For these women, the personal and political are intertwined.
Almost a decade ago, I fell in love with reading memoirs at a Life Writing class in college. We spent a semester around a circular desk discussing memoirs that I enthusiastically devoured. Since then, I’ve continued to reach toward memoirs to read about different perspectives and lived experiences, especially those written by women. The searing honesty and vulnerability with which women chronicle a specific period of their lives captivate and even nourish me.
The global rise of authoritarianism and Trump administration’s crackdown on free speech and immigration in the US made me reach for memoirs by women that grapple with political upheavals around the globe. In these books, I sought knowledge and solace from women who have lived through and assessed the male-dominated business of authoritarianism, war, occupation, and other forms of political violence.
The authors in this list have experienced or witnessed myriad hardships created by those in power, including state-sanctioned censorship, discrimination, and violence. Notably, these memoirists, in one way or another, are considered the “other” due to not only their gender but also ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality, offering unique perspectives that are often excluded in the Western canon.
Weaving political events and personal histories, these women bear witness to the political unrest that upended their lives and advocate for the disenfranchised in their families, communities, and countries. They offer an invaluable lens through which we can examine our current political turmoil.
Iran Awakening by Shirin Ebadi and Azadeh Moaveni
Nobel laureate, lawyer, writer, and former judge Shirin Ebadi writes of her unconventional upbringing, marriage and family life, faith, and experiences as one of the first female judges in Iran. With vivid details, she describes the circumstances and ideals that led to the Iranian Revolution in 1979. A former supporter of the Revolution, she quickly became disenchanted with the new authoritarian regime that replaced the Shah, crushing dissidents through wrongful detentions and executions without any due process. Stripped of her role as a judge due to the new government’s gender-based discrimination, Ebadi became a staunch advocate for the oppressed, and in the face of political persecution, remained steadfast in her commitment to justice.
Ebadi fought a lengthy legal battle to have this memoir published in the US since American trade laws restrict writers from embargoed countries from publishing their works. Since 2009, she has been living in exile in London.
The Lucky Ones by Zara Chowdhary
Zara Chowdhary takes the reader to the Ahmedabad of her girlhood in early 2002, when a train fire killed Hindu right-wing passengers in India. The chief minister of Gujarat at the time, Narendra Modi, and his political party rushed to describe it as an “act of terror,” instigating the massacre of over a thousand Muslims across the state. Many scholars would later describe this as a pogrom, state terrorism, and genocide. Like other Muslims in the state, Chowdhary and her family found themselves under a three-month siege as their Hindu neighbors turned into angry mobs, hunting, looting, raping, and massacring the country’s Muslim citizens.
In The Lucky Ones, Chowdhary explores how the foundations of an authoritarian nation-state are laid down and furthered through its failure to protect its minorities. She offers essential context for understanding the contemporary political upheavals in India as well as the global rise of fascism.
Baghdad Diaries by Nuha Al-Radi
In Baghdad Diaries, Nuha Al-Radi describes the horrors of living through the first Gulf War and its aftermath. Pieced together entirely through Al-Radi’s diary entries, this memoir creates an immediacy that transports the reader to Iraq as it was being bombed by a 42-country coalition led by the US following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Al-Radi documents the extreme poverty, shortages of medical supplies, and diseases that plagued the Iraqi civilians due to the UN embargo on their country, frequently questioning how the world could look away from their pain.
Filled with witty and unfiltered observations, her diary entries coalesce into a searing testimony of the high human costs of war. As a famed painter, sculptor, and ceramist, she channeled her trauma into her art. Shortly after her memoir was published, Al-Radi passed away from leukemia that she believed was caused by the depleted uranium left over from the war.
The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
In this raw memoir, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio recounts not only her own experiences as a DACA recipient and daughter of undocumented parents, but also stories of other undocumented immigrants in various parts of the US, including Staten Island, New York, and Miami, Florida. Her stories shed light on the various abuses undocumented people face on a daily basis, thereby humanizing and highlighting the resilience of an extremely vulnerable group that is otherwise lumped together by all sides in the political sphere.
The author, who spent most of her childhood in the US, depicts how she and her family dealt with the changing political landscape in the country, spanning from the post-9/11 War on Terror era to the first Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Always Another Country by Sisonke Msimang
Born in exile to a South African guerrilla father, Sisonke Msimang chronicles a life spent constantly on the move, traveling from Zambia to Kenya to Canada and then to the United States before she finally finds her way back home to the new post-apartheid South Africa. She writes of her personal struggles that are strongly linked to the wider political landscape she finds herself in around the globe.
Her unique family background ensures that she is never too far away from politics, but she has her political awakening in the US, where she learns firsthand the country’s unique form of racism. This sociopolitical consciousness follows her to South Africa where racism and xenophobia still find a home post-apartheid, as she gradually becomes disillusioned with the political party she once championed. Msimang’s ability to self-reflect about her privileges stands out the most.
The Hollow Half by Sarah Aziza
In this lyrical and genre-bending memoir, Sarah Aziza, daughter and granddaughter of Palestinian refugees, explores her family history that is inextricably linked with the occupation of her ancestral homeland. Painful memories resurface when she is hospitalized due to an eating disorder, driving her to unearth and piece together her lineage fractured by multigenerational displacement.
With the rhythm of a poet and meticulousness of a journalist, Aziza weaves her struggles with anorexia together with the statelessness that still haunts her and her family. She peppers her narrative with citations from the works of poets and scholars, adding layers and giving texture to this portrait of a people displaced by a political movement that hinges on their erasure.
A Border Passage by Leila Ahmed
Leila Ahmed begins her memoir with an overview of the historical events that shaped the Egypt of her childhood. She writes of the ideals that led to the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 and what it was like to live through the aftermath of it. Gamal Abdel Nasser, a revolutionary turned president of Egypt, normalized political repression that directly affected Ahmed and her family. She describes a specific period of her life as “crucible years” filled with political upheavals that heavily influenced her life.
A Border Passage is less confessional, more academic (yet engrossing), perhaps owing to Ahmed’s background in academia: She is a scholar who became the first professor of women’s studies in religion at Harvard Divinity School, where she still teaches.
Land, Guns, Caste, Woman by Gita Ramaswamy
Social activist and writer Gita Ramaswamy writes a compelling account of how, despite belonging to an upper-caste, privileged family in India, she was drawn to the ideals of the Naxalite movement. She joined the Communist Party of India and was forced to go underground when the country’s then-Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, declared a state of emergency, resulting in widespread surveillance, imprisonment, torture, and even extra-judicial killings of Naxalites.
Ramaswamy also reveals how she later became disillusioned with the party as its leaders became dogmatic, hypocritical, and power-hungry. After leaving the party, she became an activist for Dalit rights, supporting them in their struggle to reclaim land, secure fair wages, and gain freedom from bonded labor.
We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders by Linda Sarsour
Aptly titled, Linda Sarsour’s We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders is a memoir that is also a call to action. A Brooklyn native of Palestinian descent, Sarsour depicts the trauma that stems from a family’s displacement by colonialism. As a Muslim, she recounts the early days of the War on Terror and its effects on the Muslim community in the US.
Sarsour’s detailed account of her evolution as a community organizer and political activist who helped Arab and Muslim men facing detentions, deportations, and disappearances across the country in the early days after 9/11 makes for a riveting read. Years later, she rose to prominence as one of the organizers and National Co-Chairs of the Women’s March held the day after Donald Trump’s first inauguration in 2017.
In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park and Maryanne Vollers
Yeonmi Park, one of North Korea’s most famous defectors, details a harrowing account of her life in her native land, where the vast majority live in poverty, starvation, and constant surveillance. The author describes how the smallest infraction could land one in labor camps by an authoritarian regime that categorizes people by a caste system based on their family’s loyalty to the “Great Leader.”
With immense bravery, Park recounts how she and her mother fled this brutal regime only to be trafficked and sold into sexual slavery in China before eventually finding their challenging way to freedom in South Korea. Park, who has found her home in the US, is a renowned activist today.