The craft has evolved over time, with famous writers being the only ones in the space early on, like Ernest Hemingway writing about his life in Paris in A Moveable Feast, or the poet Mary Karr recalling her childhood with an alcoholic parent in The Liars’ Club. There are vital historical texts, like The Diary of Anne Frank, or Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, that are almost memoir but not quite — the pieces of a diary and the stories of someone else, respectively.
Many of these memoirs were turned into movies and became cultural icons. Books like Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert inspire people to follow in the author’s footsteps of discovery. Others, like Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling, let people into the inner worlds of celebrities — they’re just like us! Each is deeply influential in their own way.
The former was a 2006 Oprah’s Book Club pick, touted as a riveting memoir about the 23-year-old’s life of crime, drug abuse, and rehabilitation. After fifteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, a magazine investigation found much of the book to be fabricated after they couldn’t find Frey’s mugshot. Police records didn’t match his story, and Frey later admitted to embellishing key facts.
Sebold’s Lucky made headlines last year when the man she accused of the rape at the center of her story was exonerated after 40 years in prison. An executive producer adapting the memoir to film noticed that the book and the script didn’t line up, so he hired a private investigator to look at the evidence. The story surrounding the trial, and the young Black man she accused, felt flimsy. Because it was. The memoir was pulled from distribution and will be reissued with appropriate changes.
Okay, now let’s get to the books.
Whew. That was tough. Don’t come at me for not including your favorite memoir; this is a list of the most influential, not the best, and honestly, I had to cut so many of my own favorites from this list.
The memoir was adapted into film in 1999 and into an Irish stage musical in 2017.
Her story is an inspiration for anyone who wants to become anyone, big or small.
It is the first of Orwell’s published works and set the tone for his dystopian literary classics — and high school required reading — Animal Farm and 1984.
Fun Home was made into a Tony Award-winning musical in 2015.
In 2017, it became a feature film with Brie Larson in the role of Jeanette.
The book is an expansion on his 1999 essay in the New Yorker, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This.” Bourdain said he was inspired by Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris in London, with its behind-the-scenes look at restaurant dishwashers.
After Kitchen Confidential, food memoirs blew up, with food memoir now a popular subgenre. It also launched Bourdain’s public career, with several more food memoirs and food travel shows on CNN and the Food Network.
It spent many weeks on various bestseller lists and won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography.
Men We Reaped won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for nonfiction in 2014.
Negroland won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize in 2016.
It was turned into a 2001 film starring Christina Ricci and Jason Biggs.
It spent over 100 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller List and has been translated into 32 languages.
In 2006, it became a film, with Alec Baldwin as Augusten’s father.
Wild became a film in 2014, starring Reese Witherspoon as Strayed.
The Year of Magical Thinking is the best grief memoir there is. Didion adapted the book to a Broadway play, and it toured the world in various forms for nearly a decade.
If you’re looking for more of the most influential books of a certain genre, be sure to check out these lists of most influential horror novels, romance novels, fantasy books, historical fiction, and sci-fi books.
