Overcoming Obstacles

Girl, interrupted by Susanna Kaysen.

The author describes her two-year stay at the age of eighteen in a psychiatric hospital renowned for its famous clientele and for its progressive methods of treatment.

Accelerated Reader Reading Level - 5.4

Kim : empty inside : the diary of an anonymous teenager by Beatrice Sparks.

Seventeen-year-old Kim, feeling the pressure of maintaining an A average to stay on her college gymnastics team, becomes obsessive about her weight and develops anorexia.

Accelerated Reader Reading Level - 5.5

It's not about the bike : my journey back to life by Lance Armstrong with Sally Jenkins.

The world-champion cyclist recounts his diagnosis with cancer, the grueling treatments during which he was given a less than twenty percent chance for survival, his surprising victory in the 1999 Tour de France, and the birth of his son.

Accelerated Reader Reading Level - 6.7

Please stop laughing at me-- : one woman's inspirational story by Jodee Blanco.

The author, a victim of bullying, provides an account of her miserable school career, telling how her experiences as an outcast affected her life, and sharing her perspective on the events as an adult.

Accelerated Reader Reading Level - 5.3

The burn journals by Brent Runyon.

Presents the true story of Brent Runyon, who at fourteen set himself on fire and sustained burns over eighty percent of his body and describes the months of physical and mental rehabilitation that followed as he attempted to pull his life together.

Accelerated Reader Reading Level - 3.8

Hole in my life by Jack Gantos.

The author relates how, as a young adult, he became a drug user and smuggler, was arrested, did time in prison, and eventually got out and went to college, all the while hoping to become a writer.

Accelerated Reader Reading Level - 5.7

Wasted : a memoir of anorexia and bulimia by Marya

Hornbacher.

The author reflects on her fourteen-year battle with bulimia and anorexia, discussing how the eating disorders have affected her life from childhood through the present day.

Ice bound : a doctor's incredible battle for survival at the South Pole by Jerri Nielsen, with Maryanne Vollers.

The author describes her life-changing experience working as a doctor in Antarctica in 1999, during which time she discovered she had breast cancer and had to treat herself with the aid of her own patients and U.S. doctors via the Internet.

Unafraid of the dark : a memoir by Rosemary L. Bray.

A memoir in which the author, one of the first African-American women at Yale, shares the story of her life growing up poor in Chicago in the 1960s, and tells how the welfare system saved the family by enabling her and her siblings to receive a good education.

Accelerated Reader Reading Level - 7.3

Chinese Cinderella : the true story of an unwanted daughter by Adeline Yen Mah.

The author tells the story of her painful childhood in China where she lived until the age of fourteen with her father, stepmother, and siblings, all of whom considered her bad luck because her mother died shortly after giving birth to her.

Accelerated Reader Reading Level - 5.7

Rescuing Patty Hearst : memories from a decade gone mad by Virginia Holman.

The author recalls her experiences growing up with a schizophrenic mother in the 1970s, discussing the nearly four years she and her sister spent in a cottage with their mother who believed she had been ordered to outfit the house as a field hospital in a secret war, and sharing her experiences as an adult trying to reconstruct the course of her mother's illness.