7 Best Memoirs and Biographies for Teens in 2024

 

The world is small but not small enough, and people come and go with time. There are our idols and heroes, dead and alive, whom we wish we could meet, to listen to their stories and learn from their wisdom. But it is not always possible to meet them. Some are in faraway lands and some are gone from the face of Earth. How do we connect with them? Their life’s stories, biographies and memoires, of course.

It is not possible, and not even necessary, to meet every person we admire. A good substitute is to listen to their stories told by others, to read about their lives, and glean through their own works. With these, we can get close to our heroes even though we may live in different lands and different times.

We all need stories to make meaning of this life. We need heroes whom we can look up and try to emulate. This is particularly true for young adults starting on the journey of life. 

Before you choose any biography to read, you may want to know what kind of biographies you should be reading. Be selective and definitely don’t choose anything that comes your way. They may harm you more than they benefit you. My suggestion: look for people who do any or all of the following to you:

1. Inspire you.
2. Show you how to overcome the biggest struggles in life.
3.  Motivate you.

Here then are seven best biographies every Baad Ace teenager should read in 2024.

1.    Elon Musk Biography for Young Readers

What direction our life takes depend on many factors. But there is no greater influence than the heroes we look up to. That is why, children’s comics are full of heroes with superpower to do good and destroy evil. But after a certain age, we need to look for real-life heroes who will show us the path – people who are intelligent and knowledgeable, people who can achieve superhuman status through sheer hard work and commitment to big problems.

In the 21^st Century, who can be a better example of these traits than Elon Musk. Today, he is the most successful entrepreneur the world has seen, the richest person in the world, who some believe will become the first trillionaire ever. When we hear of Elon Musk, we think of a billionaire with a fleet of luxury cars, beach side mansions, and an army of bodyguards. But Elon Musk does not fit that image of a billionaire. He is in fact just a man addicted to finding big problems and solving them.

Elon was born in South Africa to a middle-class family. He did not have a happy childhood. Smart beyond his age with insatiable interest in books, he was bullied severely in school. He hated school but not going was not an option. His parents separated when he was young, and he had a difficult time with his father. His country South Africa was itself a violent country where blacks were discriminated by white minority. He wanted to get out of that country. His dream was to be in the United States of America, the technology capital of the world.

After high school, Elon made way to Canada where he worked all sorts of jobs to survive, once even surviving on a dollar a day. From there, managed to find a way to the United States. As he had dreamt, he made his mark here. In a big way. 

Elon Musk Biography for Young Readers takes you on Elon’s life story. But we read biographies not just for the story of who did what when. We read it because we want to get to the thinking that made our heroes in the first place. This book shows how Elon looks at the world, thinks, and takes on the challenge. It is not just a story but a manual for teens.

This book is well researched and written with authenticity. It is well crafted and easy to read yet full of snippets of wisdom. You will be a smarter person after reading it.

2.    The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

This book is an autobiography written by William Kamkwamba, a boy from Malawi, who changed the fortune of his family and his village by building a windmill to pump water. 

How a simple windmill can have such an impact is unimaginable because we are in developed world. But in Africa, it is a very big deal.

Malawi is a poor African country where draught brought hunger to the people who depended on their farmland for food and income. Education was expensive and modern development was still a long way. It was a hopeless existence for many of its people.

William Kamkwamba was a bright student with a dream of studying science. But in 2002, a severe draught lead to famine in Malawi. Kamkwamba’s family farm had no crop and they could not pay his school fee of eight dollars in one year. He was forced to drop out from school and forage for food as thousands of people across Malawi starved and died.

Amid this hopelessness, Kamkwamba dreamt of generating electricity and building a windmill to pump water for farming. He had read about windmills in a book in the school library. But in such a poor country, where will he get the parts necessary to build a windmill?

Kamkwamba collected scrap metals and bicycle parts started building a windmill. People in his village laughed at his idea and mocked him as he worked on his windmill. Turning a deaf ear to them, he managed to build a crude yet operable windmill. It generated electricity and also pumped water from the well into the farmland. The news of a windmill builder spread throughout his village and the world. The rest is history.

This is an inspirational book, that will make anyone dream of all the possibilities even when looking into a deep well of darkness.

“Don’t insult me today just because I’m poor, you don’t know what my future holds!”

3.    Madame Curie: A Biography

Our society puts labels on girls and women – what they can do and what they can’t do. Normally, we still do not think of girls and women as scientists or mathematicians. This needs to change because the fact is girls and women are capable of doing anything that boys and men can do. And certainly in science.

One of the most remarkable female scientists, of course, is Madam Curie. 

Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934) was the first woman scientist to win worldwide fame, and indeed, one of the great scientists of the last century. Winner of two Nobel Prizes (for physics in 1903 and for chemistry in 1911), she performed pioneering studies with radium and contributed profoundly to the understanding of radioactivity. The history of her story-book marriage to Pierre Curie, of their refusal to patent their processes or otherwise profit from the commercial exploitation of radium, and her tragically ironic death are legendary and well known but are here revealed from an inside perspective. But, as this book reveals, it was also true. An astonishing mind and a remarkable life are here portrayed by Marie Curie’s daughter in a classic and moving account.

“Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood.”

4.    Long Walk to Freedom

Nelson Mandela was the leader of South Africa. He was the first democratically elected President of that country. However, his life is inspiring not for what he did as a president but what he had to endure to get freedom for his people.

South Africa is a majority-black people but the small minority of white people who came during British colonial time discriminated against the majority black population. Black people in South Africa were treated as third-class citizens, nothing more than an animal by the whites.

Nelson Mandela was one of the activists who wanted equality for blacks. This landed him in prison for 27 years.

Even though he was jailed, and had to endure unimaginable pain, harassment and poor treatment in the prison, he continued his fight for equality from his jail cell. When he was released from the prison, he became a leader and was subsequently elected the president of South Africa.

This book, written by Nelson Mandela himself, shows the journey of his life, the pains he endured and the person he became. Instead of the hatred and disdain for the people who put him in jail for almost 30 years, he came out a more wise and compassionate man. And that is what made him a role model of not just the blacks or Africans, but for the entire world.

This is a very long book and not written for younger readers but there is no alternative. If you want to get an easier and a shorter version, read this instead: Who Was Nelson Mandela.

“It is in your hands, to make a better world for all who live in it.”

5.    I am Malala

Staying with the theme of struggle, we definitely cannot miss the story of Malala – the girl who stood up to the brutality of Talibans. 

Malala was born in 1997 in Pakistan, a country where girls are really not expected to become much more than a housewife. However, Malala has a very supportive father, who believed a girl child should have as much opportunity as a boy child. He ran a school for girls and Malala studied there.

In 2008, however, Talibans took over Malala’s home town. They banned television and playing music. One of their trademark laws was to prohibit girls from attending school. 

Malala, however, continued school with the support of her father. In 2012, the young Malala spoke publicly against Taliban’s policy of prohibiting girls from attending school. This made her a target for Taliban. One day, on the way back from school, Malala was shot in the face by a Taliban.

Malala survived the attack and became a face of girls and women fighting not only against Taliban and other extremists, but of inequality throughout the world. In 2014, Malala become the youngest ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

6.    I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives

A small experience can become life-changing. And the story of this book shows how a school assignment for a student went further than just getting a good grade, how 12-year-old Caitlin Alifirenka’s assignment to write to an unknown student in a far-off place turned into something life-changing. 

It started as an assignment. Everyone in Caitlin’s class wrote to an unknown student somewhere in a distant place.

Martin was lucky to even receive a pen-pal letter. There were only ten letters, and fifty kids in his class. But he was the top student, so he got the first one.

That letter was the beginning of a correspondence that spanned six years and changed two lives.

When Caitlin first began corresponding with Martin Ganda in Zimbabwe, she began to learn about the poverty that he and his family lived in, and it opened her eyes to how other people lived, and helped to change Martin’s future. Teens will be inspired by Martin’s determination to study his way out of poverty, and Caitlin’s determination to help him.

7.    The Greatest: My Own Story

Muhammad Ali was undoubtedly the greatest boxer of all times. But he was not just a boxer. He was a showman, an orator and an activist for equality of black Americans. As much as he is remembered for making boxing a mainstream sport, he was a big man outside the boxing ring. 

His fight inside and outside the ring is legendary. His quick wit almost out of this world. His story in his own word is something that will inspire young boys and girls for years to come.

So, these are the seven best biographies and memoirs for young adults and teens.