The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls
A girl grows up on the move with brilliant, unreliable parents, often hungry and sometimes homeless, in a memoir of poverty and resilience.
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Books like Educated
Educated is Tara Westover's memoir of growing up in a survivalist family in the Idaho mountains, never going to school and then teaching herself enough to reach university. These seven memoirs bring more honest, gripping stories of hard starts and the pull of a bigger world.
Books to read next
Born a Crime
Trevor Noah
A comedian recalls a boyhood in apartheid South Africa, where his mixed-race birth was illegal, in a funny, fierce-hearted memoir about his mother.
Wild
Cheryl Strayed
After her mother's death and the end of her marriage, a woman hikes the Pacific Crest Trail alone with no experience, in a raw memoir of grief and recovery.
Becoming
Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama looks back on a South Side Chicago childhood, her career and her years as First Lady, in a warm, candid memoir.
Angela's Ashes
Frank McCourt
Frank McCourt remembers a childhood in the slums of Limerick with a drinking father and a mother who has little to feed her children, in a Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir.
Hillbilly Elegy
J. D. Vance
A former Marine and Yale Law graduate describes growing up in a struggling Ohio steel town in a family with Appalachian roots, in a memoir that drew both praise and criticism.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou
A classic memoir of growing up Black in segregated Arkansas and beyond, and of finding a voice through books and an older friend's encouragement.
How to choose
Educated is the story of leaving a closed world through learning, so choose by what you want more of. The Glass Castle is the nearest match, a childhood with unconventional, unreliable parents. Angela's Ashes and Hillbilly Elegy also look back on poverty and family trouble, while Born a Crime brings humor to a hard upbringing under apartheid. Wild is about rebuilding after loss, Becoming looks back over a whole life, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a classic about finding your voice. Several include difficult content: The Glass Castle includes neglect and abuse, Angela's Ashes poverty, illness and the deaths of children, Hillbilly Elegy addiction, Born a Crime domestic violence, Wild drug use, and Caged Bird child sexual abuse, so check content notes first.
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