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Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Barack Obama · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Malcolm X, Alex Haley · 484 pages

Identity FormationCultural IdentityAutobiographyPolitical Biography
❤️

Long Walk to Freedom

Nelson Mandela · 638 pages

The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral and political leader of our time, Long Walk to Freedom brilliantly recreates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela's destiny. Emotive, compelling and uplifting, Long Walk to Freedom is the exhilarating story of an epic life; a story of hardship, resilience and ultimate triumph told with the clarity and eloquence of a born leader

Political BiographyRacismAutobiographyColonialism
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Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood

Trevor Noah · 297 pages

Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often ab

BelongingRacismAutobiographyCultural Identity
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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

Identity FormationCultural IdentityAutobiographyBelonging
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Becoming

Michelle Obama · 432 pages

In this adaptation of her autobiography for younger readers, Michelle Obama presents an account of her life, and, in telling of her own personal evolution, stresses the need for people to realize that no one is perfect, that the process of "becoming" is what really matters.

Political BiographyAutobiographyIdentity FormationMemoir & Biography
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'Tis A Memoir

Frank McCourt · 512 pages

AutobiographyBelongingCultural IdentityMemoir & Biography
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The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd · 311 pages

Sue Monk Kidd's ravishing debut novel has stolen the hearts of reviewers and readers alike with its strong, assured voice. Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest racis

Leaving HomeBelongingRacismGrief Over a Parent
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Educated: A Memoir

Tara Westover · 353 pages

Choose the good -- The midwife -- Cream shoes -- Apache women -- Honest dirt -- Shield and buckler -- The Lord will provide -- Tiny harlots -- Perfect in his generations -- Shield of feathers -- Instinct -- Fish eyes -- Silence in the churches -- My feet no longer touch Earth -- No more a child -- Disloyal man, disobedient heaven -- To keep it holy -- Blood and feathers -- In the beginning -- Reci

Identity FormationAutobiographySelf-DiscoveryLeaving Home
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Song of Solomon

Toni Morrison · 338 pages

Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s ori

BelongingCultural IdentitySelf-DiscoveryRacism
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Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates · 155 pages

An Amazon Best Book of July 2015: Readers of his work in The Atlantic and elsewhere know Ta-Nehisi Coates for his thoughtful and influential writing on race in America. Written as a series of letters to his teenaged son, his new memoir, Between the World and Me, walks us through the course of his life, from the tough neighborhoods of Baltimore in his youth, to Howard University—which Coates dubs “

Cultural IdentityRacismBelongingMemoir & Biography
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The Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri · 304 pages

"With a new afterword from Jhumpa Lahiri, a new edition of the contemporary classic. Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world--conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, c

BelongingIdentity FormationCultural IdentitySelf-Discovery
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The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

James McBride · 314 pages

James McBride grew up one of twelve siblings in the all-black housing projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn, the son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white. The object of McBride's constant embarrassment and continuous fear for her safety, his mother was an inspiring figure, who through sheer force of will saw her dozen children through college, and many through graduate school

BelongingRacismCultural IdentityMemoir & Biography
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Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Benjamin Alire Saenz · 368 pages

Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.

Identity FormationBelongingSelf-DiscoveryCultural Identity
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Brown Girl Dreaming

Jacqueline Woodson · 368 pages

Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement.

Identity FormationAutobiographyRacismMemoir & Biography
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Identity FormationLeaving HomeBelongingSelf-Discovery
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Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter

Adeline Yen Mah · 224 pages

A riveting memoir of a girl's painful coming-of-age in a wealthy Chinese family during the 1940s.A Chinese proverb says, "Falling leaves return to their roots." In Chinese Cinderella, Adeline Yen Mah returns to her roots to tell the story of her painful childhood and her ultimate triumph and courage in the face of despair. Adeline's affluent, powerful family considers her bad luck after her mother

Estranged FamilyAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyGrief Over a Parent
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Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Cheryl Strayed · 315 pages

A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she'd lost everything when her mother died young of cancer. Her family scattered in their grief, her marriage was soon destroyed, and slowly her life spun out of control. Four years after her mot

Leaving HomeFinding PurposeAutobiographySelf-Discovery
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Political BiographyEstranged FamilyGrief Over a ParentAbsent Parent
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Interior Chinatown

Charles Yu · 288 pages

BelongingCultural IdentityIdentity FormationRacism
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou · 281 pages

She was born Marguerite, but her brother Bailey nicknamed her Maya ("mine"). As little children they were sent to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Their early world revolved around this remarkable woman and the Store she ran for the black community. White people were more than strangers - they were from another planet. And yet, even unseen they ruled. The Store was a microcosm

Absent ParentRacismAutobiographyMemoir & Biography
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Bud, Not Buddy

Christopher Paul Curtis · 249 pages

It's 1936, in Flint, Michigan. Times may be hard, and ten-year-old Bud may be a motherless boy on the run, but Bud's got a few things going for him: 1. He has his own suitcase filled with his own important, secret things. 2. He's the author of Bud Caldwell's Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself. 3. His momma never told him who his father was, but

Absent ParentGrief Over a ParentRacismFinding Purpose
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My Name Is Asher Lev

Chaim Potok · 352 pages

"Memorable...A book profound in its vision of humanity, of religion, and of art."THE WALL STREET JOURNALHere is the original, deeply moving story of Asher Lev, the religious boy with an overwhelming need to draw, to paint, to render the world he knows and the pain he feels, on canvas for everyone to see. A loner, Asher has an extroardinary God-given gift that possesses a spirit all its own. It is

Finding PurposeIdentity FormationEstranged FamilySelf-Discovery
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The Reason You Walk

Wab Kinew · 273 pages

When his father was given a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Winnipeg broadcaster and musician Wab Kinew decided to spend a year reconnecting with the accomplished but distant aboriginal man who'd raised him. Born to an Anishinaabe father and a non-native mother, he has a foot in both cultures. He is a Sundancer, an academic, a former rapper, a hereditary chief, and an urban activist. Kinew writes af

Grief Over a ParentAutobiographyEstranged FamilyMemoir & Biography
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Crying in H Mart: A Memoir

Michelle Zauner · 256 pages

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her gra

Cultural IdentityBelongingIdentity FormationMemoir & Biography
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