MOST BEAUTIFUL NEW MEMOIRS
While a great novel can a thrill to read, a true story can be even more compelling, especially in the form of a memoir. Well-written memoirs give us the chance be a part of someone else’s life experience.
We’ve curated a collection of beautiful new memoirs from a diverse range of authors, from the long awaited Michelle Obama book, to photojournalist journeys by Steve Raymer and Tory Bilski, to stories from centenarians interviewed by Neenah Ellis, to foodie tales with accompanying recipes by Boris Fishman and Dawn Drzal.
Reading the histories of these people is not only fascinating and entertaining as we get glimpses of their rich lives, but it is also rewarding personally, as we see pieces of ourselves, given our shared humanity.
The books are beautifully written, and some beautifully illustrated with breathtaking photos. They are inspiring. They are inviting. They belong on your reading list.
Travel with photojournalist Steve Raymer in his new book, Somewhere West of Lonely: My Life in Pictures.
Known for finding and capturing the beauty of everyday people, in both their everyday struggles and their more dire crises and tragedies, Raymer puts heart and soul into his images. With more than 150 photographs taken around the world, the book gives us a fascinating view of humanity at both its weakest and its most resilient. We see courage and hope persist as people live through the devastating famines in Bangladesh and Ethiopia, as the reel from the the massive corruption crippling the Trans-Alaska Pipeline,
“Woven within a delicate lattice of beautiful images come the wisdom and love of life; forays into peacefulness and harsh reality; lessons learned; the sage advice handed down from the giants of our profession to the most worthy of photojournalists―Steve Raymer. The photographs chosen for this book almost caress one another, allowing us to travel on a road where each turn reveals the profundity of 'lonely.' Raymer's words, laden with a self-effacing tenderness, are to be cherished and retold. Time and time again.”
-- Maria Mann, European Pressphoto Agency
Steve Raymer is a former National Geographic photojournalist. He has won major awards for his work, including Magazine Photographer of the Year―one of photojournalism’s most coveted awards―for his reporting on the global hunger crisis.
Becoming, by Michelle Obama. Courtesy of Crown Publishing Group.
Becoming, by Michelle Obama, is an intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States.
The book chronicles her extraordinary life, from her childhood, growing up on the South Side of Chicago, to her studies at Princeton University and Harvard Law School, to her work as a prominent lawyer at the Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin, where she met her future husband, Barack Obama, to her eight years at the White House where she raised her two daughters and led important initiatives as a powerful advocate for women and girls. Mrs. Obama also founded the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an organization that prepares young people for careers in public service.
Michelle Obama is one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. She is respected for her impressive accomplishments and beloved for her down-to-earth, witty, and warm persona. Her memoir is deeply reflective and beautifully written. It is utterly inspiring.
If I Live to Be 100: Lessons from the Centenarians, by Neenah Ellis, is an elegant collection of memoirs, telling the stories of some of America’s oldest men and women. Ellis, formerly producer for NPR’s All Things Considered, interviewed a range of people, all over 100 years old, living across the US. Their stories give us a picture of what life was like at the very beginning of the century, and how things have changed over time.
We hear from a couple who courted by horse and sleigh in Vermont during the winter of 1918, the oldest living black lesbian, a row-boating centenarian with a penchant for skinny dipping, and many more.
The book was originally intended to be an American history project, however it emerged as a personal journey of growth and transformation for Ellis. And beyond the diversity and historical significance of these stories, the common theme is the friendships, love, and community these precious people have experienced, and the lessons they impart.
Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents, and Dinner Table, by Boris Fishman, is a gorgeous memoir that tells the story of an immigrant family and their journey from Soviet Belarus, across Europe, to the United States.
Family life, spanning three generations, is centered around the meals they share. The stories are warm and sweet, accompanied by scrumptious recipes that navigate across cultures, beginning with the heavenly dishes created by Oksana, the author’s grandfather’s Ukrainian aide.
Food brought Fishman’s parents together for the first time. Bread became his grandmother’s obsession during the Holocaust and remained so throughout the rest of her life. We follow Fishman’s foodie quests from a farm in the Hudson River Valley, to the kitchen of a Russian restaurant on the Lower East Side of New York, to a Native American reservation in South Dakota, and back to Oksana’s kitchen in Brooklyn.
“Savage Feast” is a delicious exploration of identity, belonging, family, displacement, and love. Told with witty prose and full of heart, it will inspire your own hungers.
“Central to Fishman’s insightful, absorbing memoir is hunger…The trauma of cultural loss, shared by many immigrants, was assuaged by his grandfather’s home health aide, whose recipes for potato latkes, stuffed cabbage, braised rabbit, liver pie, and scores more make the memoir a succulent treat… A graceful memoir recounting a family’s stories with candor and sensitivity.”
--Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
Boris Fishman was born in Minsk, Belarus, and immigrated to the United States in 1988 at the age of nine. His journalism, essays, and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Check out his award-winning first novel, A Replacement Life.
The Bread and the Knife: A Life in 26 Bites, by Dawn Drzal, is a memoir along the lines of M. F. K. Fisher’s epic epicurean book, The Gastronomical Me.
Starting with "A Is for Al Dente," the 26 chapters present an alphabet of food memories that track the author’s life, from childhood, through career as a food writer, through marriage, and divorce.
“Sumptuous . . . Employing various dishes or meals as Proustian madeleines, the author dives into the sensuous experiences of her life.”―Booklist
“Sumptuous, sensuous . . . Drzal is a gifted storyteller who mixes humor and pathos as deftly as whisking scrambled eggs. . . . The Bread and the Knife joins the ranks of my other favorites in the cooking and food memoir genre, . . . I loved it .”
“A deeply engaging collection of beautifully written story essays in which food triggers memory in a Proustian way.”
“Each of the twenty-six brief, glowing chapters in this book unwraps a food memory . . . arranged A to Z, and you'll wish the alphabet had more letters just so Dawn Drzal would keep on writing.”
―Laura Shapiro, author of What She Ate
"Food expresses our bounty and generosity, love of family and friends, sure. But food is also inextricably wound up in regret, fear, betrayal and failure, which is harder to swallow (as it were.) Drzal capture how the pleasures and frustrations of providing sustenance for one's loved ones and oneself seep into all of our painful, wondrous human experiences. Spanning the globe yet never straying from the intimacy of the simplest of meals, The Bread and the Knife cuts into the stuff of life, both the dramatic and the prosaic, and the stuff of sustenance is the blade."
―Julie Powell, author of Julie and Juliaand Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession.
Dawn Drzal, is a former cookbook editor, has published articles and essays in the New York Times, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Food & Wine, O., and the Antioch Review. Her essays have been anthologized in, among other places, Eat Memory: Great Writers at the Table, edited by Amanda Hesser, founder of Food52.
Wild Horses of the Summer Sun: A Memoir of Iceland, by Tory Bilski, is a wonderful story of adventure and friendship featuring a group of women who ride Icelandic horses.
Each June, Bilski and her friends meet up in Reykjavik, then head to northern Iceland, near the Greenland Sea, to a remote horse farm to ride, wild and free, to their hearts’ content.
The women first met, many years ago when they each came to ride Icelandic horses on their individual adventures. Their common passions fueled their lasting friendships.
The book spans years, as their relationships with each other deepen. Filled with adventure, self-discovery, and humor, this memoir is reminiscent of Eat, Pray, Love and Under the Tuscan Sun.
Part journal, part travelogue, part scrapbook, and filled with 16 pages of color photographs, we feel like we are on a wild ride, right along with these beautiful women.
Check out Tory Bilski’s blog Icelandica, dedicated to the annual summer trips.
Read more about Beautiful Memoirs all this week on BeautifulNow, including Beautiful Chimp Family Vacation, Magnificent Memoir: Moving Water, and Memories of Buildings Long Forgotten Now. And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.
By Steve Raymer. Rickshaw pullers rest on a backstreet in Calcutta, India.
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