Autobiographies
                                                                list prepared by Dr. Thomas Palakeel
 
 

ALL TIME CLASSICS
masterpieces from around the world
CHINA
contemporary works about living through a revolution
EDUCATION NARRATIVES
the struggle and triumph of learning and growing
ENGLAND
mainstream English works on class, gender, intellectual development
ENVIRONMENTAL FOCUS
narratives about living and learning from nature
FRANCE
intellectual and aesthetic autobiographies in the tradition of Abelard and Rousseau
GAY LIFE
records of private and public struggles for sexual identity
INDIA
autobiographies that reveal the ancient and the modern temperament
JEWISH EXPERIENCE, HOLOCAUST
records of suffering and survival
ILLNESS AS A LIFE STORY
lives scarred and defined by the broken bodies
LATIN AMERICA
autobiographies from a wide range of subcultures from within the Latin traditions
LITERARY AND AESTHETIC DEVELOPMENT
life searches that lead toward aesthetic clarity
UNITED STATES
several lists that cover the subcultures within the States
RUSSIA
classic autobiographies before and after the revolution
MENTAL DEPRESSION
records of suffering and triumph experienced from deep within
SPIRITUAL SEEKERS
the old genre, new territories
SCIENCE
searching and researching in the world of matter and mind
WOMEN'S STRUGGLES
women's encounters in a world defined by men

ALL TIME CLASSICS

The Words
                     by Jean Paul Sartre
Confessions of St.Augustine
                     by Augustine
The Confessions
                     by Jean-Jacques Rosseau, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Periodic Table
                     by Primo Levi
Frederick Douglass : Autobiographies
                     by Frederick Douglas
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
                     by Maya Angelou
The Seven Storey Mountain
                     by Thomas Merton
My Childhood
                     by Maxim Gorky
De Profundis
                     by Oscar Wilde
Childhood, Boyhood and Youth
                     by Leo Tolstoy
The Woman Warrior : Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
                     by Maxine Hong Kingston
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
                     by Thomas De Quincey

CHINA

The Woman Warrior : Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
                     by Maxine Hong Kingston
Paper Daughter : A Memoir
                     by M. Elaine Mar
Daughter of the River: An Autobiography
                     by Hong Ying
The Attic : Memoir of a Chinese Landlord's Son
                     by Guanlong Cao
A Daughter of Han : The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman
                     by Lao Toai-Toai
Recollections of West Hunan
                     by Congwen Shen

The Education of Henry Adams
                        by Henry Adams
Hunger of Memory : The Education of Richard Rodriguez
                    by Richard Rodriguez
A Romantic Education
                    by Patricia Hampl
A Small Place
                    by Jamaica Kincaid
Lost in Translation : A Life in a New Language
                     by Eva Hoffman

ENGLAND 

Father and Son
                     by Edmund Gosse
Autobiography
                     by John Stuart Mill
Autobiography
                     by  Bertrand Russell
Autobiographies: Inishfallen, Fare Thee Well Rose and Crown Sunset and Evening Star
                     by Sean O'Casey
Grace Abounding With Other Spiritual Autobiographies (Oxford World's Classic)
                     by John Bunyan
The Mirror of the Sea
             by Joseph Conrad
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
              by T. E. Lawrence
Surprised by Joy:The Shape of My Early Life
             by C.S. Lewis
The Golden String
         by Bede Griffiths
A Sort of Life
               by Graham Greene
The Memoirs of a Survivor
                     by Doris May Lessing
Good-Bye to All That
              by Robert Graves
Smile Please : An Unfinished Autobiography
                     by Jean Rhys

ENVIRONMENTAL FOCUS

Born Naked
                     by Farley Mowat
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
                     by Annie Dillard
Sand Country Almanac
                     by Aldo Leopold
Desert Solitaire
                     by Edward Abbey
The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
                     by John Muir
Confessions of an Eco-Redneck
                      by Steve Chapple
Refuge : An Unnatural History of Family and Place
                     by Terry Tempest Williams

The Words
                     by Jean Paul Sartre
The Confessions
                     by Jean-Jacques Rosseau, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Childhood
                     by Nathalie Sarraute
Tristes Tropiques
by Claude Levi-Strauss
Dear Departed
by Marguerite Yourcenar
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
by Simone de Beauvoir
A Woman's Story
by Annie Ernaux

This Wild Darkness : The Story of My Death
                     by Harold Brodkey
The Naked Civil Servant (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
                     by Quentin Crisp
Heaven on Wheels
                     by Firdaus Kanga
Two or Three Things I know for Sure
by Dorothy Allison

ILLNESS AS A LIFE STORY

Autobiography of a Face
by Lucy Grealy
Words for a Deaf Daughter
by Paul West
The Story of My Life
by Helen Keller
Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness
by John Hull
A Bomb in the Brain: A Heroic Tale of Science, Surgery, and Survival
by Steve Fishman
Train Go Sorry: Inside a Dead World
by Leah Cohen
7 Tattoos : A Memoir in the Flesh
                     by Peter Trachtenberg

Autobiography : The Story of My Experiments With Truth
                     by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Jawaharlal Nehru : An Autobiography
                     by Jawaharlal Nehru
Sound-Shadows of the New World
                     by Ved Mehta
Vedi by Ved Mehta
Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
                     by Nirad C. Chaudhuri
Thy Hand, Great Anarch (Two volumes)
                     by by Nirad C. Chaudhuri
My son's father: an autobiography by Dom F. Moraes
My God died young by Sasthi Brata
My Story by Kamala Das
My Days : A Memoir
                     by R. K. Narayan
Autobiography of a Yogi
                     by Yogananda Paramahamsa

JEWISH EXPERIENCE, HOLOCAUST

Survival in Auschwitz : The Nazi Assault on Humanity
                     by Primo Levi
The Periodic Table
                     by Primo Levi
All Rivers Run to the Sea : Memoirs
                     by Elie Wiesel
Behind the Border
                     by Nina Kossman
Burned Child Seeks the Fire : A Memoir
                     by Cordelia Edvardson
Dry Tears : The Story of a Lost Childhood (Gb772)
                     by Nechama Tec
Because of Romek: A Holocaust Survivor's Memoir
                     by David Faber
Seed of Sarah : Memoirs of a Survivor (Illini Books Edition)
                     by Judith Magyar Isaacson

LATIN AMERICA

Bitita's Diary : The Childhood Memoirs of Carolina Maria De Jesus
                     by Carolina Maria De Jesus
I, Rigoberta Menchu : An Indian Woman in Guatemala
                     by Rigoberta Menchu
A Fish in the Water
by Mario Vargas Llosa

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog
                 by Dylan Thomas
Ake: The Years of Childhood
                 by Wole Soyinka
Wordstruck: A Memoir
               by Robert McNeil
Remember to Remember
                 by Henry Miller
The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams
                  by William Carlos Williams
A Backward Glance
                 by Edith Wharton
Journey Around My Room
               by Louise Bogan
Kafka was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir
              by Anatole Broyard
Autobiography
            by Henry James
Fugitive Spring: A Memoir
         by Deborah Digges
Self-Consciousness
         by John Updike
Report to Greco
         by Nikos Kazantzakis
Growing-Up
               by Russell Baker
Out of Africa
             by Isak Dinesen
Half Remembered
         by Peter Davison

UNITES STATES

Life on the Mississippi
                     by Mark Twain
Heathen Days : 1890-1936
                     by H. L. Mencken
Autobiography
                     by Benjamin Franklin
The Long Loneliness: An Autobiography
                    by Dorothy Day
One Writer's Beginnings
                     by Eudora Welty

Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
                     by Mary McCarthy
Stop-Time
                     by Frank, Conroy
An American Childhood
                     by Annie Dillard
Bronx Primitive : Portraits in a Childhood
                     by Kate Simon
Dreaming of Columbus : A Boyhood in the Bronx
                     by Michael Pearson
This Boy's Life : A Memoir
                     by Tobias Wolff
The Duke of Deception : Memories of My Father
                     by Geoffrey Wolff
All Souls : A Family Story from Southie
                     by Michael Patrick MacDonald
The Shadow Man
                     by Mary Gordon
My Sister Life : The Story of My Sister's Disappearance
                     by Maria Flook

Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady
                    by Florence King
A Childhood : The Biography of a Place
                     by Harry Crews
Darkness Visible : A Memoir of Madness
                     by William Styron
Clear Springs : A Memoir
                     by Bobbie Ann Mason
All over but the Shoutin'
                     by Rick Bragg
A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing
                by Reynolds Price
Coming of Age in Mississippi
                 by Anne Moody

African-American experience--

Frederick Douglass : Autobiographies
                     by Frederick Douglas
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
                     by Maya Angelou
Soul on Ice
                     by Eldridge Cleaver
Black Boy : (American Hunger)
                     by Richard Wright
Bone Black : Memories of Girlhood
                     by bell hooks
Brothers and Keepers
                     by John Edgar Wideman
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
                     by Malcolm X
Colored People : A Memoir
                     by Henry Louis, Jr. Gates
The Big Sea: An Autobiography
                      by Langston Hughes
Dust Tracks on a Road
                      by Zora Neale Hurston
Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl
                      by Harriet Jacobs
Up From Slavery
by Booker T. Washington
Leaving Pipe Shop : Memories of Kin
                     by Deborah E. McDowell

Way to Rainy Mountain
                     by N. Scott Momaday
The Names : A Memoir (Sun Tracks, Vol 16)
                     by N. Scott Momaday
Education of Little Tree
                     by Forrest Carter
Bead on an Anthill : A Lakota Childhood
                     by Delphine Red Shirt
Lakota Woman
                     by Mary Crow Dog
Indian Boyhood
by Charles Alexander Eastman
Earth Horizon
by Mary Austin

Always of Home : A Southern Illinois Childhood
                     by Edgar Allen Imhoff
The Attic : A Memoir (The Iowa Heritage Collection)
                     by Curtis Harnack
How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir
                     by Phyllis Barber
Ancestors: A Family History
                      by William Maxwell
Volcano: A Memoir of Hawaii
                     by Garret Hongo
Split : A Counterculture Childhood
                     by Lisa Michaels
A Hole in the Sky: A Memoir
                     by William Kittredge
Walker in the City
                     by Alfred Kazin
The Liars' Poker
                     by Mary Karr
Capirotada : A Nogales Memoir
                     by Alberto Alvaro Rios

RUSSIA

My Childhood
                     by Maxim Gorky
Childhood, Boyhood and Youth
                     by Leo Tolstoy
Speak, Memory : An Autobiography Revisited
                     by Vladimir Nabokov
Hope Against Hope : A Memoir
                     by Nadezhda Mandelstam
Man Is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag
                     by Janusz Bardach
Kolyma Tales (Twentieth-Century Classics)
                     by Varlam Shalamov
Journey into the Whirlwind
                     by Eugenia Semenovna Ginzburg

MENTAL DEPRESSION/PSYCHOLOGICAL SELF-PORTRAITS

Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl : The True Story of 'Renee'
                     by Marguerite Sechehaye
Prozac Nation : Young and Depressed in America : A Memoir
                     by Elizabeth Wurtzel
Prozac Diary
                     by Lauren Slater
Undercurrents : A Life Beneath the Surface
                     by Martha Manning
Girl Interrupted
                     by Susanna Kaysen
My Mother's Keeper : A Daughter's Memoir of Growing Up in the Shadow of Schizophrenia
                     by Tara Elgin Holley
The Quiet Room : A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness
                     by Lori Schiller
Mad House : Growing Up in the Shadow of Mentally Ill Siblings
                     by Clea Simon
Moon is Broken; A Mother's True Story
                     by Eleanor Craig
They Cage the Animals at Night
                     by Jennings Michael Burch
The Confessions of Aleister Crowley : An Autobiography
                     by Aleister Crowley

SPIRITUAL SEEKERS

Pilgrim Souls : An Anthology of Spiritual Autobiographies
                     by Amy Mandelker (Editor)
The Sacred Journey
                     by Frederick Buechner
Confessions : The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest
                     by Matthew Fox
The Seven Storey Mountain
                     by Thomas Merton
The Altar Boy Chronicles
                     by Tony Pasquarello
Blue Windows : A Christian Science Childhood
                     by Barbara Wilson
Dakota : A Spiritual Geography
                     by Kathleen Norris

Steroids Made It Possible (Profiles, Pathways, and Dreams :
Autobiographies of Eminent Chemists)
                     by Carl Djerassi
Double Helix
                     by Francis Crick
Blackberry Winter
                      by Margaret Mead
The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine-Watcher
                      by Thomas Lewis
Raising the Dead: A Doctor's Encounter with His Own Mortality
                       by Richard Selzer
Naturalist
          by Edward O. Wilson
An Anthropology of Everyday Life
          by Edward T. Hall

  WOMEN'S STRUGGLES 

A  Touch of Innocence: Memoirs of Childhood
                   by Katherine Dunham
Cherry : A Memoir
                     by Mary Karr

My Life With the Chimpanzees
by Jane Goodal

Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found
                     by Jennifer Lauck

I Loved You All
                     by Paula Sharp

1915 : The Death of Innocence
                     by Lyn MacDonald
American Girl: Scenes from a Small-Town Girlhood
                   by Mary Cantwell
After Silence : Rape and My Journey Back
                     by Nancy Venable Raine
A Diary from Dixie
                    by Mary Chestnutt
The Liars' Poker
                    by Mary Karr
Telling : A Memoir of Rape and Recovery
                     by Patricia Weaver Francisco
Almost a Woman
                     by Esmeralda Santiago
Near Breathing : A Memoir of a Difficult Birth
                     by Kathryn Rhett