AmongReaders.com Add a tiny library
📚 AmongReaders — track what you read, talk chapter by chapter without spoilers, and read with friends. Free.Join AmongReadersSign in

🧲 Books like this

We the Animals

Justin Torres · 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

Include books by the same author
❤️

The House on Mango Street

Sandra Cisneros · 110 pages

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic, acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for he

BildungsromanChild NarratorComing of AgeWorking-Class Protagonist
❤️

In the Castle of My Skin

George Lamming · 313 pages

George Lamming's "In the Castle of My Skin" skilfully depicts the Barbadian psyche. Set against the backdrop of the 1930s riots which helped to pave the way for Independence and the modern Barbados, through the eyes of a young boy, Lamming portrays the social, racial, political and urban struggles with which Barbados continues to grapple even with some thirty-three years of Political Independence

BildungsromanComing of AgeChild NarratorWorking-Class Protagonist
❤️

Funny Boy

Shyam Selvadurai · 315 pages

Der sensible Arjie spielt lieber als Braut verkleidet mit den Mädchen aus seiner tamilischen Großfamilie, als sich auf dem Kricketplatz auszutoben. Während die Unbeschwertheit der Kindertage weicht, beginnt er zunehmend die Widersprüche und Vorurteile der Erwachsenenwelt zu spüren.

BildungsromanChild NarratorComing of AgeSexual Orientation
❤️

Bless Me, Ultima

Rudolfo Anaya · 252 pages

Ultima, a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic, comes to Antonio Marez's New Mexico family when he is six years old, and she helps him discover himself in the magical secrets of the pagan past.

BildungsromanChild NarratorCultural IdentityLyrical Prose
❤️

Anita and Me

Meera Syal · 336 pages

BildungsromanChild NarratorComing of AgeWorking-Class Protagonist
❤️

Viper in the fist

Herve Bazin · 183 pages

BildungsromanChild NarratorComing of AgeBrothers
❤️

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Ocean Vuong · 256 pages

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once

Working-Class ProtagonistComing of AgeSexual OrientationCultural Identity
🙂

My Brother Jack

George Johnston

BildungsromanBrothersComing of AgeWorking-Class Protagonist
🙂

The Beautiful Room Is Empty

Edmund White · 199 pages

When the narrator of White's poised yet scalding autobiographical novel first embarks on his sexual odyssey, it is the 1950s, and America is "a big gray country of families on drowsy holiday." That country has no room for a scholarly teenager with guilty but insatiable stirrings toward other men. Moving from a Midwestern college to the Stonewall Tavern on the night of the first gay uprising--and p

BildungsromanComing of AgeSexual OrientationLyrical Prose
🙂

Babyji

Abha Dawesar · 356 pages

Sexy, surprising, and subversively wise, Babyji is the story of Anamika Sharma, a spirited student growing up in Delhi. At school she is an ace at quantum physics. At home she sneaks off to her parents’ scooter garage to read the Kamasutra. Before long she has seduced an elegant older divorcée and the family servant, and has caught the eye of a classmate coveted by all the boys. With the world

BildungsromanComing of AgeSexual OrientationCultural Identity
🙂

The Outsiders

S.E. Hinton · 192 pages

According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine. A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs f

BildungsromanBrothersWorking-Class ProtagonistComing of Age
🙂

Tell the Wolves I'm Home

Carol Rifka Brunt · 384 pages

It is 1987, and only one person has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus -- her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn's company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June's world is turned upside d

BildungsromanComing of AgeSexual OrientationLGBTQ+ Protagonist
🙂

The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963

Christopher Paul Curtis · 239 pages

The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

Child NarratorBrothersComing of AgeIntense
🙂

Deep Rivers

Jose Maria Arguedas · 264 pages

BildungsromanComing of AgeCultural IdentityLyrical Prose
🙂

When God Was a Rabbit

Sarah Winman · 325 pages

BildungsromanBrothersComing of AgeChild Narrator
🙂

The Story of a New Name

Elena Ferrante · 480 pages

In 2012, Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend introduced readers to the unforgettable Elena and Lila, whose lifelong friendship provides the backbone for the Neapolitan Novels. The Story of a New Name is the second book in this series. With these books, which the New Yorker’s James Wood described as “large, captivating, amiably peopled...a beautiful and delicate tale of confluence and reversal,” F

BildungsromanWorking-Class ProtagonistComing of AgeIntense
🙂

Demian

Hermann Hesse · 166 pages

A young man awakens to selfhood and to a world of possibilities beyond the conventions of his upbringing in Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse’s beloved novel Demian. Emil Sinclair is a quiet boy drawn into a forbidden yet seductive realm of petty crime and defiance. His guide is his precocious, mysterious classmate Max Demian, who provokes in Emil a search for self-discovery and spiritual fulfillme

BildungsromanComing of AgeLyrical ProseSexual Orientation
🙂

The Tightrope Walkers

David Almond · 336 pages

A gentle visionary coming of age in the shadow of the shipyards of northern England, Dominic Hall is torn between extremes. On the one hand, he craves the freedom he feels when he steals away with the eccentric girl artist next door, Holly Stroud -- his first and abiding love -- to balance above the earth on a makeshift tightrope. With Holly, Dom dreams of a life different in every way from his sh

BildungsromanComing of AgeWorking-Class ProtagonistLyrical Prose
🙂

Tipping the Velvet

Sarah Waters · 480 pages

Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-h

BildungsromanComing of AgeWorking-Class ProtagonistSexual Orientation
🙂

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

Michael Chabon · 297 pages

Im magischen Sommer nach dem Collegeabschluß will Art Bechstein Pittsburgh auf den Kopf stellen. Und wird selbst auf den Kopf gestellt. Er versinkt völlig in den glitzernd bunten Geheimnissen der grauen Industriestadt. Der erste Roman eines jungen amerikanischen Autors--witzig, spritzig, melancholisch, mitreißend. Die verführerische Geschichte des heißen Sommers, als Art Bechstein erwachsen wurde.

BildungsromanSexual OrientationComing of AgeLGBTQ+ Protagonist
🙂

Ham on Rye

Charles Bukowski · 288 pages

In what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, women, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D. H. Lawrence, Ham on Rye of

BildungsromanWorking-Class ProtagonistComing of AgeLiterary Fiction
🙂

Getting the Girl

Markus Zusak · 250 pages

Tired of being the underdog, Cameron Wolfe hungers to become something worthwhile and finally finds a girl with whom he can share his words and feelings--his popular brother Rube's ex-girlfriend.

BildungsromanBrothersWorking-Class ProtagonistLyrical Prose
🙂

Not Without Laughter

Langston Hughes · 313 pages

Our greatest African American poet's award-winning first novel, about a black boy's coming-of-age in a largely-white Kansas town When first published in 1930, Not Without Laughter established Langston Hughes as not only a brilliant poet and leading light of the Harlem Renaissance but also a gifted novelist. In telling the story of Sandy Rogers, a young African American boy in small-town Kansas, an

BildungsromanComing of AgeWorking-Class ProtagonistCultural Identity
🙂

Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida

Victor Martinez · 220 pages

Manny relates his coming of age experiences as a member of a poor Mexican American family in which the alcoholic father only adds to everyone's struggle.

BildungsromanComing of AgeWorking-Class ProtagonistCultural Identity

In the works

To be read SpinnerCan’t pick your next book? Spin your Want to read.Blind date with a bookPick a mood, unwrap a surprise.Add a tiny librarySnap a little free library and its books.