A brother's journey : surviving a childhood of abuse
by Richard Pelzer
In this gripping, deeply troubling memoir, a follow-up to his brother David's bestselling A Child Called It, Pelzer reveals the unyielding suffering he says he experienced at the hands of his depraved mother growing up in the 1970s. Once David, the elder of the two, was removed from the household, the author, by this account, became the target of their mother's alcohol-induced rage. As Pelzer details his outward struggle to survive—learning to fall asleep with his eyes open, for example—and his internal efforts to understand and rise above his circumstances, he assaults readers with the graphic facts, told in surprisingly matter-of-fact language, about being beaten bloody for falling asleep when he was supposed to be awake, and being forbidden to bathe and forced to eat scraps from a dog bowl. Family members (including Pelzer's father), neighbors and teachers were aware of the abuse but did nothing to help, and Pelzer credits outsiders, especially his friend Ben, with finally "allowing" him to see himself more clearly. By looking back at—and then releasing—the image of the skinny, red-haired boy who wanted nothing more than his mother's love, Pelzer discovers his true spirit, which he shares courageously and selflessly here in the hope of healing himself, as well as raising awareness of and preventing child abuse.

A girl named Zippy : growing up small in Mooreland, Indiana
by Haven Kimmel
In this first book, Kimmel has written a love letter to her hometown of Mooreland, IN, a town with an unchanging population of 300 in America's heartland. Nicknamed "Zippy" for her energetic interpretation of a circus monkey, she could not be bothered to speak until she was three years old, and her first words involved bargaining with her father about whether or not a baby bottle was still appropriate. Born in 1965, Zippy lived in a world filled with a loving family, peculiar neighbors, and multitudes of animals, including a chicken she loved and treated like a baby. Her story is filled with good humor, fine storytelling, and acute observations of small town life.

An hour before daylight : memories of my rural boyhood
by Jimmy Carter
In an American story of enduring importance, Jimmy Carter re-creates his Depression-era boyhood on a Georgia farm, before the civil rights movement that changed it and the country. In what is sure to become a classic, Carter writes about the powerful rhythms of countryside and community. Along the way, he offers an unforgettable portrait of his father, a brilliant farmer and strict segregationist who treated black workers with his own brand of "separate" respect and fairness, and his strong-willed mother, a nurse who cared for all in need -- regardless of their position in the community. Carter describes the people who shaped his early life, only two of them white: his eccentric relatives who sometimes caused the boy to examine his heritage with dismay; the boyhood friends with whom he hunted and worked the farm, but who could not attend the same school; and the eminent black bishop who refused to come to the Carters' back door but who would stand in the front yard discussing crops and politics with Jimmy's father. Carter's clean and eloquent prose evokes a time when the cycles of life were predictable and simple and the rules were heartbreaking and complex. In his singular voice and with a novelist's gift for detail, Jimmy Carter creates a sensitive portrait of an era that shaped the nation.

Blackbird : a childhood lost and found
by Jennifer Lauck
Writing strictly from her young self's perspective, Lauck describes being left alone to care for her once beautiful, cancer-ravaged, and suicidal mother at age 5, and her descent into near homelessness by age 11, succeeding brilliantly in portraying the innocence and intuition of a child, the vulnerability and strength, and the moral clarity and will to survive. Neglected by her hardworking but untrustworthy father, and bratty older brother, Lauck, loyal and tough, guides herself through the horror of her mother's illness and death, and the shock of discovering the truth about her own birth. Then, when her father remarries, she is forced to cope with a despicable stepmother and yet another world-shattering loss. A man calls Lauck an «old soul,» and, indeed, she had to grapple with more of life's miseries before puberty than most people face in a lifetime, a brutal coming-of-age she documents with remarkable lucidity and forgiveness.

Climbing the mango trees : a memoir of a childhood in India
by Susan M. Jacksack
The celebrated actress and author of several books on Indian cooking turns her attention to her own childhood in Delhi and Kampur. Born in 1933 as one of six children of a prosperous businessman, Jaffrey grew up as part of a huge "joint family" of aunts, uncles and cousins—often 40 at dinner—under the benign but strict thumb of Babaji, her grandfather and imperious family patriarch. It was a privileged and cosmopolitan family, influenced by Hindu, Muslim and British traditions, and though these were not easy years in India, a British ally in WWII and soon to go though the agony of partition (the separation and formation of Muslim Pakistan), Jaffrey's graceful prose and sure powers of description paint a vivid landscape of an almost enchanted childhood.

Daughter of heaven : a memoir with earthly recipes
by Leslie Li
Leslie Li's paternal grandfather, Li Zongren, was China's first democratically elected vice president, to whom Chiang Kai-shek left control of the country when he fled to Formosa in 1949. Nine years later, Li's wife, Nai-nai, comes to live with her son's family in New York City, bringing a whole new world of sights, smells, and tastes as she quickly takes control of the kitchen. Nai-nai's tantalizingly exotic cooking opens up the heart and mind of her American granddaughter to her Chinese heritage - and to the world. Through her grandmother's traditional cuisine Leslie bridges the cultural divide in an America in which she is a minority - as well as the growing gap at home between her rigid, traditional Chinese father and her progressive American-born mother. Interspersed throughout her memoir are the author's personal recipes, most from Nai-nai's kitchen, that add a delicious dimension to the work. A loving ode to family and food, Daughter of Heaven is a blend of memory, history, and the senses.

Learning joy from dogs without collars : a memoir
by Lauren Summer
At 17, Summer won a wrestling scholarship to Harvard after spending much of her life as a homeless child. She became a media model at least two different ways: girl wrestler makes the boys' team was one story, but even that couldn't top “Homeless to Harvard.” But now, at 25, she tells the darker side of the myth in this groundbreaking memoir. She remembers how it was, and she tells it without pretentiousness or self-pity, honest about her shame, rage, and loyalty to her mother, factual about the physical reality of always moving. Just as compelling as the migrant child story is the Harvard student experience: all those self-congratulatory diversity groups hadn't reckoned on a member who wasn't even working class but “welfare class.” Her search for the dad who abandoned her is a dramatic quest story in itself. But perhaps the most searing episode is Parents' Weekend at college, when Mom arrives from the shelter with all her bags of stuff. This is an unforgettable Cinderella story without a savior prince.

Queen of the oddballs : and other true stories from a life unaccording to plan
by Hillary Carlip
Carlip's fresh, funny memoir of growing up at celebrity's edge in Hollywood, accompanied by photos and highlights of current events from the 1960s through 2004, is at once hilarious and heartbreaking. Even before her childhood appearance on Art Linkletter's TV program House Party, Carlip had been bitten by the showbiz bug. With shameless determination, in her teens she pursued friendships with celebrities such as Carly Simon and Carole King, and created her own minor celebrity as a juggler on The Gong Show, an extra in films like Xanadu, and the star of her own rock band. Carlip also turns the lens on her love life and the experience of growing up gay in Los Angeles. Ending the book with an anticlimactic flashback to her appearance on Oprah for her collection of writings by teenage girls, 1995's Girl Power, the author takes a step back from her continuing pursuit of fame to realize that by feeling like she's never "enough," she has been forced to "welcome limitless possibilities by doing everything unaccording to plan."

Rocket boys : a memoir
by Homer Hickham
In his debut, Hickam, a retired NASA engineer, walks that line beautifully. On one level, it's the story of a teenage boy who learns about dedication, responsibility, thermodynamics and girls. On the other hand, it's about a dying way of life in a coal town where the days are determined by the rhythms of the mine and the company that controls everything and everybody. Hickam's father is Coalwood, W.Va.'s mine superintendent, whose devotion to the mine is matched only by his wife's loathing for it. When Sputnik inspires "Sonny" with an interest in rockets, she sees it not as a hobby but as a way to escape the mines. After an initial, destructive try involving 12 cherry bombs, Sonny and his cronies set up the Big Creek Missile Agency (BCMA). From Auk I (top altitude, six feet), through Auk XXXI (top altitude, 31,000 feet), the boys experiment with nozzles, fins and, most of all, fuel, graduating from a basic black powder to "rocket candy" (melted potassium chlorate and sugar) to "Zincoshine" (zinc, sulfur, moonshine). But Coalwood is the real star, here. Teachers, clergy, machinists, town gossips, union, management, everyone become co-conspirators in the BCMA's explosive three-year project.

Running with scissors : a memoir
by Augusten Burroughts
It's hard to imagine a childhood more disturbing and relentlessly surreal than the one the author describes in this memoir. When his violent, nearly homicidal parents divorce, young Augusten lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with his mother, a confessional poet battling a mental illness that manifests itself in consuming self-absorption and psychotic episodes. Deciding she needs more space for personal exploration and art, Augusten's mother packs her 12-year-old son off to the home of psychiatrist Dr. Finch, a wildly eccentric egomaniac; most of this memoir centers on Augusten's teenage years spent in this uncontrolled, profoundly bizarre household. Luckily, Burroughs tempers the pathos with sharp, riotous humor in stories that are self-deprecating, raunchy, sexually explicit (14-year-old Augusten becomes lovers with Neil, a Finch family member 20 years his senior), scatological, grotesque, and deeply affecting.

The flame trees of Thika : memories of an African childhood
by Elspeth Huxley
In an open cart Elspeth Huxley set off with her parents to travel to Thika in Kenya. As pioneering settlers, they built a house of grass, ate off a damask doth spread over packing cases, and discovered -- the hard way -- the world of the African. With an extraordinary gift for detail and a keen sense of humor, Huxley recalls her childhood on the smart farm at a time when Europeans waged their fortunes on a land that was as harsh as it was beautiful. For a young girl it was a time of adventure and freedom, and Huxley paints an unforgettable portrait of growing up among the Masai and Kikuyu people, discovering both the beauty and the terrors of the jungle, and enduring the rugged realities of the pioneer life.

The glass castle : a memoir
by Jeanette Walls
Walls, who spent years trying to hide her childhood experiences, allows the story to spill out in this remarkable recollection of growing up. From her current perspective as a contributor to MSNBC online, she remembers the poverty, hunger, jokes, and bullying she and her siblings endured, and she looks back at her parents: her flighty, self-indulgent mother, a Pollyanna unwilling to assume the responsibilities of parenting, and her father, troubled, brilliant Rex, whose ability to turn his family's downward-spiraling circumstances into adventures allowed his children to excuse his imperfections until they grew old enough to understand what he had done to them--and to himself. His grand plans to build a home for the family never evolved: the hole for the foundation of the “The Glass Castle,” as the dream house was called, became the family garbage dump, and, of course, a metaphor for Rex Walls' life. Shocking, sad, and occasionally bitter, this gracefully written account speaks candidly, yet with surprising affection, about parents and about the strength of family ties--for both good and ill.

The language of Baklava
by Diana Abu-Jaber
Abu-Jaber's ealry life seemed defined by the rites and rituals of cooking and eating and she weaves her charming story around vividly rememberd, sensually descrived meals.

The Liars' Club : a memoir
by Mary Karr
In this funny, razor-edged memoir, Mary Karr, a prize-winning poet and critic, looks back at her upbringing in a swampy East Texas refinery town with a volatile, defiantly loving family. She recalls her painter mother, seven times married, whose outlaw spirit could tip into psychosis; a fist-swinging father who spun tales with his cronies--dubbed the Liars' Club; and a neighborhood rape when she was eight. An inheritance was squandered, endless bottles emptied, and guns leveled at the deserving and undeserving. With a raw authenticity stripped of self-pity and a poet's eye for the lyrical detail, Karr shows us a "terrific family of liars and drunks ... redeemed by a slow unearthing of truth."

The life and times of the thunderbolt kid : a memoir
by Bill Bryson
A vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the middle of the United States in the middle of the last century