Recommended Works of Creative Nonfiction for
Sonya's CNF students

This is not an exhaustive list but I do add to it pretty often;
I use this with my creative writing students for book-length presentations. The thumbnail descriptions are not book reviews, just notes on subject matter for my students.

If you want to read a book not on this list, you must have it approved by me first.

Just to warn you in advance...I'll probably say no and steer you back to this list.

Abbey, Edward. Desert Solitaire. Adventures of a wildman fighting environmental destruction.

Agee, James and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Life among sharecroppers in the South of the 1940s.

Almond, Steve. Candyfreak. Hilarious search for the chocolate heart of America.

Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son (collection of essays by noted African-American writer)

Barber, Charles. Songs from the Black Chair. A memoir on mental illness and friendship from the point of view of a social worker.

Berry, Wendell: many books (mostly on environmental issues)

Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood, the first "nonfiction novel," about murders of a family and the trials of the murderers.

Cary, Lorene. Black Ice. An African-American girl confronts culture shock at an elite New England prep school.

Christman, Jill. Dark Room. Growing up with hippies, meditations on memory, violence, and family legacy.

Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking, an account of the year after the death of her husband; Slouching Toward Bethlehem, a collection of influential essays on the United States, the West, American politics.

Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood. Environmental explorations.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickeled and Dimed, immersion reporting on the minimum wage.

Ehrlich, Gretel. The Solace of Open Spaces (essays)

Erem, Suzan. Labor Pains. The story of a labor organizer in Chicago trying to survive in her work.

Fadiman, Anne, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Immersion journalism with the Hmong community in Minneapolis.

Fuller, Alexandra. Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight, a memoir of a childhood in Africa.

Gay, Peter. My German Question. A noted historian tells about growing up as a Jewish boy in Nazi Germany.

Ghosh, Amitav. Incendiary Circumstances. Essays on international politics, a focus on southeast Asia

Goldberg, Natalie. Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America. Zen meditation and writing.

Gonzalez, Ray. Memory Fever: A Journey Beyond El Paso Del Norte.

Gornick, Vivian. Fierce Attachments. Essays on growing up in New York, family relationships.

Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda

Grealy, Lucy. Autobiography of a Face. Growing up with a facial deformity, cancer.

Griffin, Susan. A Chorus of Stones. Gender, family history, and military reflections.

Hastings, Eli. Falling Room. An activist of the 1990s reviews his political passions, actions, and influences.

Hampl, Patricia. I Could Tell You Stories. Essays ranging from Catholic girlhood to literary criticism.

Heat Moon, William Least. Blue Highways: A Journey Into America. A road trip after a divorce.

Hersey, John. Hiroshima. Immersion reporting after the atomic bombings.

Karr, Mary. The Liar’s Club. Growing up as a wild girl in poor, rural Texas.

Kidder, Tracy. Among Schoolchildren and many others. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World is a fantastic and inspiring chronicle of the work of a committed doctor working to cure infectious disesases among the world's poor.

Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. Immigration and identity, Jamaica & American identity, colonialism, family relationships.

Kingsolver, Barbara. High Tide in Tucson: essays on a wide range of things, concern for the environment, history, and social justice combined with the dilemma of raising kids. Animal, Vegetable, Mineral; a year of farming for environmental sustainability.

Kingston, Maxine Hong. China Men and The Woman Warrior. Chinese-American immigrant experiences, using mixed-genre imagined reconstruction of family stories.

Kuusisto, Stephen. Planet of the Blind. Growing up without admitting he was blind.

Lamott, Anne. Operating Instructions. Life as a single mother—very funny.

Lavender, Bee. Lessons in Taxidermy. A life in the Pacific Northwest with chaos, accidents, and cancer.

Link, Aaron Raz, and Hilda Link. What Becomes You. Sexual reassignment surgery, gender identity, a memoir co-written by a mother and son.

Lorde, Audre. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. A “biomythography” of a noted lesbian African-American activist.

Mackall, Joe. The Last Street Before Cleveland. Working-class Midwestern memoir, addiction. Also Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish.

Martin, Lee. From Our House. A memoir about a midwestern, rural boyhood; Turning Bones. family researched and imagined family life history.

Marquart, Deb. The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere. North Dakota, adolescence, identity.

McCourt, Frank. Angela’s Ashes. Irish immigration. 'Tis, the sequel.

McPhee, John. Coming Into the Country. Environment and wilderness.

Mendelsohn, Daniel. Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million. A literary critic searches and travels the world for traces of members of his family who perished in the Holocaust.

Millet, Kate. Flying. A noted feminist’s struggle with manic depression, activism, lesbianism, and academia. Also by Millet: Sita, the story of a love affair in the ‘70s. *These are non-traditional, so if you're looking for an involving narrative, you might steer clear!*

Monson, Ander. Neck Deep and Other Predicaments. Essays that experiment with the form of the essay itself. Hilarious and strange.

Moore, Dinty W. Between Panic and Desire. Experimental and linked essays with a good dose of humor.

Moraga, Cherríe. Loving in the War Years. A blend of Chicana lesbian theory with personal stories, poetry and scenes.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory. An exiled Russian author (who wrote Lolita) writes about memory and childhood (beautifully).

Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran. A female professor’s experiences in 1980s Iran.

Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. Orwell’s adventures and trials in the Spanish Civil War.

Ray, Janisse. Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. Southeastern Georgia ecology and working-class family history.

Rodriguez, Richard. The Hunger of Memory. and Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father.

Roorbach, Bill. Summers With Juliet. Essays about the author and his then-girlfriend, now wife. Temple Stream, a segmented love letter to a river and to the relationship between humanity and wilderness.

Sanders, Scott Russell. The Paradise of Bombs, Staying Put, many other collections.

Schwartz, Mimi. Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed, an honest and fiesty look at a marriage; Good Neighbors, Bad Times, Echoes of My Father's German Village, a gripping retracing of family lore to recreate the experience of a small German town during the Holocaust.

Sedaris, David. Me Talk Pretty One Day. Very funny essays by a popular NPR commentator.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley.

Slater, Lauren. Welcome To My Country. Mental illness memoir; Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir.

Sullivan, Robert. The Meadowlands. Urban ecology and immersion reporting.

Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. Essays on her writing and life.

Williams, Terry Tempest. Refuge. An environmentalist looks at her Utah family’s struggle with breast cancer.

Wolff, Tobias. This Boy’s Life. Remembrances of a boyhood, abusive stepfather.

Wright, Richard. Black Boy. African-American boyhood and politics.