Category Archives: Non-Fiction

Bad Mormon by Heather Gay

Drinking and Tweeting meets Unorthodox in this vulnerable memoir about The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star’s departure from the Mormon Church, and her unforeseen success in business, television, and single motherhood. Straight off the slopes and into the spotlight, Heather Gay is famous for speaking the gospel truth. Whether as a businesswoman, mother, or television personality, she is unafraid to blaze a new trail, even if it means losing family, friends, and her community. Born and bred to be devout… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Fatphobia & body-shaming
  • Misogyny & sexism with discussions of purity culture
  • Ableist child abuse
  • Divorce
  • Suicide of business partner’s sibling
  • Alcohol consumption & recreational drug use
  • Pregnancy
  • Cosmetic surgery
  • Death of a father mentioned

Afterlife by Melissa Jennings

Afterlife is a collection of poetry about catharsis, self-love, and self-revolution. Afterlife is a journey from the darkness to the light again, and again, and again.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Depression & anxiety
  • Intrusive thoughts & trauma flashbacks
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm

Abandon Me: Memoirs by Melissa Febos

In her dazzling Abandon Me, Febos captures the intense bonds of love and the need for connection–with family, lovers, and oneself. First, her birth father, who left her with only an inheritance of addiction and Native American blood, its meaning a mystery. As Febos tentatively reconnects, she sees how both these lineages manifest in her own life, marked by compulsion and an instinct for self-erasure. Meanwhile, she remains closely tied to the sea captain who raised her, his parenting ardent but intermittent as his work took him away for months at a time. Woven… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Emotional intimate partner abuse
  • Substance addiction
  • Suicidal ideation

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is Kingston’s disturbing and fiercely beautiful account of growing up Chinese-American in California. The young Kingston lives in two worlds: the America to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” Her mother tells her traditional tales of strong, wily women warriors – tales that clash puzzlingly with the real oppression of women. Kingston learns to fill in the mystifying spaces in her mother’s stories with stories of her own, engaging her family’s past and her own present with anger, imagination, and dazzling passion.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Cheating
  • Suicide by drowning
  • Alcohol consumption & mentions of smoking
  • Pregnancy
  • Murder
  • Sword violence
  • Animal death

World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

From beloved, award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut work of nonfiction–a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us. As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted–no matter how awkward the fit or f… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Animal death
  • Bullying

Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby

Irby is turning forty, and increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin. She has left her job as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic, has published successful books and is courted by Hollywood, left Chicago, and moved into a house with a garden that requires repairs and know-how with her wife and two step-children in a small white, Republican town in Michigan where she now hosts book clubs. This is the bourgeois life of dreams. She goes on bad dates with new friends, spends weeks in Los Angeles taking meetings with “skinny, luminous peoples” while being a “cheese fry-eating… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism discussed
  • Fatphobia
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Chronic illness & pain (endometriosis)
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent

You’re Doing Just Fine by Charlotte Eriksson

Named after the poem that has been shared over 400,000 times on Tumblr, this is the third book from young author and songwriter Charlotte Eriksson. A collection of prose and poetry with the theme of hope, recovery and finding beauty in the darkness. An exploration of the life of a young artist with an aching heart, urged by a wanderlust that leads and directs, and the simple task of learning how to live with yourself.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Depression
  • Suicide
  • Self-harm

My Side of the River by Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

Born to Mexican immigrants south of the Rillito River in Tucson, Arizona, Elizabeth had the world at her fingertips as she entered her freshman year of high school as the number one student. But suddenly, Elizabeth’s own country took away the most important right a child has: a right to have a family. As her parents’ visas expired, they were forced to return to Mexico, leaving Elizabeth responsible for her younger brother, as well as her education. Determined to break the cycle of being “a statistic,” she knew that even though her parents couldn’t stay, there was no way she could let go of the opportunities the U.S. could provide… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism

The Manicurist’s Daughter by Susan Lieu

Susan Lieu has long been searching for answers about her family’s past and about her own future. Refugees from the Vietnam War, Susan’s family escaped to California in the 1980s after five failed attempts. Upon arrival, Susan’s mother was their savvy, charismatic North Star, setting up two successful nail salons and orchestrating every success―until Susan was eleven. That year, her mother died from a botched tummy tuck. After the funeral, no one was ever allowed to talk about her or what had happened. For the next twenty years, Susan navigated a series of cascading questions alone―why did the most perfect… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction (theme)
  • Death of a mother during cosmetic surgery

Nowhere Girl by Cheryl Diamond

What if the people you love most are not who you thought they were? What if you don’t know who you are, either? Cheryl Diamond’s memoir begins when she is four and her family is in Kashmir, India, hurtling down the Himalayas in their battered station wagon headed for the Golden Temple, the holiest site in the Sikh religion. The family are Sikhs. Today. In a few years they will be Jewish. Cheryl’s name is Harbhajan. Today. But in a few years she will be Crystal. By the time she turns nine, Cheryl has had at least six assumed identities. She has lived on five continents, fleeing the specter of Interpol and law enforcement. Her father, a master financial criminal, or so she believes… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Incest & child sexual abuse
  • Emotional, verbal & child abuse