by Tom Seeman

On Bronson Street, in the projects of Toledo, Ohio, in a crowded house occupied by a family of fourteen, Tom Seeman starts a very important list. Just as the trash-strewn field in his backyard is home to a treasure-trove of wild animals, Tom's list, "Animals I Want To See One Day," is home to dreams of adventure in places far away from the downtrodden neighborhood where he lives.

by J. Dana Trent

Dana Trent is only a preschooler the first time she uses a razor blade to cut up weed and fill dime bags for her schizophrenic father, King. While King struggles with his unmedicated psychosis, Dana's mother, the Lady, a cold and self-absorbed woman whose personality disorders rule the home, guards large bricks of drugs from the safety of their squalid trailer.

by D. Watkins

Directly in his periphery is east Baltimore, a poverty-stricken city battling the height of the crack epidemic just hours from the nation's capital. Watkins, like many boys around him, is thrust out of childhood and into a world where manhood means surviving by slinging crack on street corners and finding oneself on the right side of pistols. For thirty years, Watkins is forced to safeguard every moment of joy he experiences or risk losing himself entirely. 

by Jean Guerrero

Jean Guerrero tries to locate the border between truth and fantasy as she searches for explanations for her father's behavior. Refusing to accept an alleged schizophrenia diagnosis at face value, she takes Marco Antonio's dark paranoia seriously and investigates all his wildest claims.

by Obed Silva

Silva and his mother had come north across the border to escape his father's violent, drunken rages. His father had followed and danced dangerously in and out of the family's life until he was arrested and deported back to Mexico, where he drank himself to death, one Carta Blanca at a time, at the age of forty-eight.

by Tara Westover

Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. 

by Vicki Laveau-Harvie

When her elderly mother is hospitalized unexpectedly, Vicki Laveau-Harvie and her sister travel to their parents' ranch home in Alberta, Canada, to help their father. Estranged from their parents for many years, they are horrified by what they discover on their arrival. 

by Kirkland Hamill

"Wake up, you filthy beasts!" Wendy Hamill would shout to her children in the mornings before school. Startled from their dreams, Kirk and his two brothers couldn't help but wonder--would they find enough food in the house for breakfast?

by Monica Potts

Growing up gifted and working-class poor in the foothills of the Ozarks, Monica and Darci became fast friends. The girls bonded over a shared love of reading and learning. They pored over the giant map in their middle-school classroom, tracing their fingers over the world that awaited them, vowing to escape. In the end, Monica left Clinton for college and fulfilled her dreams, but Darci, along with many in their circle of friends, did not.

by Safiya Sinclair

Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair's father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman's highest virtue was her obedience.

by Travis Dandro

From a child's-eye view, Travis Dandro recounts growing up with a drug-addicted birth father, alcoholic step-dad, and overwhelmed mother. As a kid, Dandro would temper the everyday tension with flights of fancy, finding refuge in toys and animals and insects rather than in the unpredictable adults around him. 

by Brian Broome

Broome, whose early years growing up in Ohio as a dark-skinned Black boy harboring crushes on other boys propel forward this gorgeous, aching, and unforgettable debut. Brian's recounting of his experiences -- in all their cringe-worthy, hilarious, and heartbreaking glory -- reveal a perpetual outsider awkwardly squirming to find his way in.

by Harriet Brown

The day of her mother's funeral, Harriet Brown was five thousand miles away. For years they'd gone through cycles of estrangement and connection, drastic blow-ups and equally dramatic reconciliations. By the time her mother died at seventy-six, they hadn't spoken at all in several years. Her mother's death sent Brown on a journey of exploration, one that considered guilt and trauma, rage and betrayal, and forgiveness.

by Joseph Earl Thomas

Joseph Earl Thomas grew up feeling he was under constant threat. Roaches fell from the ceiling, colonizing bowls of noodles and cereal boxes. Fists and palms pounded down at school and at home, leaving welts that ached long after they disappeared. An inescapable hunger gnawed at his frequently empty stomach, and requests for food were often met with indifference if not open hostility.

by Javier Zamora

At nine years old, all Javier can imagine is rushing into his parents' arms, snuggling in bed between them, and living under the same roof again. He cannot foresee the perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns, arrests and deceptions that await him; nor can he know that those two weeks will expand into two life-altering months alongside fellow migrants who will come to encircle him like an unexpected family.

 

by Ashley C. Ford

Through poverty, adolescence, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley C. Ford wishes she could turn to her father for hope and encouragement. There are just a few problems: he's in prison, and she doesn't know what he did to end up there. Then, her grandmother reveals the truth about her father's incarceration ... and Ashley's entire world is turned upside down.

by Stephanie Danler

Stephanie Danler knew she should be happy. Instead, she found herself driven to face the difficult past she'd left behind a decade ago: a mother disabled by years of alcoholism, further handicapped by a tragic brain aneurysm; a father who abandoned the family when she was three, now a meth addict in and out of recovery.

by Stephanie Foo

Both of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis (complex PTSD) illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.

by Leah McLaren

When her daughter is eight, Leah McLaren's mother abruptly fled her life as rural house wife in search a glamorous career in the city. In the chaotic years that follow, Cecily lurches from one apartment, job and toxic romance to the next.  Her self-described parenting style of "benign neglect" is a hilarious party joke, but for her daughter it's reality.

 

by Deborah Jackson Taffa

Taffa was raised to believe that some sacrifices were necessary to achieve a better life. Her grandparents -- citizens of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe -- were sent to Indian boarding schools run by white missionaries, while her parents were encouraged to take part in governmental job training off the reservation. Assimilation meant relocation.