Raw and honest memoirs I’ve cried my way throughLike this list

5 items

• The Liars' Club

  a Memoir

  Karr, Mary

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  A brutally honest — and wryly funny — account of the writer’s coming of age in Texas. Karr's even-handed retelling of her youth is utterly without sentimentality, but strangely charming — if cringe-worthy at times. [Also available as an eBook]

• Wasted

  a Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

  Hornbacher, Marya, 1974-

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  In this seminal book, American writer Marya Hornbacher describes her struggle with dysfunctional eating and body loathing with unflinching honesty. I picked up Wasted in the early 2000s in an effort to understand my own eating disorder, but I…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• In the Dream House

  A Memoir

  Machado, Carmen Maria

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  This memoir of abuse is told in compelling fragments that mirror the way trauma distorts memory. It also flips the script on society’s understanding of domestic violence as a heterosexual phenomenon defined by physical violence. Machado is a queer,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Between Two Kingdoms

  A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

  Jaouad, Suleika

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  When cancer found her, Suleika Jaouad was in her early 20s and living in Paris with a new boyfriend. What began as an insatiable itch turned out to be a rare form of Leukemia requiring a barrage of chemotherapy and radiation treatments — and even a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Toil & Trouble

  Burroughs, Augusten

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  You may remember Augusten Burroughs as the author of the popular memoir Running With Scissors, about growing up in the home of his mother’s eccentric psychiatrist (it was made into a 2006 film starring Annette Bening). You may not know that…Read moreRead more of this annotation