“This is not a memoir. Memoirs are for chicks…”

I remember exactly where I was when I scribbled these words into my notebook, the first words of my third novel, On the Shoulders of Giants. It was early 2015 and I was at Blackwater River Correctional facility, commonly referred to as “Sweetwater” by the inmate population back then. Memoirs are for chicks. Not sure why I began the story of Izzy and Pharaoh and Scarlett this way. Probably because I was reading Eat Pray Love at the time, the quintessential chick book.

Sweetwater is nowhere near as sweet these days. I just had a buddy there get his face slashed from orbital bone to the corner of his mouth. A quiet, non-gang-affiliated, middle-aged black dude who minds his own business and respects everyone. They permanently disfigured this guy so they could take their time emptying the few soups he had in his locker while he was getting medical attention. Pathetic.

But I’m getting sidetracked here. I guess being so near the end of this long prison sentence has got me looking back. The point of this was to share the 10 best memoirs I’ve read over the last 20 years. So here we go…

• Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert—Loaded with wisdom, humor, and spectacular writing. I know this book by heart. Even though it’s been a decade since I last read it, I can still vividly remember multiple passages: the soccer game, the paragraph on the word “harbor,” her description of the meditative experience… But her riff on the Oak and the Acorn was so profoundly instrumental in my own development that I quoted it in my own little hybrid memoir. Twice.
• Corrections in Ink by Keri Blakinger—Possibly the best memoir I’ve ever read. Especially on the subjects of addiction and incarceration. Ms. Blakinger is fluent in both the Ivey league and the underworld, and her storytelling style is equal parts gritty and poetic. The world is fortunate that she tamed her demons and shook off her chains in time to tell this story.
• The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama—I’ve read this one a couple times too. The former President wrote this well before his historic run to the White House in 2008. Although he has been dismissed as a “far left progressive” by those who would view him as the enemy no matter what he believed or wrote, this book is a meditation on pragmatism and moderation and working together. And a masterclass on how we arrived at this point in our nation’s history by a constitutional law scholar.
• Whip Smart by Melissa Febos—I wrote an essay about Ms. Febos that is included in my own hybrid memoir, Letters to the Universe, called “Back to Work.” It focuses on a couple letters we exchanged when I was in solitary confinement in 2016. This book is her first, a memoir on the time she spent working as a dominatrix in a Manhattan dungeon.
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott—A must for aspiring writers. One of the best books on the craft ever written.
• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls—And I thought my family was dysfunctional. I have sent this book to many of my incarcerated female friends at Lowell. This is one of my favorite books of all time, irrespective of genre. I’ve never seen the movie, but I know Woody Harrelson played the father.
• On Writing by Stephen King—I came across many of my other favorite books by combing through his reading lists in the back. (The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.) Stephen King is a national treasure.
• Wild by Cheryl Strayed—There is quote in this book that is foundational for me: “Life is the story that we tell ourselves in our heads…”
• The Dirt by Motley Crue—I wasn’t really a fan of the band or their music when I picked this up. I mean, I was familiar with “Home Sweet Home” and “Wild Side” and “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)”. After all, I am a child of the ’80s. But this book, with its bottle of Jack on the cover, is compulsively readable. Maybe the best rock memoir of all time.
• We’re All Doing Time by Bo Lozoff—A book that changed my life. It is still free to prisoners from the Human Kindness Foundation. Bo and his wife Sita spent decades visiting death row and maximum-security units teaching men and women meditation and yoga. If you’ve ever read Consider the Dragonfly, you’ll remember it as the book that Smoke left CJ.