Inspiring Women’s Life Stories

Out Came the Sun, by Mariel Hemingway
Many families in the blinding spotlight of celebrity have claimed to be “cursed,” but when you’re a Hemingway (yes, that Hemingway), it must be impossible not to believe you were born under a bad sign. Depression, alcoholism, mental illness, eating disorders—self-destruction runs through this family tree like sap. Award-winning actress Mariel—sister of Margaux, who famously died of a drug overdose at age 42, and granddaughter of Ernest, who even more famously shot himself just months before Mariel’s birth—has spent her life evading that seemingly predestined unhappily-ever-after. This latest memoir is her moving account of how she came out of the shadow of dysfunction and into the sunlight.

Hope, by Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus
As we chortle along with Netflix’s new hit The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, it’s easy to forget that there are real-life survivors out there: women kidnapped and held against their will under horrifying circumstances. Amanda Berry  and Gina DeJesus are two of them. With the help of two prize-winning journalists and the diaries the women kept while chained in the basement of a house in the Cleveland suburbs, Berry and DeJesus tell the story of a decade of captivity and abuse, and their eventual escape. While the shocking never-before-revealed details grab your attention, it’s the story of their true unbreakability that deserves it.

Unforgettable, by Scott Simon
Author and journalist Scott Simon is the popular host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, but in this book, he takes a back seat to his mother, Patricia Lyons Simon Newman Gelbin. The book was born out of tweets Simon wrote in the hospital as he watched Geblin, “an old showgirl,” die with wit, wisdom, and grace. Chapters bookended with 140-character dispatches from the hospital tell the story of his mother’s last days, studded with memories of his childhood and sparkling reminiscences from her life.

The Book of Joan, by Melissa Rivers
If ever there was a mother who knew no boundaries (or simply chose not to respect them), it was Joan Rivers. With the comedienne and force of nature’s unexpected passing last year, Hollywood lost one of its supernovas. The inveterate workaholic was never one to keep a secret or hoard a joke (she published her twelfth book just months before she died), but still, one can’t help but feel much of Joan’s behind-the-scenes life was left unshared. Luckily, those private quips and outrageous stories of Hollywood hijinx were not buried with her: Rivers’s daughter, co-star, and best friend Melissa has given us all a gift with this collection of remembrances. Melissa said she just wanted to write a book that would have made her mother laugh, and the apple does not fall far from the tree.

Delta Jewels, by Alysia Burton Steele
Alysia Burton Steele, now a professor of photojournalism at Ole Miss, never got to photograph or record an interview with her grandmother, Althenia A. Burton, who died in 1994. If she had, Steele hopes it might have looked something like her latest project, in which she pairs text and images to tell the life histories of 50 Mississippi Delta “church mothers,” a term of endearment and respect for female elders in the African-American Baptist community. Subtitled “In Search of My Grandmother’s Wisdom,” Steele’s book draws from her subjects’ personal stories of marriage, birth, death, racism, and unshakeable faith in the face of oppression. These are women who saw Jim Crow and Civil Rights, and this book is living history captured.

Born With Teeth, by Kate Mulgrew
On Orange is the New Black, Kate Mulgrew is Red, a tough-as-nails, henna redhead with ties to the Russian mafia. Previously, she famously portrayed Captain Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager. But before taking either role, Mulgrew played doting daughter and loving sister to a large Irish-Catholic family in a small Midwestern town. New York beckoned, and Mulgrew moved there at 18. Fame came easily, but personal travail followed, including a child given up for adoption, a rape that would haunt her, and her beloved mother’s diagnosis with Alzheimer’s. However, Mulgrew lives by the advice acclaimed acting teacher Stella Adler once gave her: “Use it.” In this memoir, she does.

Bettyville, by George Hodgman
In this moving memoir, George Hodgman, a gay man who escaped from the rural town of Paris, Missouri for a life of excitement and culture in New York City, must return to his hometown to care for his aging mother. Betty is obstinate, unapologetic, and determined to avoid ending her days in an assisted living facility, even if that means she and her son must finally confront the truth that has divided them for decades: that he’s gay, and she’s never quite been able to accept it. The messy, unbreakable bonds between parent and child are at the center of this funny, heartfelt look back at a small-town life and a mother and son looking to heal their relationship before time puts an end to it.
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