What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorReaching Out
Francisco Jimenez · 196 pages
Leaving his home in a migrant community, Francisco sets off for college, carrying memories of years of poverty and prejudice.
For Bread Alone
Mohamed Choukri · 152 pages
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
Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child
Elva Trevino Hart · 236 pages
Autobiography. Latino/a Studies. BAREFOOT HEART is a vividly told autobiographical account of the life of a child growing up in a family of migrant farm workers. Elva Trevino Hart was born in south Texas to Mexican immigrants and spent her childhood moving back and forth between Texas and Minnesota, eventually leaving that world to earn a master's degree in computer science/engineering. This is a
Leaving Mother Lake: A Girlhood at the Edge of the World
Yang Erche Namu, Christine Mathieu · 320 pages
Dare to Disappoint: Growing Up in Turkey
Ozge Samanci · 190 pages
In her unpredictable and funny graphic memoir, Ozge recounts her story using inventive collages, weaving together images of the sea, politics, science, and friendship.
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
After The Wall
Jana Hensel · 202 pages
Hensel was born in Leipzig, East Germany, in 1976 and was 13 when the Berlin Wall fell. This memoir, a bestseller in Germany, portrays the disorientation of her generation, whose upbringing under communism ended abruptly with the integration of East and West Germany.
Dreams in a Time of War
Ngugi wa Thiong'o · 256 pages
By the world-renowned novelist, playwright, critic, and author of Wizard of the Crow, an evocative and affecting memoir of childhood.Ngugi wa Thiong'o was born in 1938 in rural Kenya to a father whose four wives bore him more than a score of children. The man who would become one of Africa's leading writers was the fifth child of the third wife. Even as World War II affected the lives of Africans
Colored People
Henry Louis Gates Jr. · 216 pages
My Beloved World
Sonia Sotomayor · 315 pages
An instant American icon, the third woman, and the first Hispanic on the U.S. Supreme Court, the author tells the story of her life before becoming a judge, in this personal memoir. Here the author recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a progress that is testament to her extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself. She writes of her precarious c
Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy's Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard
Mawi Asgedom, Dave Berger · 167 pages
An autobiography of a boy who, at the age of three, fled civil war in Ethiopia by walking with his mother and brother to a Sudanese refugee camp, and later moved to Chicago and earned a scholarship to Harvard University. Includes recipes and discussion questions
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
Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America
Linda Furiya · 256 pages
While growing up in Versailles, an Indiana farm community, Linda Furiya tried to balance the outside world of Midwestern America with the Japanese traditions of her home life. As the only Asian family in a tiny township, Furiya's life revolved around Japanese food and the extraordinary lengths her parents went to in order to gather the ingredients needed to prepare it. As immigrants, her parents a
The Black Girl Next Door: A Memoir
Jennifer Baszile · 310 pages
Traces the author's coming-of-age in an exclusive white California suburb in the 1970s and 1980s, describing the prejudices that minimized her family's achievements and her struggles to define herself as "the black girl next door" in light of her parents' dreams.
Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age Story
Amani Al-Khatahtbeh · 144 pages
"At nine years old, Amani Al-Khatahtbeh watched from her home in New Jersey as two planes crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. That same year, she heard her first racial slur. At age eleven, when the United States began their invasion in Iraq and the television was flooded with anti-Muslim commentary, Amani felt overwhelmed with feelings of intense alienation from American so
The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood
Richard Blanco · 260 pages
A poignant, hilarious, and inspiring memoir from the first Latino and openly gay inaugural poet, which explores his coming-of-age as the child of Cuban immigrants and his attempts to understand his place in America while grappling with his burgeoning artistic and sexual identities. Richard Blanco’s childhood and adolescence were experienced between two imaginary worlds: his parents’ nostalgic w
The Dark Child
Camara Laye · 188 pages
"The Dark Child is a ... memoir of Camara Laye's youth in the village of Koroussa, French Guinea, a place steeped in mystery. Laye marvels over his mother's supernatural powers, his father's distinction as the village goldsmith, and his own passage into manhood. ... More than the autobiography of one boy, this is the universal story of sacred traditions struggling against the encroachment of a mod
First Darling of the Morning: Selected Memories of an Indian Childhood
Thrity Umrigar · 294 pages
First Darling of the Morning is the powerful and poignant memoir of bestselling author Thrity Umrigar, tracing the arc of her Bombay childhood and adolescence from her earliest memories to her eventual departure for the United States at age twenty-one. It is an evocative, emotionally charged story of a young life steeped in paradox; of a middle-class Parsi girl attending Catholic school in a predo
'Tis A Memoir
Frank McCourt · 512 pages
The Perfect Gentleman: A Muslim Boy Meets the West
Imran Ahmad · 400 pages
"Imran Ahmad shares his story of life as a Pakistani Muslim growing up in England in this coming-of-age memoir"--Provided by the publisher.
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
J.D. Vance · 272 pages
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, this book is a probing look at the struggles of America's white working class through the author's own story of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town. Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis - that of poor, white Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for over fo
Mao's Last Dancer
Li Cunxin · 444 pages
A poor child living in poverty is chosen out of millions of children to attend Madame Mao's dancing ballet. His life drastically shifted from living in poverty to studying dance.

