There are certain stories a writer simply has to tell, and none more so than their own. Perhaps this accounts for the explosive debut memoirs—think of Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club, Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle, or Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart—that announce the arrival of a major literary talent, fully formed. In our second annual Debuts Issue we’ve identified many first books, across all genres, that stand out from the crowd, and here are some of my favorite debut memoirs:
Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden (Dial Press, Jan. 13): Marriage is one of the pillars of the memoir genre, and every marriage is like a fingerprint—unique and ripe for close study. Burden, granddaughter of legendary socialite Babe Paley, recounts how one day her husband of 20 years strode into their bedroom and said, “I’ve decided I want a divorce. I’m leaving.” Her debut book, expanded from a Modern Love column in the New York Times, is a “measured, empathetic, and modern response to an enraging callousness,” according to our reviewer.
Everybody’s Fly: A Life of Art, Music, and Changing the Culture by Fred Brathwaite with Mark Rozzo (Viking, March 10): The author, better known as graffiti artist and hip-hop impresario Fab 5 Freddy (immortalized in the Blondie song “Rapture”), revisits his experiences in New York during the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, when the city was a hotbed of music, art, and fashion emerging from the streets. Among the captivating figures readers will encounter in these pages: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Melle Mel, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and, of course, Debbie Harry. Our starred review calls it a “rich, gritty remembrance of an artist’s journey.”
In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means To Be a Man by Tom Junod (Doubleday, March 10): An award-winning magazine writer makes his book debut with this family memoir, a reckoning with his larger-than-life father—parents, of course, being another pillar of the memoir genre. Growing up on Long Island in the 1960s and ’70s, Junod was both intimidated and fascinated by his father’s movie-star looks and sexual braggadocio. Did he lead another life outside their middle-class suburban home? Our starred review calls it an “enthralling family memoir and an unromantic commentary on manhood.”
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground by Zayd Ayers Dohrn (Norton, May 19): Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers were two of the most notorious members of the Weather Underground in the 1960s and ’70s, young radicals whose opposition to the Vietnam War and alliance with the Black Panthers put them in the crosshairs of the FBI. Living under multiple aliases and in disguise, they found their lives transformed with the birth of their first son, the author. This riveting memoir, expanded from Dohrn’s Mother Country Radicals podcast, grapples with the family’s complex legacy of social justice and political violence.
Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.
