhattan lifestyle, the romance between the ultimate bachelorette and her surprising Prince Charming, and her fierce battle against disease.
My New York Diary
Julie Doucet · 100 pages
From the publisher: "*My New York Diary* is the classic graphic novel by the acclaimed and iconic artist Julie Doucet. In one of the first contemporary graphic novels, Doucet abruptly packs her bags and moves to New York. Trouble follows her in the form of a jealous boyfriend, insecurity about her talent, her worsening epilepsy, and a tendency to self-medicate with booze and drugs."
Bad Boy: A Memoir
Walter Dean Myers · 224 pages
In his own words...As a boy, Walter Dean Myers was quick-tempered and physically strong, always ready for a fight. He also read voraciously-he would check out books from the library and carry them home, hidden in brown paper bags in order to avoid other boys' teasing. He aspired to be a writer. But growing up in a poor family in Harlem, his hope for a successful future diminished as he came to rea
Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?
Roz Chast · 228 pages
In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. When it came to her elderl
Everybody's Fly: A Life of Art, Music, and Changing the Culture
Fab 5 Freddy · 336 pages
American Widow
Alissa Torres, Sungyoon Choi · 209 pages
An autobiographical comic which chronicles the experiences of Alissa Torres after her husband Eddie was killed in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, leaving her to face a whirlwind of bureaucracy, politics, mourning, and impending childbirth and single motherhood.
In the Shadow of No Towers
Art Spiegelman · 48 pages
"For Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were both highly personal and intensely political. In the Shadow of No Towers, his first new book of comics since the groundbreaking Maus, is an account of the events and aftermath of that tragic day." "Spiegelman and his family bore witness to the attacks in their lower Manhattan neighborho
Sleepers
Lorenzo Carcaterra · 370 pages
When friendship runs deeper than bloodAn unforgettable true story of friendship, loyalty and revenge. They were four boys who shared everything - the laughter and bruises of an impoverished upbringing in New York's West Side. Then one of their pranks misfired - a man nearly died and they were sent away to a reformatory school. Then they suffered the worst abuse the guards could inflict on them. Th
Little Fish: A Memoir from a Different Kind of Year
Ramsey Beyer · 272 pages
"Told through real-life journals, collages, lists, and drawings, this coming-of-age story illustrates the transformation of an 18-year-old girl from a small-town teenager into an independent city-dwelling college student. Written in an autobiographical style with beautiful artwork, Little Fish shows the challenges of being a young person facing the world on her own for the very first time and the
I Am the Central Park Jogger
Trisha Meili · 257 pages
The woman dubbed in the headlines "the Central Park Jogger," who was raped and brutally beaten in 1989 while jogging in New York's Central Park, recounts her assault and recovery and describes how the event changed her life.
Down These Mean Streets
Piri Thomas · 317 pages
The story of a Puerto Rican boy, oldest of seven children, who was born and brought up in Spanish Harlem.
The Complete Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi · 352 pages
From inside front cover: The story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a ... loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private and public life in a coutnry plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trails of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming -- both sweet and terrible; and, fina
Dad Is Fat
Jim Gaffigan · 274 pages
"In Dad is Fat, stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan, who's best known for his legendary riffs on Hot Pockets, bacon, manatees, and McDonald's, expresses all the joys and horrors of life with five young children--everything from cousins ("celebrities for little kids") to toddlers' communication skills ("they always sound like they have traveled by horseback for hours to deliver important news"), to the
Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef
Gabrielle Hamilton · 291 pages
Big Sea
Langston Hughes · 335 pages
The Big Sea (1940) is a novel by American poet Langston Hughes. It chronicles Hughes’s life as a young adult in Harlem and Paris in the 1920s. In Paris, he was a cook and waiter in nightclubs. In Harlem, he was a rising young poet at the center of the Harlem Renaissance. The Big Sea (1940) is a novel by American poet Langston Hughes. It chronicles Hughes's life as a young adult in Harlem and Pa
Pimp: The Story of My Life
Iceberg Slim · 317 pages
This is the story of Iceberg Slim's life, as he saw, felt, tasted, and smelled it. A trip through hell by the one man who lived to tell the tale. The dangers of jail, addiction and death that are still all too familiar.
The Boys of Summer
Roger Kahn · 445 pages
"A ... narrative of growing up within shouting distance of Ebbets Field, working for the Herald Tribune in the Jackie Robinson years ... and what's happened to everybody since."
Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx
Sonia Manzano · 267 pages
Set in the 1950s in the Bronx, this is the story of a girl with a dream. Emmy award-winning actress and writer Sonia Manzano plunges us into the daily lives of a Latino family that is loving--and troubled. This is Sonia's own story rendered with an unforgettable narrative power. When readers meet young Sonia, she is a child living amidst the squalor of a boisterous home that is filled with noisy r
My Infamous Life: The Autobiography of Mobb Deep's Prodigy
Albert Johnson, Laura Checkoway · 308 pages
"A memoir about a life almost lost and a revealing look at the dark side of hip hop's golden era ... a story of struggle, survival, and hope down the mean streets of New York City"--Dust flap jacket.
Primates of Park Avenue
Wednesday Martin · 256 pages
Like an urban Dian Fossey, Wednesday Martin decodes the primate social behaviors of Upper East Side mothers in a memoir about her adventures assimilating into that most secretive and elite tribe. After marrying a man from the Upper East Side and moving to the neighborhood, Wednesday Martin struggled to fit in. Drawing on her background in anthropology and primatology, she tried looking at her new
I Never Liked You: A Comic Book
Chester Brown · 186 pages