Canada flag Memoir books from Canada

Recommended memoir books (27)
Travel the world without leaving your chair. If you are into memoir here are some memoir books from Canada for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge.

1.

A Mind Spread Out on the Ground by Alicia Elliott EN

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Description:
"In her raw, unflinching memoir . . . she tells the impassioned, wrenching story of the mental health crisis within her own family and community . . . A searing cry." —New York Times Book Review The Mohawk phrase for depression can be roughly translated to "a mind spread out on the ground." In this urgent and visceral work, Alicia Elliott explores how apt a description that is for the ongoing effects of personal, intergenerational, and colonial traumas she and so many Native people have experienced. Elliott's deeply personal writing details a life spent between Indigenous and white communities... continue

2.
A Stranger at Home

A Stranger at Home : A True Story by Christy Jordan-Fenton, Margaret Pokiak-Fenton EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Description:
The powerful memoir of an Inuvialuit girl searching for her true self when she returns from residential school.

3.

Death Interrupted : How Modern Medicine Is Complicating the Way We Die by Blair Bigham EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Description:
In Death Interrupted, ICU doctor Blair Bigham shares his first-hand experiences of how medicine has complicated the way we die and offers a road map for dying in the modern era. Doctors today can call on previously unimaginable technologies to help keep our bodies alive. In this new era, most organs can be kept from dying almost indefinitely by machines. But this unprecedented shift in end-of-life care has created a major crisis. In the widening grey zone between life and death, doctors fight with doctors, families feel pressured to make tough decisions about their loved ones, and lawyers are ... continue

4.

Disfigured : On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space by Amanda Leduc EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Description:
"Challenges the ableism of fairy tales and offers new ways to celebrate the magic of all bodies. In fairy tales, happy endings are the norm - as long as you're beautiful and walk on two legs. After all, the ogre never gets the princess. And since fairy tales are the foundational myths of our culture, how can a girl with a disability ever think she'll have a happy ending? By examining the ways that fairy tales have shaped our expectations of disability, Disfigured will point the way toward a new world where disability is no longer a punishment or impediment but operates, instead, as a way of ce... continue

5.

Doppelganger : A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein EN

Rating: 5 (3 votes)
Description:
From the award-winning, bestselling author of No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, and This Changes Everything, a revelatory analysis of the collapsed meanings, blurred identities, and uncertain realities of the mirror world. Over the past twenty-five years, Naomi Klein has charted and documented our politics and culture with a series of trenchant bestselling books laying bare the effects of branding, austerity, and climate profiteering on our societies and souls. With Doppelganger, Klein takes a more personal turn, braiding together elements of tragicomic memoir, chilling political reportage, and cob... continue


7.

Embers : One Ojibway's Meditations by Richard Wagamese EN

Rating: 5 (2 votes)
Description:
"Life sometimes is hard. There are challenges. There are difficulties. There is pain. As a younger man I sought to avoid them and only ever caused myself more of the same. These days I choose to face life head on--and I have become a comet. I arc across the sky of my life and the harder times are the friction that lets the worn and tired bits drop away. It's a good way to travel; eventually I will wear away all resistance until all there is left of me is light. I can live towards that end." --Richard Wagamese, Embers In this carefully curated selection of everyday reflections, Richard Wagamese... continue

8.
Fatty Legs

Fatty Legs by Christy Jordan-Fenton, Margaret Pokiak-Fenton EN

0 Ratings
Description:
The moving memoir of an Inuit girl who emerges from a residential school with her spirit intact.

9.

Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard EN

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Description:
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest—a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery “Finding the Mother Tree reminds us that the world is a web of stories, connecting us to one another. [The book] carries the stories of trees, fungi, soil and bears--and of a human being listening in on the conversation. The interplay of personal narrative, scientific insights and the amazing revelations about the life of the forest make a compelling story.”—R... continue

10.

For Joshua: One Ojibway Father Teaches His Son by Richard Wagamese EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Description:
“An expansive work about healing, resilience, humanity, respect, inheritance, Indigenous teachings, and most of all, love” from the author of Indian Horse (Literary Hub). “We may not relight the fires that used to burn in our villages, but we can carry the embers from those fires in our hearts and learn to light new fires in a new world.” Ojibwe tradition calls for fathers to walk their children through the world, sharing the ancient understanding “that we are all, animate and inanimate alike, living on the one pure breath with which the Creator gave life to the Universe.” In this intimate ser... continue