Personal Memoirs Women

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.

With poignant prose and a deeply authentic personal story, this harrowing account exposes the stark and painful realities of childhood abuse, painting a heart-breaking picture of the lasting pain and fear that it inflicts on its victims. Spanning 30 years, in this coming-of-age memoir, author Christina Vitagliano recounts in vivid detail the frightening nights spent when her father loomed in the doorway of her bedroom, along with the psychological toll that the relentless familial abuse took on her psyche.

People ask me when I first knew I was female. Would you believe me if I told you that I don't know if I've ever known, since I don't really know what a woman is, other than a concept that exists outside me - still, I know that I have felt like one, a woman I mean, yet the only way I first knew was from males? Will you suspend prejudgment long enough to entertain the possibility that gender can be so relative?

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.

Ann is 60 and suffering from celibacy. Going through two divorces has made her skittish; having two children has made her cautious. But finally her longing for sex and romance sends her hurtling out of her comfort zone. Her adventure begins with a very nice transvestite and gets more interesting from there.

Sarah’s story is one for any parent; it is not just about the highs and lows of having a child with additional needs, but also simply as a mum of three. She talks candidly about coming to terms with the decision to move Oscar to a SEN (Special Educational Needs) school, another big milestone in Oscar’s young life. Whilst Sarah may have found herself on a different path to the one she’d imagined for herself, it has not been a bad one. There is sadness, certainly; and there have been struggles along the way; but there has been so much laughter and happiness, too.

Sisters Amy and Zoe grow up in Oklahoma, where they are homeschooled for an unexpected reason: Zoe suffers from debilitating and mysterious seizures, spending her childhood in hospitals as she undergoes surgeries. Meanwhile, Amy flourishes intellectually, showing an innate ability to glean a world beyond the troubles in her home life, exploring that world through languages first.

Sifting gingerly through memories of her late mother, brilliant newcomer Sarah McColl has penned an indelible tribute to the joy and pain of loving well. Even as her own marriage splinters, McColl drops everything when her mother is diagnosed with cancer, returning to the family farmhouse and laboring over elaborate meals in the hopes of nourishing her back to health. In a series of vibrant vignettes - lipstick applied, novels read, imperfect cakes baked - McColl reveals a woman of endless charm and infinite love for her unruly brood of children.

When Nicole Hardy’s eye-opening "Modern Love" column appeared in the New York Times, the response from readers was overwhelming. Hardy’s essay, which exposed the conflict between being true to herself as a woman and remaining true to her Mormon faith, struck a chord with women coast-to-coast. Now in her funny, intimate, and thoughtful memoir, Nicole Hardy explores how she came, at the age of 35, to a crossroads regarding her faith and her identity.

Michelle Marez was raised in Pueblo, a culturally diverse town in Southern Colorado. She is half Slavic and half Hispanic. The identities were like costumes, worn one over the next. These costumes became so heavy and itchy that she finally took them all off and exposed her true self. It took a devastating discovery to begin the painful work that leads her to love, belonging, freedom, and happiness. This is her journey.

The youngest of her parents’ combined 21 children, Sarah Frey grew up on a struggling farm in southern Illinois, often having to grow, catch, or hunt her own dinner alongside her brothers. She spent much of her early childhood dreaming of running away to the big city - or really anywhere with central heating. At 15, she moved out of her family home and started her own fresh produce delivery business with nothing more than an old pickup truck. Two years later, when the family farm faced inevitable foreclosure, Frey gave up on her dreams of escape and took over the farm.

Welcome to essayist Kimberly Harrington’s poetic and funny world of motherhood, womanhood, and humanhood, not necessarily in that order. It’s a place of loud parenting, fierce loving, too much social media, and occasional inner monologues where timeless debates are resolved such as Pro/Con: Caving to PTO Bake Sale Pressure (“Pro: Skim the crappiest brownies for myself. Con: They’re really crappy.”) With accessibility and wit, she captures the emotions around parenthood in artful and earnest ways.

"Congratulations on the resurrection of your life", a colleague wrote to Emily Rapp Black when she announced the birth of her second child. The line made Rapp Black pause. Her first child, a boy named Ronan, had died from Tay-Sachs disease before he turned three years old, an experience she wrote about in her second book, The Still Point of the Turning World. Since that time, her life had changed utterly.

This confessional self-help guide explores the complex emotional truth of what it’s like when food, weight, and body image take priority over every other human impulse or action. Activist author Marissa LaRocca’s revelatory tale includes her struggle with her secrets, including sexuality, and how she emerged as an outspoken advocate for gay rights and women’s health issues.

Jeanne Darst was born the youngest of four daughters in an old, celebrated family long past its glory days. For the early part of her life, the family survived on the memory of past generations' grandeur, and the romantic belief that Darst's father would restore that greatness with his destined career as a novelist. Within a few years, however, it was abundantly clear to everyone but him that despite the many years enslaved to the writer's craft and lifestyle, he was never going to sell a book.

In the days before Roe v. Wade, an ambitious young journalist, abandoned by her beau, leaves Michigan for a dream job on the city desk of a Rochester, NY newspaper. Burned once, she's eager for love, but as the only "girl" in the newsroom, she's more concerned about finding allies and making friends. When a new leading man appears, she recognizes a kindred spirit. Soon her bylined stories claim front-page space. However, when she becomes pregnant, she must switch her attention from deadlines to decisions.

With a successful speaking career putting her on the road 250 days a year, a slew of prestigious awards for her activism, the hugely successful book I Am That Girl, and a happy marriage, Alexis Jones was living a seemingly charmed life. But the principles of self-care, setting boundaries, and eschewing perfectionism that she espoused in her talks didn’t seem to translate into her own life; she still never seemed to feel “enough” inside. Then, in a matter of months, things started to fall apart on the outside, too.

On the first day of high school, Kristina Ellis' mom - a single, working mother who lost her husband to cancer - informed her that she could not financially support her after graduation. Kristina would need to find her own way to pay for college. As an average student with less-than-impressive test scores, Kristina realized she would have to sell herself to scholarship committees if she wanted to stand out. That's when she devised the plan that led to her receiving over $500,000 in scholarships.

This is a memoir about childhood neglect; childhood sexual abuse; and living in care—but it is also one of the best examples of resilience and survival. Groomed and abused as a child, Liz could easily have crumbled. Instead, she stood up and saw justice done. But Hear Me is more than one woman's story—as remarkable and powerfully written as that story is.