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Autobiography/Memoir Long Walk to Freedom Nelson Mandela 2013 The autobiography of international hero, Nelson Mandela, who was in foster care as a child. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir I'll Love You If... Matthew Huggins 2009 I'll Love You If...is a harsh but true portrait of a hard life, a misery memoir, yes, but one that ends in triumph. Matthew became the youngest councillor in England he was only 21. His council, Barking and Dagenham, was used to much older councillors so he was poorly treated by his fellow politicians and then expelled. He now advises councils on how to treat children in care. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Daddy, we hardly knew you Germaine Greer 1999 When her father died in 1983, Germaine Greer realized how little she knew about him. Over a three year period she explores the background of her father's love and finds out that he was in foster care as a boy, a fact he never revealed to her. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time Karen Armstrong 2007 Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was orphaned at the age of 6 and grew up in kinship care first with his grandfather and then with an uncle. In this biography, British scholar Karen Armstrong presents Muhamma in his historic context and distinguishes between Islamic law and the cultural practices of Islam. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Bessie Smith: A Poet's Biography of a Blues Legend Jackie Kay 1997 Bessie Smith: A Poet’s Biography of a Blues Legend (1997) by Jackie Jay is a combination of history, poetry, prose and memoir. Jackie Kay was poet laureate of Scotland from 2016 to 2021. She was born in 1961 to a Scottish mother and Nigerian father and adopted as a baby by white Scottish communists who loved blues and jazz music. For the young Jackie Kay, growing up Black in an all-white part of Glasglow, Bessie Smith was a source of comfort. In her biography of Bessie Smith—who was orphaned at the age of 9 and singing on street corners before she became a star—Jackie Kay creates a moving, fascinating account of Bessie Smith’s extraordinary (and often difficult) life. Bessie Smith: A Poet’s Biography of a Blues Legend was republished in 2021 by Vintage. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Rememberings Sinead O'Connor 2021 Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O'Connor published her memoir, Rememberings, in 2021. The book covers her difficult childhood with a mother who was a habitual thief and violent in the way she treated Sinead. One of the worst stories is when Marie O’Connor had Sinead sit in the front passenger seat of the car and then deliberately rammed the car into another one. When Sinead was fourteen, she was caught stealing a pair of gold shoes for a friend to wear to a concert. She was then sent to the An Grianán Training Centre, once a notorious Magdalene laundry. She later wrote that the experience overall was a positive one. External Website

Authors X The Autobiography of Malcolm X ➝ Back to Top

Autobiography/Memoir Two Mothers Deidre Michell 2011 Recipes for Survival: Stories of Hope and Healing by Survivors of the State ‘Care’ System in Australia is a collection of stories by those who have grown up in care in Australia during the 20th century and is therefore contribution to a growing body of literature on the experiences of the Forgotten Australians. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Hackney Child Hope Daniels 2014 At the age of nine, Hope Daniels (Jenny Molloy) walked into Stoke Newington Police Station with her little brothers and asked to be taken into care. Home life was intolerable: both of Hope's parents were alcoholics and her mum was a prostitute. The year was 1983. As London emerged into a new era of wealth and opportunity, the Daniels children lived in desperate poverty, neglected and barely nourished. Hounded by vigilante neighbours and vulnerable to the drunken behaviour of her parents' friends, Hope had to draw on her inner strength. Hackney Childis Hope's gripping story of physical and emotional survival - and the lifeline given to her by the support of professionals working in the care system. Despite all the challenges she faced, Hope never lost compassion for her parents, particularly her alcoholic father. Her experiences make essential reading and show that, with the right help, the least fortunate children have the potential not only to recover but to thrive. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Long Way Home Kate Shayler 2001 Kate Shayler (pseudonym) grew up a 'homes kid' in the fifties and sixties. Her memoir is an account of her experience as an institutionalised white kid and what happens to a child in the absence of emotional support and affection. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands Mary Seacole 2017 This is the autobiography of Mary Seacole, a Jamaican business woman who applied to assist when the Crimean War broke out. She was refused, but travelled independently and set up a hotel and assisted battlefield wounded. Mary Seacole is celebrated as a mixed-race woman who successfully combated racial prejudice. She was in foster care as a child. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Fish Ladder: A Journey Upstream Katharine Norbury 2016 Katharine Norbury was abandoned as a baby in a Liverpool convent. Raised by loving adoptive parents, she grew into a wanderer, drawn by the beauty of the British countryside. One summer, following the miscarriage of a much-longed-for child, Katharine and her nine-year-old daughter Evie decide to follow a river from the sea to its source. But a chance circumstance forces Katharine to the door of the woman who gave her up all those years ago.Combining travelogue, memoir, exquisite nature writing, fragments of poetry and tales from Celtic mythology, The Fish Ladder is a captivating and life-affirming story about motherhood, marriage, family, and self-discovery, illuminated by the extraordinary majesty of the natural world. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Lost in the System Charlotte Dworkin Lopez et al. 1996 Miss Teen USA for 1992, a foster child, recounts her struggle since the age of two to find stability within multiple homes and shelters, her triumphant pageant success, and her joyful adoption. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Tell No One Brendan Watkins 2023 In Tell No One One, Brendan Journey traces his footsteps in discovering his birth parents Brendan was 8 when he was told he was adopted (he grew up in Melbourne) – which made sense for him of why no one in his family looked alike. In his 20s, Brendan began seeking out his birth parents. He was surprised to find out that his birth mother was 27 when she ‘gave him up’. It took until 2018 before Brendan found out – via a DNA test – that he was “the son of a celebrated missionary priest.” Tell No One includes Brendan’s research on ‘children of priests’. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions Alfred Russel Wallace 1905 The autobiography of British evolutionary scientist and writer, Wallace Alfred Russel, who was in foster and kinship care as a child. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Li Cunxin Li Cunxin 2003 Li Cunxin was taken from his family in rural China at the age of 11. For 7 years he lived away from his family in Beijing and trained for 16 hours a day at a dance academy. As a young man, he was offered an opportunity as an exchange student and performed for the Houston Ballet in Texas, United States and decided not to return to China. In 1995, Li Cunxin moved with his Australian born wife, Mary McKendry, to Australia and was the principal ballet dancer for the Australian Ballet. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir My Turn: An Autobiography Norman 2003 My Turn. Memoirs by Norman Wisdom With William Hall. The story of Norman Wisdom who was in foster care as a child and as a 14 year old was working as a cabin boy on a cargo ship heading to Argentina. Norman Wisdom's early years could easily have come straight from the pages of a Dickens novel. Left by their frightened mother, ill-treated by a brutal father, Norman and his brother were forced to fend for themselves, sleeping rough in London and stealing food to survive. (William Hall, who assisted Norman Wisdom in the writing of his life story, is a biographer, broadcaster and critic. He is the author of more than a dozen biographies, including Michael Caine, James Dean, Frankie Howerd, Larry Adler and Dick Emery.) External Website

Autobiography/Memoir The Forgotten Children: Fairbridge Farm School and its Betrayal of Britain's Child Migrants to Australia David Hill 2010 In 1959 David Hill’s mother – a poor single parent living in England – reluctantly decided to send her sons to Fairbridge Farm School in New South Wales where, she was led to believe, they would have a good education and a better life. David was lucky – his mother was able to follow him out to Australia – but for most children, the reality was shockingly different. Here is the story of the lives of the Fairbridge children, from the bizarre luxury of the voyage out to Australia to the harsh reality of the first days there; from the crushing daily routine to stolen moments of freedom and the struggle that defined life after leaving the school. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Thrown Away Child Louise Allen 2017 Thrown Away Child is a memoir covering Louise Allen’s abusive childhood in a foster home, how she survived - using her love of art as a sanctuary - and how she hopes to right old wrongs now by fostering children herself and campaigning for the improvement of foster care services. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class Rob Henderson 2024 In his recently published memoir, Troubled, Rob Henderson reflects on his time growing up in the American foster care system and enlisting in the US Air Force before going on to study at Yale. He completed his tertiary education with a PhD from Cambridge. While he was at university, Henderson thought deeply about class distinctions and came up with the concept of luxury beliefs. Rob Henderson writes in this article about his idea that “luxury beliefs” are “ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class at very little cost, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes”. He writes: “In the past, people displayed their membership of the upper class with their material accoutrements. But today, luxury goods are more accessible than before. This is a problem for the affluent, who still want to broadcast their high social position. But they have come up with a clever solution. The affluent have decoupled social status from goods and reattached it to beliefs.” External Website