The 10 Best Memoirs of 2025: Personal Histories, Shared Resilience

Time magazine’s All section released its annual ranking of the 10 best memoirs of 2025, headlined by Yiyun Li’s Things in Nature Merely Grow. Li’s book centers on the writer’s attempt to understand the deaths of her two sons through precise, disciplined prose rather than sentimentality, framing loss as an ongoing inquiry rather than a single moment of grief. She writes that if an abyss is where she will reside for the rest of her life, that abyss becomes her habitat, a place where she searches for meaning with a stubborn honesty. The volume closes with a note directing readers to crisis resources, including the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, underscoring the book’s commitment to addressing pain openly and helpfully.

Beyond Li, the Time list collects memoirs that map memory, identity, and social history across a broad spectrum of experiences. Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools, by Mary Annette Pember, places a family’s trauma within the larger history of government-sponsored schools for Native children, exploring how intergenerational wounds intersect with culture and belonging. Strong Roots: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Ukraine, by Olia Hercules, anchors memory in lineage and cuisine as Ukraine endures displacement and upheaval after Russia’s invasion. Articulate: A Deaf Memoir of Voice, by Rachel Kolb, offers a thoughtful meditation on language, accessibility, and the many ways people communicate when the dominant mode is not theirs. Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, by Sarah Wynn-Williams, recounts a firsthand view of the early Facebook era and its descent into corporate culture that at times felt untethered from accountability. Memorial Days, by Geraldine Brooks, chronicles the arduous process of grieving after an unexpected loss and the administrative and emotional labor that follows. Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity, by Joseph Lee, blends ancestral history with current questions of sovereignty and belonging on the island of Martha’s Vineyard and beyond. The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters, by Sasha Bonét, ties generational motherhood to a broader American history, asking readers to consider the truths embedded in family narratives. Mother Mary Comes to Me, by Arundhati Roy, reflects on the author’s relationship with her mother and how memory, inheritance, and writing itself shape identity. The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir, by Martha S. Jones, traces the color line through the lens of her ancestors, turning historical inquiry into a personal reckoning with race, ancestry, and belonging. At the top of the list stands Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li, a searing meditation on loss that seeks to translate grief into a discipline of living and writing.

The breadth of the 2025 slate emphasizes memoir as a form for examining large social forces through intimate, individual stories. Several entries foreground Indigenous voices and settler-colonial histories, while others probe the moral and ethical dimensions of technology, power, and consumer culture. Several authors center Deafness, disability, and alternative forms of fluency as essential to understanding how people experience syntax, speech, and community. The collection also highlights memoir’s enduring appeal: readers seeking a new angle on memory, truth, and resilience can find them across a spectrum of voices that celebrate both endurance and nuance.

Time’s annual roundups have long served as a map for readers seeking books that illuminate personal experience against broader historical currents. The 2025 edition reinforces that impulse, inviting audiences to reconsider their own lives through the lives described on the page. The full list, including notes on each author’s approach and themes, is available in Time’s feature on The 10 Best Memoirs of 2025, which also points readers toward related resources and conversations surrounding contemporary memoir.

For readers navigating loss, identity, and community in a year marked by global upheaval, the selection offers both solace and challenge. It invites reflection on how personal history, memory, and culture shape who we are today and who we might become tomorrow.