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As I sat down to write my latest book, a nonfiction examination of the current state of gender equality in Canada, I could hear my editor’s voice in my ear: Let’s have more of you. And I would think, is there any more of me? It feels like my skin’s on every page. Then I’d remember the great memoirs I loved, which had already sailed these tricky waters. Their authors navigated between the personal and the political, the too-much and the not-enough, and come out in one piece. Even better: They’d left a model of what could be.

Here are some of my favourite memoirs by Canadian women.

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A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, by Alicia Elliott

I was on a train when I read A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, and I’d look up as the towns flashed by. The outside world seemed unreal, because I was so caught up in the stories that Alicia Elliott was telling about her life. I’d say there were raw, and they are, but that doesn’t begin to convey the art that’s evident in the shaping of these essays, and their connections to each other.  I think I almost missed my stop, so read it when you’ve got time. You won’t want to put it down.

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Feeding My Mother, by Jann Arden

“We are all slightly broken. Some of us even rattle when we walk,” Jann Arden writes in this gorgeous book, and you can practically hear her voice saying it. She’s looking after her mother, who is living with Alzheimer’s, cooking for her and trying to live in the present – though the past is always there with them. It’s such a beautiful, honest book about what we gain and lose in the process of caring for others. It has great recipes, too, and someone who loves food I consider that a major bonus.

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Being Brown, by Rosemary Brown

I took this book out of the library, because I’d always been inspired by Rosemary Brown’s life (trained as a social worker, she was the first Black woman to hold a seat in a provincial legislature and to run for the leadership of a major party). But I wasn’t ready for how fresh and disturbingly contemporary it felt, as Brown talks about the racism and sexism she experienced, and also how she rose above it all. Sometimes I’d flip back to the copyright page to check when it was published. It was 1989, but—sadly—it could have been yesterday.

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It Should Be Easy to Fix, by Bonnie Robichaud

Before there were the legions who said MeToo, there was Bonnie Robichaud. A cleaner at a Canadian Forces base in 1970s,  a warrior for the rights of women to work at their jobs in peace and safety, and the central figure in a landmark Supreme Court case, Robichaud is a hero in the fight against sexual harassment. Reading her memoir is like hearing Bonnie’s feisty voice in your ear.

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Unbroken, by Angela Sterritt

Gitxsan journalist Angela Sterritt was one of the first people in the media to take seriously the stories of missing and murdered Indigenous women. She looks at the way that these women’s deaths were dismissed and ignored, and sets those stories against her own experiences of precarity and dislocation. I learned so much, not just about our historical (and present) colonial exploitation, but also about how a personal story can illuminate a nation-wide tragedy. It’s such a powerful book.

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They Said This Would Be Fun, by Eternity Martis

“At times this book is distressing,” Eternity Martis writes, “and at other times you will laugh.” I don’t know about you, but that’s exactly how I like my memoirs. With a journalist’s eye and a novelist’s pen, Martis examines racism on campus, Black sisterhood, domestic abuse, and making one’s way through the confusing maze of young-adulthood. This is a memoir that unfolds like a movie.

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Heroes in My Head, by Judy Rebick

One of the great feminist writers and advocates in Canadian history, Judy Rebick tells a shocking personal story here: As a response to being sexually abused in childhood, she developed 11 distinct personalities. Individual and societal experiences intertwine as Rebick grapples to understand how her past affects her struggles for women’s rights and reproductive justice. The material is disturbing, but the story is one of triumph.

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Beyond Reason and Changing My Mind, by Margaret Trudeau

Read them both, one after the other. You won’t regret it. Two portraits of a fascinating woman at different times in her life, and a country that changes much less than she does.

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Learn more about What She Said: Conversations About Equality

A passionate advocate for gender equity, and one of our most respected journalists, explores the most pressing issues facing women in Canada today with humour and heart.

The fight for women’s rights was supposed to have been settled. Or, to put it another way, women were supposed to have settled—for what we were grudgingly given, for the crumbs from the table that we had set. For thirty per cent of the seats in Canada’s Parliament; for five per cent of the CEO’s offices; for a tenth of the salary of male athletes; for the tiny per cent of sexual assault cases that result in convictions; for tenuous control over our health and bodies. "Aren’t we over it yet? No, we’re not," Elizabeth Renzetti writes.

In this book, Renzetti draws upon her own life story and her years as an award-winning journalist at the Globe and Mail, where her columns followed the trajectory of women's rights. Forcefully argued, accessible, and witty, What She Said explores a range of issues: the increasingly hostile world of threats that deter young women from seeking a role in public life; the use of non-disclosure agreements to silence victims of sexual harassment and assault; the inadequacy of access to health care and reproductive justice, especially as experienced by Indigenous and racialized women; the ways in which future technologies must be made more inclusive; the disparity in pay, wealth, and savings, and how women are not yet socialized to be the best financial managers they can be; the imbalanced burden of care, from emotional labour to child care.

Renzetti explores the nuance of these issues, so often presented as divisive, with humour and sympathy, in order to unite women at a time when women must work together to protect their fundamental right to exist fully and freely in the world. What She Said is a rallying cry for a more just future.