1. The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After - Clemantine Wamariya
This memoir follows the story of Clemantine Wamariya and her survival through the Rwandan Genocide. Clemantine was four years old when the massacre began in 1994, only one year older than me, and I found myself constantly thinking while reading, "that could have been me." She doesn't describe a war that took place far off in the past, but rather the time period of my childhood and knowing that makes the story all too real. Another interesting thing about this memoir is that it doesn't only follow Clemantine's life fleeing from conflict and being a refugee, it follows her life in America as well. The memoir begins with her living in Chicago and the chapters contrast her life in America where she is living the "American Dream" then flash back to the horrors she endured all over various African countries during her childhood. The memoir is moving and shows that although the genocide is over, the scars remain. Check out her Tedtalks on Youtube as she recalls her childhood and tells the fable of the girl who smiled beads.Adults often said to me, "You're so strong, you're so brave." But I didn't want to be strong, I didn't want to be brave. I wanted a fresh, fluffy brain, one that was not tormented by wars and fear. I wanted to backtrack in time to a world of innocence, to regress into a landscape of The Boxcar Children. It was so nice there.
2. Educated- Tara Westover
Tara was born in rural Idaho to Doomsday parents who believed the end of the world was coming at any moment. She was never allowed to go to public school or even see a doctor as her father mistrusted the government and believed they were part of a larger conspiracy. Born at home, Tara never had a birth certificate, never even knew the exact date of her birth, and grew up without an education. She worked in a dangerous scrap yard and it wasn't until the age of 16 that she decided to purchase algebra books and attempt to educate herself well enough to pass the ACT and get into a decent college to escape the toxic environment she had with her siblings and parents. Fast forward in time, Tara completed her undergraduate at BYU, earned a fellowship at Harvard, and received her Masters and PhD from Cambridge. She became educated. The book follows her journey to college and beyond in the last quarter of the memoir, but it's mainly about her childhood. It reminded me so much of The Glass Castle which is one of my favorite books of all time. It's a unique memoir but at its core it's a coming of age tale about family dynamics.All my father's stories were about our mountain, our valley, our jagged little patch of Idaho. He never told me what to do if I left the mountain, if I crossed oceans and continents and found myself in strange terrain, where I could no longer search the horizon for the Princess. He never told me how I'd know when it was time to come home.
3. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness- Susannah Cahalan
I'm very into psychological thriller themes, i.e. Shutter Island, AHS: Asylum because one of the scariest things to me is being sane but having everyone else believe that you're insane. That's pretty much what happened to Susannah Cahalan. Susannah was a normal 24 year old getting her start in the journalism world when one day she woke up in a hospital room, strapped to a bed, with no recollection of the past month or how she got there. All her medical tests came back completely normal and the doctors were convinced she was suffering from a psychotic break, not a medical condition. Luckily for Susannah, thanks to some amazing doctors and persistent family members, she wasn't transferred to a psych ward (a.k.a. my worst nightmare) and her rare disease was diagnosed, (this isn't a spoiler, she wrote the book after all, so you know there's a happy ending). The book is written from the memories of friends and family and hospital staff and the stories they told Susannah about her month of madness. Susannah also gained knowledge on her hospital stay from the 24 hour video surveillance they put in her hospital room after she attempted to escape multiple times and was considered a flight risk. Susannah's memoir was turned into a movie and is now on Netflix. Although the movie isn't as good as the book (what's new) it's definitely worth a watch.Like daffodils in the early days of spring, my neurons were resprouting receptors as the winter of my illness ebbed.
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