This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
It’s funny. I always mean to read more memoirs, and nonfiction in general, but I’ve also noticed how it’s memoirs that tend to entice most of the people who don’t read much in my life. Though I view much of fiction as a legitimate mirror of reality, I also know how interesting it can be to read a book based on an actual, real person’s life.
And, sometimes, real life is more unbelievable than fiction. I would, for instance, not believe it if someone said a Black American woman would walk her pet cheetah around the streets of Paris in the mid-century, but Josephine Baker really did that. I think your book club will love diving into her life story, as well as Naomi Watts’s, and Andrée Blouin’s (aka the most dangerous woman in Africa)—all below.
Fearless and Free by Josephine Baker (Feb. 4)
This posthumous memoir by the Josephine Baker—the dancer/spy/cheetah-toting Civil Rights activist who I became obsessed with as a teenager after Beyoncé dressed like her during a performance—is finally out in English. In it, she tells her life story through conversations she had with French journalist Marcel Sauvage, which are as funny and flirty as her onstage persona.
Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I’d Known About Menopause by Naomi Watts
This is a little different as far as celebrity memoirs go. While beloved actress Naomi Watts does include stories of her and her friends’ lives, it’s all in the name of spreading awareness about menopause—something she wished was done for her before she first started experiencing it at 36. She uses humor and frankness to take the shame out of speaking about menopause, all while answering important questions.
Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya
We love a bookish book, and through Bibliophobia, Chihaya takes us through how life-affirming—and maybe even destructive—books have been in her life. Books like Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye have helped her understand her own sense of otherness as the only Japanese American growing up in a white suburb, and she’s taught literature at an Ivy League university. But then she gets hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, and suddenly, her relationship to books changes. By diving into texts like Anne of Green Gables, The Last Samurai, and others, she repositions books in her life, showing how they can soothe and interrogate us in vital ways.
My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria by Andrée Blouin
Andrée Blouin is a name I know many of us Americans have not heard enough of. At one time, she was called the most dangerous woman in Africa for her role in decolonization. She advised the leaders of the Congo, Algeria, Mali, Guinea, and Ghana. She accomplished all this after being abandoned at three and escaping a forced marriage organized by the abusive colonial orphanage that raised her. Her two-year-old son dying from being denied malaria treatment on account of his being partially African sent her on a radicalized path of freedom fighting and activism. I can’t wait to read more about her.
Suggestion Section
Book Club Tings:
A printable list of book club-friendly questions