Recommend urban childhood memoirs

August 26, 2019 10:40 AM

I'm looking for well written, evocative memoirs of growing up in a large city or other urban area in the 20th century. Anywhere in the world is ok but I want to read at least one set in the United States. Recommend me your favorites!
posted by selfnoise to Writing & Language (29 answers total)

Basketball Diaries
posted by parmanparman at 10:41 AM on August 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
posted by batter_my_heart at 10:42 AM on August 26, 2019 [6 favorites]

Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah
posted by sugarbomb at 10:49 AM on August 26, 2019

The Color of Water by James McBride
posted by sallybrown at 11:02 AM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Pete Hamill,A Drinking Life, which is as much a memoir of growing up in mid-century Brooklyn as it is a recovery narrative.
posted by thelonius at 11:09 AM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

In Memory Yet Green by Isaac Asimov
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 11:10 AM on August 26, 2019

Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall
posted by knownassociate at 11:14 AM on August 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

An American Childhood by Annie Dillard (Pittsburgh, 1950s)
posted by FencingGal at 11:15 AM on August 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

I went through a celebrity bio phase a few years ago and of these the Rosie Perez and Penny Marshall memoirs of growing up in NYC were exceedingly readable and evocative. Alison Arngrim (otherwise known as Nellie Oleson)'s memoir of growing up in LA and in the entertainment industry was also excellent and very readable.

And although it's billed as a semi-autobiographical novel rather than a memoir I highly recommend Lethem's clearly personal paean to Brooklyn in his Fortress of Solitude.
posted by rdnnyc at 11:27 AM on August 26, 2019

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is partly autobiographical but it isn't really a memoir, it's a novel.
Vivian Gornick's feminist masterpiece Fierce Attachments was pathbreaking for the genre and is as much about a particular time in the Bronx as it is about mothers and daughters.
posted by nantucket at 11:28 AM on August 26, 2019

The Beautiful Struggle, Ta-Nehisi Coates
posted by eirias at 11:30 AM on August 26, 2019 [4 favorites]

Maximum City by Suketu Mehta is an unforgettable memoir of Mumbai. Truly one of the best books of the last 20 years, and already a historical document because Mumbai has changed so much.
posted by MiraK at 11:33 AM on August 26, 2019

Richard Wright's "Black Boy," including the second half that is sometimes separate, "American Hunger." He starts out in the rural south, but soon moves to Memphis and a few other places, and then Chicago and deals with the issues there during the Great Depression.
posted by Melismata at 11:40 AM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Absolutely seconding Ta-Nehisi Coates's The Beautiful Struggle. One of the best books I've ever read.
posted by General Malaise at 11:44 AM on August 26, 2019

Becoming Maria by Sonia Manzano (the actress who played Maria on Sesame Street). Here's the NYT review.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 12:11 PM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Chicago Days / Hoboken Nights - Daniel Pinkwater
posted by Duffington at 12:11 PM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

3x Beautiful Struggle.

Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday is about growing up Jewish in turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna, a place infinitely more civilized than anywhere in the U.S. at the time.
posted by praemunire at 12:14 PM on August 26, 2019

Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
posted by scratch at 12:22 PM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Growing Up, by the recently deceased Russell Baker. (Not all of it is set in the city, as he lived his very youngest years in the country, but a classic gem of a memoir.)
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 12:23 PM on August 26, 2019

Girls of Tender Age, by Mary Ann Tirone-Smith (Hartford, CT)
posted by dlugoczaj at 12:56 PM on August 26, 2019

Angela's Ashes won the Pulitzer for autobiography and is a story of growing up in poverty in urban Ireland.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:04 PM on August 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

It's not a memoir, but I strongly recommend There Are No Children Here, by Alex Kotlowitz. It details the childhoods of two boys growing up in the Henry Horner Homes project in Chicago in the 1990s, and it is profoundly affecting.
posted by easy, lucky, free at 3:17 PM on August 26, 2019

Sleeping Arrangements, by Laura Shaine Cunningham. Cunningham was raised in the Bronx by her mother until her mother passed away when Cunningham was eight, after which her two bachelor uncles stepped in to raise her. I read it many years ago and found it charming and delightful.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 3:27 PM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Negroland
Last Exit to Brooklyn
A Walker in the City
posted by Ideefixe at 3:28 PM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
posted by fso at 3:46 PM on August 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

It's lightly fictionalized, but Mordecai Richler's "The Street" is a series of stories about growing up on Montreal's Saint Urbain Street during and after World War II. One of them was filmed as an animated short by the National Film Board.
posted by zadcat at 5:07 PM on August 26, 2019

Becoming by Michelle Obama
posted by SisterHavana at 5:10 PM on August 26, 2019

Response by poster: Thanks everyone, these are fantastic! I decided to start with nantuckets recommendation of 'Fierce Attachments'. Will check the rest of these out down the road.
posted by selfnoise at 5:40 AM on August 27, 2019

Lowborn, by Kerry Hudson. UK-centric but a very powerful exploration of deprived cities (or deprived pockets and families within) and towns in the UK.
posted by sedimentary_deer at 1:31 PM on August 27, 2019