Books

Ma-Nee Chacaby was born into poverty on a remote Ojibwa-Cree reserve in Ontario, survived abuse and addiction, and came out as a lesbian elder at a time when her community had no name for what she was. Her autobiography is a story of survival, identity, and the power of Two-Spirit tradition — told with unflinching honesty by an elder who refused to disappear.

After decades of depression, addiction, and self-loathing, Maeve DuVally got sober and, as a public-facing communications executive at Goldman Sachs, took the hardest step of coming out as her true self. To her surprise the firm embraced her, and a New York Times profile launched a new life as a role model.

Why it’s here: Maeve steps fully into herself in her late fifties — a later-life memoir of reinvention and courage from a woman who refused to run out the clock as someone she wasn’t.

Chicana playwright and activist Cherríe Moraga braids her own coming-of-age and coming out with the story of her mother, Elvira, and Elvira’s long decline into Alzheimer’s. It is a memoir about memory, inheritance, and the grief of watching a parent fade — and, through one family, a larger reckoning with Mexican American identity and belonging.