Here are 93 books that The Many Lives of Mama Love fans have personally recommended if you like
The Many Lives of Mama Love.
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I've always been drawn to books that ask difficult questions instead of offering easy answers.
Growing up, I became fascinated by how quietly society shapes who we become—and how difficult it can be to figure out which parts are truly ours. Books have taught me to sit with complexity in a world that often wants everything to be black and white. The books I return to are the ones that make me question, reflect, and better understand human nature, society, and what it truly means to be unapologetically yourself. That's the kind of conversation I hope my own writing can contribute to.
Few books have made me question my own life quite like Untamed.
I didn't connect with this book because my life is anything like Glennon Doyle's—it isn't. I connected with it because she puts words to something I think many of us experience: the quiet pressure to become the person everyone else expects us to be. It made me ask myself a deeply uncomfortable question: Whose life am I actually living?
I found myself thinking about all the ways expectations can slowly shape who we are, often so quietly that we don't even realise it is happening. How much of who we are is actually us—and how much of it is the version we've learned to perform for everyone else?
I kept thinking about how much courage it takes to stop performing and start listening to yourself instead.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD! “Packed with incredible insight about what it means to be a woman today.”—Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club Pick)
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.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • Cosmopolitan • Marie Claire • Bloomberg • Parade •…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I'm addicted to memoirs. I love to peek inside another person's life, especially when the author embraces radical transparency, and I can’t resist being swept into the heart and mind of a courageous midlife woman. I admire writers who take risks, who remind me that sometimes our decisions, our humanness, take us down difficult roads. I'm a Professor of Communication Studies, and I author a Substack called Life Talk, which explores human connection—with others and with ourselves. The books on this list reflect both personal and professional passion: I'm endlessly drawn to self-reflexive inquiry, to stories that help me understand identity, resilience, and the courage it takes to transform.
I’m a sucker for a book that asks big questions, and this book does just that.
Shapiro investigates a family secret that she uncovers by chance, prompting her to probe topics that I find fascinating: How does heritage impact identity? Do we really know our parents? What happens when the world one knows is turned upside down?
I was drawn to this book because Shapiro doesn't just tell her story—she uses it to interrogate decades of secrecy in fertility treatment, and I couldn't stop thinking about other lives that were shaped by those silences.
When I finished this book, I picked up the phone and called my mother—I wanted to dig into my own heritage and ask questions about branches in our family tree that seemed askew.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed author of Inheritance and host of the hit podcast Family Secrets: a memoir about the staggering family secret uncovered by a genealogy test, an exploration of the urgent ethical questions surrounding fertility treatments and DNA testing, and a profound inquiry of paternity, identity, and love.
“Memoir gold: a profound and exquisitely rendered exploration of identity and the true meaning of family.” —People
In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had casually submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her beloved deceased father…
I'm addicted to memoirs. I love to peek inside another person's life, especially when the author embraces radical transparency, and I can’t resist being swept into the heart and mind of a courageous midlife woman. I admire writers who take risks, who remind me that sometimes our decisions, our humanness, take us down difficult roads. I'm a Professor of Communication Studies, and I author a Substack called Life Talk, which explores human connection—with others and with ourselves. The books on this list reflect both personal and professional passion: I'm endlessly drawn to self-reflexive inquiry, to stories that help me understand identity, resilience, and the courage it takes to transform.
I adore writers willing to show me their soft underbelly, who make themselves truly vulnerable, and Frangello does this with intensity.
Reading this memoir made me want to strive for deeper honesty in my own writing. It made me feel less alone with secrets from my past, the experiences and youthful decisions that caused me shame in adulthood. I have also enjoyed talking with others about Frangello's willingness to go there in print.
In fact, this memoir facilitated the best book club discussion I've had in years! My book club members had incredibly diverse opinions, but one thing we all agreed on: none of us had read anyone braver.
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A Good Morning America Recommended Book • A LitReactor Best Book of the Year • A BuzzFeed Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Rumpus Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Bustle Most Anticipated Book of the Month
"A pathbreaking feminist manifesto, impossible to put down or dismiss. Gina Frangello tells the morally complex story of her adulterous relationship with a lover and her shortcomings as a mother, and in doing so, highlights the forces that shaped,…
Famed Australian literary critic Peter Craven has included Mural in his best books for 2024. He called it "dark and brilliant." Rod McLary in the Queensland Reviewers Collective says it's "breath-taking," a "tour de force of literary fiction." On her blog This Reading Life, Brona was "fascinated" by this confession…
I'm addicted to memoirs. I love to peek inside another person's life, especially when the author embraces radical transparency, and I can’t resist being swept into the heart and mind of a courageous midlife woman. I admire writers who take risks, who remind me that sometimes our decisions, our humanness, take us down difficult roads. I'm a Professor of Communication Studies, and I author a Substack called Life Talk, which explores human connection—with others and with ourselves. The books on this list reflect both personal and professional passion: I'm endlessly drawn to self-reflexive inquiry, to stories that help me understand identity, resilience, and the courage it takes to transform.
Burden's honesty shook me—especially the disbelief she captures when she realizes the love of her life has become a complete stranger. As someone who has lived through a rough divorce and who has taught interpersonal communication for decades, I was fascinated by her inquiry into how intimacy unravels and people change.
This book is a wonderful mix of juicy story and relatable emotion. I found myself thinking of Burden's insights—the ways we can support our friends and family—just weeks later when someone I love told me her marriage was over.
INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Burden’s searing, probing memoir explores . . . what she learned about intimacy and her own spirit.”—People
“A beautifully written instant classic. Strangers is gripping and heartbreaking and a must-read for every wife—and husband.”—Graydon Carter
“Asks us to examine life’s most perplexing questions: Can we see the invisible fault lines in a marriage or truly know the people closest to us?”—Lori Gottlieb
It was a great love story, one for the ages. The speed of our beginning and the speed of our ending felt like matching bookends. They both came out of…
I write historical fiction about real people, and I found the subject of a medium who faced off against Harry Houdini altogether irresistible. Still, writing about a medium presented unique challenges. I had to ask myself: Did I believe it was possible to summon the dead? Would readers be skeptical if I pushed this belief on them? Or would readers who didn’t believe in spiritualism think I’d gone too far in representing otherworldly events? So I read many books and studied how other authors handled these questions. I hope this list of stories about mediums, seances, and ghosts will chill and thrill you.
Sarah Waters is one of my all-time favorite authors, and this book did not disappoint.
From the story’s opening pages, I experienced the unsettling sense that something was not quite right. The story barrels along with enough twists to make you wonder if you’ve landed in the territory of Charles Dickens, which in a way you have, because this is Victorian London and there’s a prison and questionable loyalties, to say nothing of a séance gone wrong.
I happily went on this ride, even though it got downright creepy at points.
'Affinity is the work of an intense and atmospheric imagination . . . Sarah Waters is such an interesting writer, a kind of feminist Dickens' Fiona Pitt-Kethley, Daily Telegraph
Set in and around the women's prison at Milbank in the 1870s, Affinity is an eerie and utterly compelling ghost story, a complex and intriguing literary mystery and a poignant love story with an unexpected twist in the tale. Following the death of her father, Margaret Prior has decided to pursue some 'good work' with the lady criminals of one of London's most notorious gaols. Surrounded by prisoners, murderers and common…
I like books in which there are moral stakes, which sometimes draws me to stories with criminals, and I like when the character at the center of the problem is complex or destabilizes things. Dark humor always helps. Average people should be able to see themselves in some way in the criminal’s bad behavior or at least in their desires. I have published two story collections and two novels. My first collection of short stories won the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award. My fiction has appeared in Tin House, Southern Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. I'm a professor of English at Kalamazoo College.
Separated from her young son, Romy Hall is serving two consecutive life sentences for killing a customer from the Mars Room, a strip club where she’d been dancing. Brilliantly written with compassion and dry, dark humor, the book explores Romy’s relationships with her fellow prisoners and the despair, dangers, and absurdities of life behind bars.
I loved this novel’s gritty texture, its sentences, its characters, and how it forced me to think more deeply about why and how we incarcerate people. The final sequence in Muir Woods is heart-pounding, wondrous, devastating, and strangely hopeful.
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018** **A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF 2018**
'An unforgettable novel.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'More knowing about prison life [than Orange Is The New Black]... so powerful.' NEW YORK TIMES 'One of America's finest writers.' VOGUE
Romy Hall is at the start of two consecutive life sentences, plus six years, at Stanville Women's Correctional Facility. Outside is the world from which she has been permanently severed: the San Francisco of her youth, changed almost beyond recognition. The Mars Room strip club where she once gave lap dances for a living. And…
In River City, loyalty is everything—and nothing defines it more than warcheck, the elegantly violent game that unites the town.
Terra Laclem, daughter of a retired warcheck legend, is raised to honor family, faith, and tradition. But when her father betrays the ideals he’s always preached, Terra is forced to…
At a conference hosted by Maria Shriver, I met Sister Terry Dodge, who works with women exiting prison with nothing but $200, with no job and no place to live. She showed a video, and that video has stuck with me. So much so that it wrote itself into The Breaks. Meanwhile, I was volunteering with a therapy program, taking pets into Juvenile Hall. I learned a lot from the kids and counselors there. Then You Got Nothing Coming came my way, and later Orange is the New Black (the book, not the television show). In both fiction and nonfiction, the mix of pathos, hilarity, and horror is astounding.
Women’s prison was something I never thought about, until I picked up this memoir because I was curious about the title (and was completely wrong about it).
How a Smith graduate with a job as a New York creative ended up in prison was interesting, but once she walked inside, I was spellbound. I got caught up in the sadness, the fear, the drama, the boredom, and the unfairness of (no period products??).
This book was as eye-opening as it was mesmerizing.
'I loved this book ... a beautifully told story about how incredible women can be, and I will never forget it Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love
With her career, live-in boyfriend and loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the rebellious young woman who got mixed up with drug runners and delivered a suitcase of drug money to Europe over a decade ago. But when she least expects it, her reckless past catches up with her; convicted and sentenced to fifteen months at an infamous women's prison in Connecticut, Piper becomes inmate #11187-424.
I grew up watching old Bogart movies on TV with my father. From Phillip Marlowe to Sam Spade, I was taken with the life of the P. I. Once I was old enough to read and enjoy the irony as well as the sex and violence in Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer tales, I’d pull the detective novels from under my old man’s bed and spend time with all the lowlifes. Guess I’ve never grown out of my love for noir. That’s why I started writing P. I. novels as well as reading them. I hope they bring as much entertainment to others as those old-school sagas brought to me.
I found the quest for redemption as mesmerizing as the search for the killer.
The concept that one may achieve absolution by righting a wrong unrelated to one’s initial failure is both intriguing and memorable. Plus, the author’s ability to explore inner demons without slowing the overall external hunt is impressive.
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF MOTHERING SUNDAY AND LAST ORDERS, and reissued for the first time on the Scribner list, The Light of Day is both a gripping crime story and a remarkable love story.
On a cold but dazzling November morning George Webb, a former policeman turned private detective, prepares to visit Sarah, a prisoner and the woman he loves. As he goes about the business of the day he relives the catastrophic events of two years ago that have both bound them together and kept them apart.
I am always drawn to these remarkable books because they illuminate the intricacies of the human experience and the power of resilience. Sparrow in the Razor Wire captivates you with its message of hope and redemption, demonstrating that the human spirit can thrive even in adversity. The Power Elite challenges you to critically examine societal structures, igniting your passion for social justice and change. The 33 Strategies of War empowers you with strategic insights to navigate life's challenges and turn obstacles into opportunities. The Color Purple celebrates love and self-discovery, while Becoming Ms. Burton inspires you with stories of overcoming adversity and personal growth.
For me, this is a powerful memoir that chronicles her remarkable journey from a life marked by trauma and incarceration to one of empowerment and activism. After experiencing profound loss and systemic injustices, Susan transforms her pain into purpose, advocating for the rights of women affected by the criminal justice system.
Through resilience and determination, she not only rebuilds her own life but also inspires countless others to break free from cycles of despair. This inspirational narrative highlights the strength of the human spirit and the transformative power of hope, reminding us that change is possible, even in the face of adversity.
One woman's remarkable odyssey from tragedy to prison to recovery'and recognition as a leading figure in the national justice reform movement. Susan Burton's world changed in an instant when her five-year-old son was killed by a van on their street in South Los Angeles. Consumed by grief and without access to professional help, Susan self-medicated, becoming addicted first to cocaine, then crack. As a resident of South L.A., an impoverished black community under siege by the War on Drugs, it was but a matter of time before Susan was arrested. She cycled in and out of prison for fifteen years;…
An inspiring, hilarious, and much-needed approach to addiction and self-acceptance,
You’re Doing Great! debunks the myth that alcohol washes away the pain; explains the toll alcohol takes on our emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being; illustrates the steps to deal with our problems head-on; exposes the practices used…
I have been captivated by the study of prisons since my early college years. The fact that prisons are so new in human history still feels mind-blowing to me. I used to think that prisons have just always been around, but when you realize they are actually new, that has major implications. This is nowhere more clear than at the beginning: how hard it was to get to the point where prisons made sense to people, to agree on how prisons should be designed and managed, and to keep on the same path when prisons very quickly started to fail. It’s still puzzling to me.
Prisons were originally built for men (really, white men), not for women. But women were sent to prison, just not in big enough numbers to merit their own facilities until much later. Women were also viewed as a difficult population by reformers and prison administrators alike: Women who committed crimes were deemed so morally repugnant that they could not be rehabilitated, so the routines and purposes of prisons seemed not to apply to them (prisons were originally supposed to rehabilitate their prisoners).
As a small and unprofitable population (because they were assigned unprofitable labor like sewing and laundry), women prisoners were considered especially burdensome. Using the prison histories of three differently situated states, Rafter describes the experiences of incarcerated women and how those experiences were shaped by their unique position and the biases about women criminals.
Contemporary Research on crime, prisons, and social control has largely ignored women. Partial Justice, the only full-scale study of the origins and development of women's prisons in the United States, traces their evolution from the late eighteenth century to the present day. It shows that the character of penal treatment was involved in the very definition of womanhood for incarcerated women, a definition that varied by race and social class.Rafter traces the evolution of women's prisons, showing that it followed two markedly different models. Custodial institutions for women literally grew out of men's penitentiaries, starting from a separate room for…
