Memoirs to Inspire are on our TWE Bookshelf this month. While these books can be seen as someone’s personal re-telling of their life’s experience, we think it is an important genre for readers to learn about the amazing and demanding lives women are leading.
Several well-known women are debuting their memoirs which you will, no doubt, hear about. Broadcaster Connie Chung, Supreme Court Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson, food expert Ina Garten and entertainer Cher are sharing their personal life experiences.
TWE found a wonderful breadth of women with topical memoirs to put on your bookshelf as well. They make us think about what is possible; what can be accomplished; and the unending challenges women are facing and overcoming.
Here are a few impactful memoirs to inspire TWE thinks you will enjoy. They range in topic from our pressing climate issues; inequality in the health care field; purposeful adventure and the fight for women’s rights in Afghanistan.
(1) Lydia Millet We Loved It All
Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet examines how we live in our wild and rapidly changing world. We Loved It All grapples with climate change and extinction, and how to find meaning in the face of all we stand to lose. Lydia worked at the Center for Biological Diversity for more than two decades.
With humor and imagination she draws from her own life with her thoughts on the uniqueness of nature; the power of storytelling, and the creatures that deserve our attention. We Loved It All challenges us to think about our choices, losses, and responsibilities.
Photo: Ivory Orchid Photography
(2) Ala Stanford,M.D. Take Care of Them Like My Own
Ala Stanford, M.D., founder of the Black Doctors Consortium, focuses on the racial injustices in our health care system in this fascinating memoir and call to action. Dr. Stanford knew she wanted to be a doctor when she was eight years old. There were not many health care workers in her working-class North Philadelphia neighborhood.
Her teachers were dismissive, and the realities of racism, sexism, and poverty might have thwarted her. Thanks to her faith, family, and sheer will, today she is one of the too small number of Black women surgeons in America, along with an unwavering commitment to the fight for health justice.
Take Care of Them Like My Own depicts important lessons about the power of communities working together to take care of one another and the importance of fighting for a healthcare system that fulfills its promise to all Americans.
(3) Niamh McAnally Following Sunshine
Writer and adventurer Niamh McAnally shares the story of her journey from being unemployed, homeless, and divorced in her fifties, to embarking on a global quest to find purpose through volunteering and ultimately finding a profound love that changed her life.
The reader will learn about unique cultures, dolphin research, turtle conservation, and coral reef protection. The plot thickens with an unexpected love story when she is selected as crew for a solo sailor in the Bahamas, a project that was only supposed to last a month but will now last a lifetime.
Following Sunshine highlights the potential that lies within us and for us to choose a path truest to our being.
(4) Pashtana Burrani and Tamara Bralo Last To Eat, Last To Learn: My Life In Afghanistan Fighting To Educate Women
Pashtana founded the nonprofit LEARN and developed a program for getting educational materials directly into the hands of girls in remote Afghan areas, training teachers in digital literacy.
Her commitment to education has made her a target of the Taliban. She continues to fight for women’s education and autonomy in Afghanistan and beyond.
Courageous and inspiring, Last to Eat, Last to Learn is the story of how one person can transform a family, a tribe, a country. It reminds us of the power of education and the transformational potential that lies within each of us.
Photo: George Kerrigan
Once you start reading, you will find that each of these changemaking women have such compelling insights that it will be hard to put the book down.
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