PEOPLE Picks the Best Non-Celebrity Memoirs of 2024

Mar. 15, 2025

There’s Always This Year, Feeding Ghosts and Becoming Little Shell.

As a child, I first fell in love with books because they offered an escape from the world I was living in. I became a journalist because hearing — and sharing — people’s stories helped make sense of it. The best memoirs do a little bit of both.By letting readers into their unique, often deeply emotional journeys, memoirs and personal essays hold up a mirror to an experience that’s outside our own. But walking a little while in someone else’s shoes also lightens the load on our feet for the duration of the read. For me, reading about a real-life experience that’s vastly different, or even just a little bit removed, from my own helps build empathy, deepen understanding and yes, get out of my own head.The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now!These beautiful memoirs will make you laugh, cry and feel a whole range of human emotions. They make the perfect gift for any reader — especially if that’s yourself.

As a child, I first fell in love with books because they offered an escape from the world I was living in. I became a journalist because hearing — and sharing — people’s stories helped make sense of it. The best memoirs do a little bit of both.

By letting readers into their unique, often deeply emotional journeys, memoirs and personal essays hold up a mirror to an experience that’s outside our own. But walking a little while in someone else’s shoes also lightens the load on our feet for the duration of the read. For me, reading about a real-life experience that’s vastly different, or even just a little bit removed, from my own helps build empathy, deepen understanding and yes, get out of my own head.

The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now!

These beautiful memoirs will make you laugh, cry and feel a whole range of human emotions. They make the perfect gift for any reader — especially if that’s yourself.

01of 10

This affirming memoir of a late-in-life transition takes readers through the writer’s gender identity realization and her journey to find her place in society. A gorgeous, essential read.

Buy Now

02of 10

‘There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension’.

In this slam dunk of a memoir, a poet and cultural critic delivers a lyrical meditation on basketball, hope and what “making it” really means. If you need an inspiring, energizing New Year’s read, make it this one.

03of 10

‘Roman Year’.

04of 10

‘Feeding Ghosts’.MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Sun Yi was a Shanghai journalist who fled to Hong Kong after years of political harassment. After she sends her daughter Rose to an elite boarding school, she suffers a breakdown. Rose eventually moves to the United States and brings Sun Yi with her. Tessa, Rose’s daughter, leaves home after watching them both struggle under the weight of unexplored trauma until, at 30, she returns to examine their shared history. A moving, evocative graphic memoir.

05of 10

MCD

06of 10

‘We Will Be Jaguars’.Abrams Press

Abrams Press

Nenquimo was born in one of the last contacted Amazon rainforest tribes and after leaving the forest as a teenager to study in the city, she later returned to embrace and protect the precious culture she came from. An astonishing tale of fighting climate change from one of the most forceful voices in the field.

07of 10

From the celebrated author ofA Three Dog Lifecomes a wry, witty memoir that flits between memories and the present and proves that growing old doesn’t have to mean fading away. Next time a loved one complains they’re “too old” for something, hand them this book.

08of 10

‘First in the Family: A Story of Survival, Recovery, and the American Dream’.Flatiron Books

Flatiron Books

When COVID hit, drug overdoses spiked — Hoppe’s cousin among them. “I never learned the true history of substance use disorder in my family,” she writes in this remarkable, urgent memoir. “People just disappeared.” When her cousin died, the author had already been in recovery for almost four years but hadn’t told anyone. As she traces her journey and the larger narrative of American addiction and recovery, especially among BIPOC people, you won’t be able to turn away.

09of 10

‘Becoming Little Shell’.

“I’m committed to uncovering the culture of my people,” writes the author as he embarks upon a stirring exploration of his Indigenous ancestry that gets more complicated the deeper he digs. It’s a vital, revelatory story of self-discovery, the history of a people and survival. No matter how much you know about the history of Indigenous and Native people in this country, this book will teach you something.

10of 10

‘How To Live Free In A Dangerous World’.

Travel the globe through Lawson’s powerful prose as they explore far-flung locations and deeply felt emotions, finding beauty in tumultuous times and powerfully disrupting the constraints of race, gender and disability. It’s an illuminating journey that will crack your heart open.

source: people.com