Books like Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
12 books with a reading profile close to Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde. Deep, inward-looking and contemplative; a moderate read.
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1
How to Say Babylon
Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, literary
Safiya Sinclair recounts her childhood in Jamaica under the rigid authority of her father, a strict Rastafarian musician who enforced a sequestered life to protect his daughters from "Babylon," his term for the corrupti…
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2
Mother Mary Comes to Me
Also inward-looking · memoir, literary
Arundhati Roy's 'Mother Mary Comes To Me' is a collection of essays and non-fiction pieces rather than a novel, despite the evocative title.
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3
Letters to Milena
by Franz Kafka
Also deep and inward-looking · memoir, literary
Franz Kafka’s correspondence with Milena Jesenská begins as a professional exchange regarding the translation of his prose into Czech but quickly pivots into a private record of obsessive emotional attachment.
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4
Tropical classical
by Pico Iyer
Also contemplative · memoir, literary
In this collection of essays, Pico Iyer examines the collision of Western cultural exports with the local realities of the post-colonial world.
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5
Men We Reaped: A Memoir
by Jesmyn Ward
Also deep and inward-looking · memoir, literary
Jesmyn Ward chronicles the lives and deaths of five young Black men from her community in DeLisle, Mississippi, including her own brother.
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6
The End of Eddy
Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, literary
Eddy Bellegueule grows up in a poor village in northern France, in a family where men are expected to be tough and unemployment and alcohol are common.
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7
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
Also deep and inward-looking · memoir, literary
In this memoir, William Styron documents his descent into a paralyzing clinical depression that began during a trip to Paris in 1985.
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8
Autobiography of a Face
by Lucy Grealy
Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, literary
Lucy Grealy describes her childhood diagnosis of Ewing’s sarcoma and the subsequent removal of much of her jawbone.
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9
This Boy's Life
by Tobias Wolff
Also inward-looking · memoir, literary
Tobias Wolff’s memoir recounts his nomadic upbringing in the 1950s as he travels across the United States with his divorced mother to escape an abusive boyfriend.
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10
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Also inward-looking · memoir, literary
Jeanette Winterson’s semi-autobiographical novel follows Jeanette, a young girl adopted into a strict Pentecostal household in Northern England.
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11
Paula
Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, literary
Isabel Allende began writing this chronicle in 1991 while sitting bedside in a Spanish hospital where her daughter, Paula, lay in a porphyria-induced coma.
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12
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, literary
Jeanette Winterson’s memoir returns to her upbringing in a strict Pentecostal household in Northern England, expanding on the lived reality behind her debut novel.
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