Memoir Dysfunctional

When Amber Portwood debuted on MTV's hit reality series 16 & Pregnant, no one could have predicted that the teenager from Anderson, Indiana, with the dry sense of humor would go on to become one of the most controversial young celebrities in reality TV history. But soon after Amber stepped into the public eye, her life spiraled into chaos.

Winner of the 2025 Housatonic Book Award for Nonfiction A riveting memoir about a daughter’s investigation into the wirings of her loving, unpredictable mother: a woman who lived her life in pursuit of the divine, and who started two big fires, decades apart. Ten years before Nina was born...

A bittersweet and humorous memoir of family—of the silence and ignorance that separate us, and the blood and stories that connect us—from an award-winning New York Times writer and comedian. Approaching his 30 birthday, Sopan Deb had found comfort in his day job as a writer for the New York...

A lyrical and evocative memoir from Frances Mayes, the Bard of Tuscany, about coming of age in the Deep South and the region’s powerful influence on her life. The author of three beloved books about her life in Italy, including Under the Tuscan Sun and Every Day in Tuscany, Frances Mayes...

Gloria Norris grew up in the projects of Manchester, New Hampshire, with her parents; her sister, Virginia; and her cat, Sylvester. A snapshot might show a happy young family, but only a dummkopf would buy that. Nine-year-old Gloria is gutsy and wisecracking. Her father, Jimmy, all dazzle and danger, is often on the far side of the law and makes his own rules - which everyone else better follow. Gloria's mom, Shirley, tries not to rock the boat, Virginia unwisely defies Jimmy, and Gloria fashions herself into his sidekick - the son he never had.

At the young age of three, while I was at school, my mother was murdered by her abusive new boyfriend. What would happen to her five unintentionally abandoned children? The heartbreak of the devastating loss of my mother was just the beginning of a series of tragic events that shaped my childhood. Lost in the chaos of abuse, I was the unseen collateral damage of domestic violence. I was forced to take on the role of the invisible child for self-preservation. I figured you can't hurt what you can't see.

In the Fall of 1970, at the start of eighth grade, Peter Selgin fell in love with the young teacher who'd arrived from Oxford wearing Frye boots, with long blond hair and a passion for his students that was as intense as it was rebellious. The son of an emotionally remote inventor, Peter was also a twin competing for the attention and affection of his parents. He had a burning need to feel special. The new teacher supplied that need.

At age four, Diana manages her family's banking, grocery shops alone, and befriends the town drunk. Her father is too busy chasing skirts and throwing fits to notice what she does. And her mom is too mentally absent to properly parent. While Diana's narcissistic dad terrorizes and exploits her, she works harder to please him. Estill, an award-winning humor author, shares an honest and comedic look at her dysfunctional childhood. As an adult, she struggles to reclaim her power while caring for her dementia-impaired dad.

Robert Ragland toiled every day on his family’s Appalachian tobacco farm as a young boy. His father, an impoverished and illiterate sharecropper, spent his earnings on alcohol and beat his children and wife constantly. And Robert couldn’t take one more strike. Meanwhile, Mennonite families had moved to town, providing food and comfort when Robert’s mother broke her leg. Witnessing compassion from these people, Robert wondered: What would it feel like to belong to a group where I was wanted, loved, and appreciated?

As a young girl, Alda Sigmundsdóttir yearns to be close to her beautiful, distant mother, yet is never able to win her affection. When her parents divorce, a dark symbiosis between mother and daughter is forged, with devastating consequences that threaten to derail everything—especially Alda’s chance at intimacy and love.

Constance was always a California dreamer, though her circumstances gave her no right to be. She grew up in 1980s San Diego as the fourth of nine children. The crowded two-bedroom apartment where she spent her childhood was far from a safe cocoon that could nurture her dreams into reality. Constance began caring for her siblings while she was still a child herself, stepping in for her overwhelmed mother and her often absent, unpredictable father.

While growing up in housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, Jaquira Diaz found herself caught between extremes: as her family split apart and her mother battled schizophrenia, she was surrounded by the love of her friends; as she longed for a family and home, she found instead a life upended by violence. From her own struggles with depression and sexual assault to Puerto Rico's history of colonialism, Ordinary Girls vibrates with music and lyricism.

Zoe Zolbrod remained silent about her early childhood molestation for nearly a decade. When she finally decided to tell, she wasn't sure what to expect or what to say. Through a series of experiences - Zolbrod hitchhikes with a boyfriend from one coast to another, hangs out in a strip club in Philadelphia, meets and marries her husband, and gives birth to her children - she traces the development of her sexuality, her relationships with men, and the cultivation of her motherhood in the shadow of her childhood sexual abuse.

When Heather Havrilesky was a kid in the seventies, it seemed there were only disaster movies. Burning towers, devouring earthquakes, careening airliners, alien pod invasions. To be prepared, she and her siblings fabricated elaborate plans to escape any and every emergency. But what began merely as a childhood game grew into a way of life where something shocking lurked around every corner.

In this brave and shocking memoir, the author masterfully guides us through the pivotal points of her life, from an abusive upbringing that destroys her self-confidence, to the wreckage of an ill-conceived marriage, and on to a defining moment, full of grace and mercy, which gave her the wings to become the conquering and triumphant phoenix she is today.

After a tumor bursts in Mike Scalise's brain, leaving him with a hole in the head and malfunctioning hormones, he must navigate a new alien world of illness maintenance. His mother, who has a chronic heart condition and a flair for drama, becomes a complicated model as she competes with him for the status of "best sick person". The Brand New Catastrophe is a moving, funny exploration of how we define ourselves by the stories we choose to tell.

Leaving home was not easy for Irene Sardanis. Born into a Greek family in the Bronx in the 1940s, she was the youngest child of an unhappy mother and a father who drank, gambled, and enjoyed other women—and then, when Irene was 11, abandoned the family altogether. Irene's older siblings found a way out, but Irene was trapped, held hostage to her mother's rage and despair. When she finally escaped her mother as a young adult, she married a Greek man who controlled and dominated her just like her mother always had. But Irene wasn't ready to let her story end there.

The American mental health system is in crisis, and those affected by its shortcomings are drowning without the tools and resources they deserve and need to thrive. In Born into Crisis, author Kenneth Nixon shares his story of growing up with a mother with severe mental illness and a family stuck in an enduring cycle of trauma. He knows firsthand the impact trauma can have on a person's life. Kenneth not only takes you on a powerful journey through his stories, he provides cogent and practical strategies for creating lasting change in our mental health system.

Set in the bucolic, yet brutal South of his youth, My Mother’s House is a memoir by novelist David Armand. It recounts the young author’s early memories of being born to a schizophrenic mother, then given up for adoption, only to be raised in a home with an alcoholic and abusive step-father.

Layla spent the first eight years of her life in a loving home with her grandparents. That comfort all ended once welfare caught up with her mother, who was still receiving food benefits for her. After moving to her mother's home, the dysfunctional relationships continued for years. Layla was abused emotionally, physically, and sexually. She looked to her mother for love and protection, but never found it. Layla sought to take her power back from all those that had taken advantage of her. This story will inspire you to look within for the strength to push forward.