5 Fall Memoirs By Women You Should Add To Your Reading List

Fall reading season calls for some of the biggest memoirs of the year! Aside from celeb memoirs by Amy Schumer and Anna Kendrick, we pulled together a list of fall biographies that you should definitely have on your radar when you enter your local bookstore this season.

1. In the Game: The Highs and Lows of a Trailblazing Trial Lawyer by Peggy Garrity

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Peggy Garrity started life in a small Midwest town as an Irish Catholic girl. Determined to escape a life like her own mother’s, Peggy reinvented herself in the mid-1970s as a high-profile L.A. lawyer and single mother of four. From being in the courtroom with would-be presidential assassin Sara Jane Moor, Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, and Cheryl Tiegs to some of LA’s most high profile murder cases, all at a time when women weren’t often solo practitioners. In the Game shares Peggy’s trailblazing path to life as a thrill-seeking lawyer who beat the odds as a single working mother in the 1970s and faced discrimination in a male-dominated field.

2. You Can’t Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain by Phoebe Robinson

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As a stand-up comedian, Phoebe Robinson is no stranger to making everyday experiences something to laugh about, which as a black woman in America, she upholds, a sense of humor is required to deal with daily absurdities. In the same tone of her podcast 2 Dope Queens, Phoebe examines politics and society alongside pop-culture references aplenty. You Can’t Touch My Hair will leave readers thinking about the world differently and laughing out loud along the way.

3. I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This: A Memoir by Nadja Spiegelman

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Nadja Speigelman’s mother Francoise, a French-born New York art director, was a daunting but dazzling figure in Nadja’s life. As Nadja grew older their relationship grew more stressed, replicating the relationship between Françoise and her own mother. After college, Francoise opened up to her daughter about her own childhood with an unpredictable mother and playboy father, also one of France’s first plastic surgeons. This new info sparked a hunger for more information about her grandparents and Nadja heads to Paris to get to know the woman her mother left. Nadja’s memoir explores how each generation creates a path for the next and how sometimes those we love are the ones that can hurt us the most.

4. Scream: A Memoir of Glamour and Dysfunction by Tama Janowitz

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In the 1980s Tama Janowitz was hailed as the Lit girl of New York after the publication of her short story collection Slaves of New York. She was grouped as one of the original Brat Pack writers, a wave of young minimalists whose sensible writing put them at the forefront of American culture. In her first memoir Scream, Janowitz recalls the quirky literary world of New York in the 80s and reflects on her opposite life today, that includes a mother with dementia, a teenage daughter and a disapproving brother. This time Tama turns the criticism on herself and offers insight, humor and detail in a way that’s not afraid to touch on the strange parts of life.

5. When Nobody Was Watching: My Hard-Fought Journey to the Top of the Soccer World by Carli Lloyd

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In 2015, the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team won its first FIFA championship in 16 years. Team captain and midfielder Carli Lloyd made history that day, scoring three goals during the first sixteen minutes. However her road to being one of the most celebrated women’s soccer stars has not been easy. In 2003 her career was struggling so much that she contemplated quitting the sport for good. In her new memoir, Carli reflects on her amazing turnaround, the trainer that fixed her character and confidence and what it it’s really like to perform at the highest level of competition.