American memoirs

American memoirs

Cheri Register won the 2001 American Book Award for "Packinghouse Daughter," her memoir of growing up in Albert Lea, Minn. Here she recommends five memoirs, limiting her choices to American books, she says, in order to avoid the issues of translation. "There are bolder, more experimental memoirs that I like but wouldn't necessarily recommend as foundational," she says. "I trust that most readers of the book page will find something unfamiliar even on this list."

Maxine Hong Kingston "The Woman Warrior" (Alfred A. Knopf, 1976)

Kingston carved out the niche for literary memoir by combining the first-person narrative and verity of autobiography with the scene-setting and sensory detail of fiction, enriched by her mother's Chinese "talk-story." I think of this book, always first on my list, as the Great American Memoir, because it shows how a child of immigrants forges an identity out of her American experience and her family's cultural heritage.

Mary Karr "The Liars' Club" (Viking, 1995)

Yes, many memoirs are telltale accounts of family dysfunction, but this one is told with affection, loyalty, and a drive to understand what makes good-hearted people fare poorly. It is deeply layered and richly textured, and gives life to its setting (coastal East Texas) and voice to its social class (oil industry workers).

Diane Wilson "Spirit Car" (Borealis Books, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2006)

There are many worthy Minnesota memoirs, but this one goes on the "must" list because it helps bind the deepest wound in Minnesota history. In tracing her mixed-race ancestry back to 1862, Wilson both personalizes the Dakota Conflict and challenges the dominant stories of how it played out. Her book is an excellent example of "documentary memoir," which draws on archival research as well as memory and family history.

Mark Doty "Heaven's Coast" (HarperCollins, 1995)

If you're looking for something lyrical and contemplative, poet Doty is the master. Whether he is writing of love and loss in the AIDS epidemic, as in this adult memoir, a boyhood in awe of beauty ("Firebird"), or the human-canine bond ("Dog Years"), Doty's eloquent voice is respectful, sometimes reverential and engagingly unpretentious.

Barack Obama "Dreams From My Father" (Random House, 1995)

No ghost-written political résumé, this is a genuine memoir, intelligent, candid and skillfully written. My daughter brought it to me in 2005 and urged, "Mom, you have to read this; he's just like us" -- "us" meaning Korean adoptees raised in white families. I read it and wished we could elect someone this insightful as president. Read this book alongside James McBride's "The Color of Water" and John Edgar Wideman's "Fatheralong."