Books like Becoming

01

Educated: A Memoir

Tara Westover · Memoir

Educated is Tara Westover's memoir about growing up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho and eventually earning a PhD in history from Cambridge University.

Both dig into identity.

02

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

Trevor Noah · Memoir

Born a Crime is Trevor Noah's memoir about growing up mixed-race in South Africa during the final years of apartheid and its chaotic aftermath.

A kindred memoir read.

03

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates · Memoir

Between the World and Me is a letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his teenage son, Samori, about what it means to live in a Black body in the United States.

Both dig into identity.

04

When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi · Memoir

When Breath Becomes Air is Paul Kalanithi's account of his life before and after being diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer at 36, while completing his residency in neurosurgery at Stanford.

Both dig into identity.

05

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Cheryl Strayed · Memoir

Wild is Cheryl Strayed's account of hiking 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone in 1995 at twenty-six, with no prior backpacking experience and a pack so heavy she could barely lift it.

Both dig into resilience.

06

Finding Me: A Memoir

Viola Davis · Memoir

Finding Me is Viola Davis's account of her childhood in extreme poverty in Central Falls, Rhode Island, and her path from that starting point to becoming one of the most decorated actors in the history of American theater and film.

Shares identity and resilience with Becoming.

07

Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream

H. G. Bissinger · Memoir

Friday Night Lights is H.

Shares identity and race and class with Becoming.

08

Greenlights

Matthew McConaughey · Memoir

Greenlights is Matthew McConaughey's memoir-philosophy hybrid, built around decades of journals he kept starting in his teens.

Shares identity and resilience with Becoming.

09

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou · Memoir

Maya Angelou's first volume of autobiography covers her childhood and adolescence in Stamps, Arkansas and San Francisco during the 1930s and 1940s, ending with the birth of her son at age sixteen.

Shares identity and resilience with Becoming.

10

Know My Name: A Memoir

Chanel Miller · Memoir

Know My Name is Chanel Miller's memoir of being sexually assaulted behind a dumpster at Stanford University in 2015, being identified publicly as only "Emily Doe" throughout the subsequent trial, and the experience of navigating a legal process while the perpetrator — Stanford swimmer Brock Turner — became the more visible subject of the story.

Shares identity and resilience with Becoming.

11

Lucky Man: A Memoir

Michael J. Fox · Memoir

Michael J.

Shares identity and resilience with Becoming.

12

The Glass Castle: A Memoir

Jeannette Walls · Memoir

The Glass Castle is Jeannette Walls's memoir about growing up as the second of four children in a family that moved constantly across the American Southwest and West Virginia, rarely had enough to eat, and existed almost entirely outside conventional institutions.

Shares identity and resilience with Becoming.