A memoir is one of the most intimate books a person can write. It's not just a story, but a life, told in the writer's own words. No filter. No outside interpretation. Just their point of view. The truth as they lived it.
For queer authors, sharing their personal story matters more than most people realize. When you grow up rarely seeing yourself in books or movies, writing your own narrative becomes an act of courage. It says: "My life is worth telling. My experiences are worth sharing.”
For many readers in the LGBTQ+ community, queer memoirs prove that they aren’t alone in what they’ve experienced. Others have been in their shoes before.
Queer memoirs are deeply personal and deeply human. They explore what it feels like to discover who you are, to hide it, to own it and to live it out loud. Some are heartbreaking. Some are hilarious. Many are both. All of them are honest in a way that only a lived experience can be.
Here are some of the most compelling memoirs written by queer authors. Each tells a story that is as unique as the person who wrote it.
1. How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir
by Saeed Jones
From award-winning poet Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives – winner of the Kirkus Prize and the Stonewall Book Award – is a "moving, bracingly honest memoir" (The New York Times Book Review) written at the crossroads of sex, race, and power.
One of the best books of the year as selected by The New York Times; The Washington Post; NPR; Time; The New Yorker; The Oprah Magazine; Goodreads; and many more."
People don't just happen," writes Saeed Jones. "We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The 'I' it seems doesn't exist until we are able to say, 'I am no longer yours.'" Haunted and haunting, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir about a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears.
Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescence – into tumultuous relationships with his family, into passing flings with lovers, friends, and strangers. Each piece builds into a larger examination of race and queerness, power and vulnerability, love and grief: a portrait of what we all do for one another -- and to one another -- as we fight to become ourselves.
An award-winning poet, Jones has developed a style that's as beautiful as it is powerful -- a voice that's by turns a river, a blues, and a nightscape set ablaze. How We Fight for Our Lives is a one-of-a-kind memoir and a book that cements Saeed Jones as an essential writer for our time.
2. Untamed
by Glennon Doyle
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - OVER THREE MILLION COPIES SOLD! "Packed with incredible insight about what it means to be a woman today." -- Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club Pick)
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Bloomberg, Parade
In her most revealing and powerful memoir yet, the activist, speaker, bestselling author, and "patron saint of female empowerment" (People) explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet others' expectations and start trusting the voice deep within us.
This is how you find yourself. There is a voice of longing inside each woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives and wonder: Wasn't it all supposed to be more beautiful than this? We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to be grateful, hiding our discontent--even from ourselves.
For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her own discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There She Is. At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high. But she soon realized they had come to her from within. This was her own voice -- the one she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions, cultural conditioning and institutional allegiances. This was the voice of the girl she had been before the world told her who to be. Glennon decided to quit abandoning herself and to instead abandon the world's expectations of her. She quit being good so she could be free. She quit pleasing and started living.
Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live. It is the story of navigating divorce, forming a new blended family, and discovering that the brokenness or wholeness of a family depends not on its structure but on each member's ability to bring her full self to the table. And it is the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honor our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts so that we become women who can finally look at ourselves and say: There She Is.
Untamed shows us how to be brave. As Glennon insists: The braver we are, the luckier we get.
3. Pageboy: A Memoir
by Elliot Page
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A New York Times "100 Notable Books of 2023"
A TIME Magazine "100 Must-Read Books of 2023"
A Washington Post "50 Notable Works of Nonfiction"
An Autostraddle "Best Queer Books of 2023"
"Vivid ... Moving ... Juicy" - NPR
"Eloquent and enthralling ..." -- The Washington Post
"Searing, deeply moving, and incredibly poignant ... This isn't simply a book on what it means to be trans, it's about what it means to be human." --Alok Vaid-Menon
Full of intimate stories, from chasing down secret love affairs to battling body image and struggling with familial strife, Pageboy is a love letter to the power of being seen. With this evocative and lyrical debut, Oscar-nominated star Elliot Page captures the universal human experience of searching for ourselves and our place in this complicated world.
"Can I kiss you?" It was two months before the world premiere of Juno, and Elliot Page was in his first ever queer bar. The hot summer air hung heavy around him as he looked at her. And then it happened. In front of everyone. A previously unfathomable experience. Here he was on the precipice of discovering himself as a queer person, as a trans person. Getting closer to his desires, his dreams, himself, without the repression he'd carried for so long. But for Elliot, two steps forward had always come with one step back.
With Juno's massive success, Elliot became one of the world's most beloved actors. His dreams were coming true, but the pressure to perform suffocated him. He was forced to play the part of the glossy young starlet, a role that made his skin crawl, on and off set. The career that had been an escape out of his reality and into a world of imagination was suddenly a nightmare.
As he navigated criticism and abuse from some of the most powerful people in Hollywood, a past that snapped at his heels, and a society dead set on forcing him into a binary, Elliot often stayed silent, unsure of what to do. Until enough was enough.
The Oscar-nominated star who captivated the world with his performance in Juno finally shares his story in a groundbreaking and inspiring memoir about love, family, fame -- and stepping into who we truly are with strength, joy and connection.
4. Reading the Waves: A Memoir
by Lidia Yuknavitch
The frank and revealing memoir of a writer who draws from her own creativity to heal.
"I believe our bodies are carriers of experience," Lidia Yuknavitch writes in her provocative memoir Reading the Waves. "I mean to ask if there is a way to read my own past differently, using what I have learned from literature: how stories repeat and reverberate and release us from the tyranny of our mistakes, our traumas, and our confusions."
Drawing on her background -- her father's abuse, her complicated dynamic with her disabled mother, the death of her child, her sexual relationships with men and women -- and her creative life as an author and teacher, Yuknavitch has come to understand that by using the power of literature and storytelling to reframe her memories, she can loosen the bonds that have enslaved her emotional growth. Armed with this insight, she allows herself to look with the eye of an artist at the wounds she suffered and come to understand the transformational power this has to restore her soul.
By turns candid and lyrical, stoic and forgiving, blunt and evocative, Reading the Waves reframes memory to show how crucial this process can be to gaining a deeper understanding of ourselves.
5. Rehearsals for Dying: Digressions on Love and Cancer
by Ariel Gore
An expansive, darkly funny, and deeply personal reflection on the reality of living with -- and dying from -- metastatic breast cancer.
Deena stepped out of the shower and opened her towel in the steam. "Does my breast look weird?" These words irrevocably change the lives of writer Ariel Gore and her wife. As they descend into a world of doctors and tests, medications and insurance, sickness and treatments and hope and pain and more, they discover just how little they truly knew -- despite the awareness campaigns and hyper-visible pink ribbons -- about the reality of breast cancer. Over the four years following Deena's terminal diagnosis, Gore does what she always does, no matter how difficult or personal the subject: she writes about it.
With keen insights, empathy, and humor, Ariel Gore braids together the story of Deena's experience, her own role as a caretaker, narratives from others living with breast cancer, literary reflections on illness, and reportage on the history of breast cancer and the $200 billion industry that capitalizes on and profits from breast cancer screenings and treatments.
Rehearsals for Dying investigates and challenges everything we think we know about breast cancer. It goes beyond awareness to knowledge, presenting a rich, nuanced, heartbreaking, and hopeful portrait of what it is to be diagnosed with, treat, and live with breast cancer in the twenty-first century.
6. Devout: Losing My Faith to Find Myself
by David Archuleta - Paula Abdul
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER & NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A raw and powerful coming-out story from the beloved American Idol finalist traces David Archuleta's journey from closeted Mormon teen to global pop star to openly queer man, revealing the hidden pressures of fame, the weight of religious expectations, and the courage it takes to live authentically.
At just 17, David Archuleta rose to national fame as the runner-up on American Idol season seven, captivating millions with his angelic voice. Behind the scenes, however, he was struggling with a truth he feared would destroy everything: he was attracted to men -- and a devout member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In Devout, David takes you inside his deeply personal journey as a closeted Mormon teen turned international pop star, torn between faith, fame and identity. From dealing with the pressures of being on a hit television show to a domineering father who controlled every aspect of his career -- even being banned from the show's set -- David reveals the emotional abuse and inner turmoil that he says plagued his childhood.
This searing memoir reflects on David's ventures with American Idol, a tour with Demi Lovato, and a two year sabbatical as a missionary in South America, charting his path through heartbreak, estrangement, three engagements, thoughts of suicide, and finally, his courageous decision to leave the Mormon Church in order to live authentically as a queer man. Featuring never-before-seen photos, Devout is a must-read for fans of pop culture, American Idol, and anyone deconstructing their religious upbringing, or who's ever wrestled with who they are versus who they're told to be.
7. Hola Papi: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons
by John Paul Brammer
"A master class of tone and tenderness." -- The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
"Should be required reading." -- Los Angeles Times
LGBTQ advice columnist John Paul Brammer writes a "wise and charming" (David Sedaris) memoir-in-essays chronicling his journey from a queer, mixed-race kid in America's heartland to becoming the "Chicano Carrie Bradshaw" of his generation.
The first time someone called John Paul (JP) Brammer "Papi" was on the gay hookup app Grindr. At first, it was flattering; JP took this as white-guy speak for "hey, handsome." But then it happened again and again...and again, leaving JP wondering: Who the hell is Papi?
Soon, this racialized moniker became the inspiration for his now wildly popular advice column "¡Hola Papi!," launching his career as the Cheryl Strayed for young queer people everywhere -- and some straight people too. JP had his doubts at first – what advice could he really offer while he himself stumbled through his early twenties? Sometimes the best advice comes from looking within, which is what JP does in his column and book -- and readers have flocked to him for honest, heartfelt wisdom, and more than a few laughs.
In this hilarious, tenderhearted book, JP shares his story of growing up biracial and in the closet in America's heartland, while attempting to answer some of life's most challenging questions: How do I let go of the past? How do I become the person I want to be? Is there such a thing as being too gay? Should I hook up with my grade school bully now that he's out of the closet?
Questions we've all asked ourselves, surely. ¡Hola Papi! is "a warm, witty compendium of hard-won life lessons," (Harper's Bazaar) for anyone--gay, straight, and everything in between--who has ever taken stock of their unique place in the world.
8. Mother, Nature: A 5,000-Mile Journey to Discover if a Mother and Son Can Survive Their Differences
by Jedidiah Jenkins
LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST & NATIONAL BESTSELLER - From the author of To Shake the Sleeping Self …
"Exquisitely written and completely compelling . . . As Jedidiah Jenkins traces a 5,000-mile route with his wildly entertaining mother, Barb, he begins to untangle the live wires of a parent-child bond and to wrestle with a love that hurts." -- Suleika Jaouad, author of Between Two Kingdoms
When his mother, Barbara, turns 70, Jedidiah Jenkins is reminded of a sobering truth: Our parents won't live forever. For years, he and Barbara have talked about taking a trip together, just the two of them. They disagree about politics, about God, about the project of society -- disagreements that hurt. But they love thrift stores, they love eating at diners, they love true crime, and they love each other.
Jedidiah wants to step into Barbara's world and get to know her in a way that occasional visits haven't allowed. They land on an idea: to retrace the thousands of miles Barbara trekked with Jedidiah's father, travel writer Peter Jenkins, as part of the Walk Across America book trilogy that became a sensation in the 1970s.
Beginning in New Orleans, they set off for the Oregon coast, listening to podcasts about outlaws and cult leaders -- the only media they can agree on -- while reliving the journey that changed Barbara's life. Jedidiah discovers who Barbara was as a 30-year-old writer walking across America and who she is now, as a parent who loves her son yet holds on to a version of faith that sees his sexuality as a sin.
Along the way, he peels back the layers of questions millions are asking today: How do we stay in relationship when it hurts? When do boundaries turn into separation? When do we stand up for ourselves, and when do we let it go? Tender, smart, and profound, Mother, Nature is a story of a remarkable mother-son bond and a moving meditation on the complexities of love.
9. Memories That Smell Like Gasoline
by David Wojnarowicz
"Wojnarowicz is a spokesman for the unspeakable." -- New York Magazine
David Wojnarowicz, one of the most provocative artists of his generation, explores memory, violence and the erotism of public space -- all under the specter of AIDS.
Here are David Wojnarowicz's most intimate stories and sketches, from the full spectrum of his life as an artist and AIDS activist. Four sections -- "Into the Drift and Sway," "Doing Time in a Disposable Body," "Spiral," and "Memories that Smell like Gasoline" -- are made of images and indictments of a precocious adolescence, and his later adventures in the streets of New York.
Combining text and image, tenderness and rage, Wojnarowicz's Memories that Smell like Gasoline is a disavowal of the world that wanted him dead, and a radical insistence on life. The new and revised edition features a foreword by Ocean Vuong and a note from the editor, Amy Scholder.
10. Simply More: A Book for Anyone Who Has Been Told They're Too Much
by Cynthia Erivo
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
In this vulnerable and enlightening book of life lessons, globally renowned performer Cynthia Erivo draws from her singular experience to show us how to embrace being "too much" and to live up to the fullest iteration of ourselves.
It is never too late to build the life you're seeking. Cynthia Erivo learned the music to Wicked a decade before she needed it, not knowing those same lyrics would change her life. Now she has performed those songs on the world stage, showing us there is always time to keep discovering ourselves. And to illustrate that it's often the parts of ourselves we are told to bury that make us shine.
In a series of powerful, personal vignettes, Cynthia reflects on the ways she has grown as an actor and human and the practices she's learned over years of performing and reminds us all we are capable of so much more than we think.
We all have hopes and dreams that we want to bring across the finish line. We all falter and take missteps. In this book, Cynthia draws from her experiences running marathons, both real and metaphorical, onstage and onscreen, to show how each challenge can help us. She urges readers to lean into the wisdom of their bodies, to understand and strive for a physical and mental balance. Because when we chase our deepest desires, each small step leads us closer to where we want to go.
11. Trauma Plot: A Life
by Jamie Hood
A VULTURE NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
"Piercing … Trauma Plot flips the confessional memoir on its head." -- The Cut
"An innovative, rigorous, genre-bending and ultimately life-affirming account of what it takes to survive." -- Vulture
In the thick of lockdown, 2020, poet, critic and memoirist Jamie Hood published her debut, how to be a good girl, an interrogation of modern femininity and the narratives of love, desire and violence yoked to it. The Rumpus praised Hood's "bold vulnerability," and Vogue named it a Best Book of 2020.
In Trauma Plot, Hood draws on disparate literary forms to tell the story that lurked in good girl's margins -- of three decades marred by sexual violence and the wreckage left behind. With her trademark critical remove, Hood interrogates the archetype of the rape survivor, who must perform penitence long after living through the unthinkable, invoking some of art's most infamous women to have played the role: Ovid's Philomela, David Lynch's Laura Palmer and Artemisia Gentileschi, who captured Judith's wrath. In so doing, she asks: What do we as a culture demand of survivors? And what do survivors, in turn, owe a world that has abandoned them?
Trauma Plot is a scalding work of personal and literary criticism. It is a send-up of our culture's pious disdain for "trauma porn," a dirge for the broken promises of #MeToo, and a paean to finding life after death.
12. Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir
by Lamya H
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, Autostraddle, Book Riot, BookPage, Harper's Bazaar, Electric Lit, She Reads
THEM'S HONOREE IN LITERATURE - AN AUDACIOUS BOOK CLUB PICK - WINNER: The Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, the Stonewall Book Award, the Israel Fishman Nonfiction Award, Lambda Literary Award Finalist
"A queer hijabi Muslim immigrant survives her coming-of-age by drawing strength and hope from stories in the Quran in this "raw and relatable memoir that challenges societal norms and expectations." -- Linah Mohammad, NPR
"A masterful, must-read contribution to conversations on power, justice, healing and devotion from a singular voice I now trust with my whole heart." -- Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed
When 14-year-old Lamya H realizes she has a crush on her teacher -- her female teacher -- she covers up her attraction, an attraction she can't yet name, by playing up her roles as overachiever and class clown. Born in South Asia, she moved to the Middle East at a young age and has spent years feeling out of place, like her own desires and dreams don't matter, and it's easier to hide in plain sight. To disappear. But one day in Quran class, she reads a passage about Maryam that changes everything: When Maryam learned that she was pregnant, she insisted no man had touched her. Could Maryam, uninterested in men, be . . . like Lamya?
From that moment on, Lamya makes sense of her struggles and triumphs by comparing her experiences with some of the most famous stories in the Quran. She juxtaposes her coming out with Musa liberating his people from the pharoah; asks if Allah, who is neither male nor female, might instead be nonbinary; and, drawing on the faith and hope Nuh needed to construct his ark, begins to build a life of her own -- ultimately finding that the answer to her lifelong quest for community and belonging lies in owning her identity as a queer, devout Muslim immigrant.
This searingly intimate memoir in essays, spanning Lamya's childhood to her arrival in the United States for college through early-adult life in New York City, tells a universal story of courage, trust and love, celebrating what it means to be a seeker and an architect of one's own life.
13. The Risk It Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation
by Raquel Willis
One of TIME magazine's 2025 WOMEN OF THE YEAR and 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE
WINNER of the LGBTQ+ Nonfiction, 2024 Best Book Awards
A passionate, powerful memoir by a trailblazing Black transgender activist, tracing her life of transformation and her work towards collective liberation.
In 2017, Raquel Willis stepped onto the stage at the National Women's March just hours after the inauguration of Donald Trump. Mid-speech, her microphone was cut. The moment was brief, barely noticed by most -- but for Willis, it crystallized a truth she had been circling her entire life: visibility is not the same as power, and inclusion is not the same as liberation.
The Risk It Takes to Bloom begins there and moves backward, tracing how a Black queer child from Augusta, Georgia, became the woman holding that microphone and what was required of her to keep speaking. Raised by devout Black Catholic parents, Willis grew up surrounded by love but isolated by silence, with little language for her gender or queerness.
At the University of Georgia, she found her first glimpses of possibility: queer community, chosen family, romance, and early explorations of self. Then her father died suddenly, and grief cracked her life open. After college, Willis entered journalism and went back into hiding, believing living stealth was the price of survival. But as violence against trans women of color intensified and trans youth succumbed to suicide, she came to understand that silence was its own kind of harm. Her professional coming out became an act of resistance against a world that preferred people like her to stay silent and unseen.
Structured in seasons -- rooting, budding, pruning, and blooming -- this memoir is not a story of linear triumph, but of ongoing transformation. With lyrical precision and moral clarity, Willis examines what liberation truly demands: not certainty, but courage; not perfection, but truth; not simply survival, but the risk of a fully lived life.
14. Fearless and Free: A Memoir
by Josephine Baker - Ijeoma Oluo - Anam Zafar - Sophie Lewis
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR: The TODAY Show, Vanity Fair, Financial Times, W Magazine, Oprah Daily, LibraryReads
"A gorgeous, captivating gem of a memoir ... Josephine Baker's as enthralling on the page as she was on the stage." – Abbott Kahler, New York Times bestselling author of Eden Undone and Sin in the Second City
Praised as "funny and witty" by Kwame Alexander on the TODAY show, now published in the U.S. for the first time, Fearless and Free is the memoir of the "trailblazing" (People), rule-breaking, one-of-a-kind Josephine Baker, the iconic dancer, singer, spy and Civil Rights activist.
After stealing the spotlight as a teenaged Broadway performer during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Josephine then took Paris by storm, dazzling audiences across the Roaring Twenties. In her famous banana skirt, she enraptured royalty and countless fans -- Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso among them. She strolled the streets of Paris with her pet cheetah wearing a diamond collar. With her signature flapper bob and enthralling dance moves, she was one of the most recognizable women in the world.
When World War II broke out, Josephine became a decorated spy for the French Résistance. Her celebrity worked as her cover, as she hid spies in her entourage and secret messages in her costumes as she traveled. She later joined the Civil Rights movement in the U.S., boycotting segregated concert venues and speaking at the March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King Jr.
First published in France in 1949, her memoir will now finally be published in English. At last we can hear Josephine in her own voice: charming, passionate and brave. Her words are thrilling and intimate, like she's talking with her friends over after-show drinks in her dressing room. Through her own telling, we come to know a woman who danced to the top of the world and left her unforgettable mark on it.