I want to read about people I can look up to

September 8, 2020 1:03 AM

I'm going through a bit of a rough road mental-health-wise, and would like to read biographies about real people that I can admire.

Ideally I'm looking for nonfiction accounts of real people, but if something is fictionalised but based on fact that would work too. I'm interested in it for the character development, so I'm not looking for books that are focused on the time period or historical plot points -- rather, I want to read books that make me feel like I'm getting to know somebody who is extraordinary in some way.

Extra bonuses for books that:

- Involve people getting over heartache or the loss of a relationship that was really meaningful to them, but went on to do okay

- Involve people that were widely misunderstood but persevered despite this

- Involve people who are queer in some way

- Involve people who had great moral courage or were just exceptionally good as people

- Involve people who were faced with really challenging circumstances, but faced them and ended up triumphing somehow

None of these bullet points are obligatory, but the more there are, the awesomer it will be.

Thank you so much. I need some hope.

posted by forza to Media & Arts (14 answers total)

Oliver Sacks' autobiography On the Move is excellent (there is another part covering his childhood but I recommend starting with On the Move and going back to the earlier book if you like it). He ticks quite a few of your boxes and he was a great writer who had a very interesting life. I always feel when I'm reading his work how much enthusiasm and love he has for whatever he's doing almost no matter how difficult his life was at the time.
posted by crocomancer at 1:44 AM on September 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

Primo Levi wrote one of the most insightful books about his experiences in Auschwitz in 'If this is a man'. Its pretty depressing for obvious reasons. But the follow up, also autobiographical, usually called 'The Truce' in England but Wikipedia says The Reawakening in the US, tells the story of his convoluted and indirect journey back from Poland to Italy. I find it a remarkable and inspiring story of survival and living life, particularly the character of Cesare.
posted by biffa at 1:53 AM on September 8, 2020

It is on my reading list, I still need to come to it so not a personal recommendation but sounds very much like what you are looking for:
Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More
by Janet Mock
posted by bluedora at 2:36 AM on September 8, 2020

Tina Turner's first book, I, Tina.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:56 AM on September 8, 2020

If you’re ok with religious people, Dorothy Day’s autobiography, The Long Loneliness. She was a political radical who converted to Catholicism and brought her politics into the Catholic Church as one of the founders of the Catholic Worker movement. Later in her life, she became a peace activist.
posted by FencingGal at 4:24 AM on September 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

I found Alison Bechdel's memoir "Are You My Mother?" to be incredibly helpful, and it meets almost all of your requirements.

She's queer, and IIRC she's on the spectrum? no, wait, she has OCD as a child, she has her share of heartache but that isn't the focus of the book -- she delves deep into psychoanalysis and developmental psychology and literature as she struggles to understand her history of profound childhood abandonment and neglect, and the resulting difficult relationship with her mother. She isn't an "exceptionally good person" in the traditional sense, I mean, she isn't out there doing charity work or helping others at cost to herself. But she does achieve a truly monumentally generous, uplifting forgiveness for (and from?) her mother over the course of the book, and she works, works, works at her art... always plugging away at it throughout all her struggling, and that artist's ethos is inspirational to me, though ymmv.
posted by MiraK at 5:34 AM on September 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

David McCullough's John Adams moved me. He and his wife Abigail were extraordinary people. The amount of things they faced together and overcame were humbling.
posted by mmascolino at 6:14 AM on September 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

I liked "Are You My Mother?" but found Alison Bechdel's earlier book "Fun Home" (to which "Are You My Mother?" is a companion piece) more readable - it might be good to start with that.
posted by needs more cowbell at 6:31 AM on September 8, 2020

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson is beautifully written and checks all of your boxes.
posted by veery at 7:19 AM on September 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

Lots of good suggestions above. Here are mine:

"How We Fight For Our Lives" by Saeed Jones

"Heaven's Coast" by Mark Doty

"Native Country of the Heart" by Cherríe L. Moraga

"Hunger" by Roxane Gay

"Lab Girl" by Hope Jahren

"Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma" by Melanie Brooks (more an anthology than a single writer)

"Darling Days" by iO Tillett

"Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home" by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

"Ordinary Light" by Tracy K. Smith

"Men We Reaped" by Jesmyn Ward
posted by wicked_sassy at 7:57 AM on September 8, 2020

Nelson Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, shows moral courage in the face of challenging circumstances. And it reminds us that what now seems like a universally lauded and supported organization began as a small and almost certainly doomed movement.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:36 AM on September 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Eleanor Roosevelt.
posted by Melismata at 9:38 AM on September 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Walking With Destiny, the excellent biography of Churchill by Andrew Roberts.
Something not many laypeople know is that he had a very long career in the Military and Politics before he helmed the British nation through WW2... a career very fraught with very serious mistakes. How he overcame those and learned from them is an important part of his story.
posted by BigLankyBastard at 5:33 PM on September 8, 2020

Response by poster: Thank you all! These are all so good, I'm not going to pick a best answer but will just work through them! I've already started on one of the early suggestions (about Primo Levi) and it's really hitting the spot. I'll keep looking back here so if anybody has anything to add, feel free!
posted by forza at 10:20 PM on September 8, 2020