Books like Pedro and Me by Judd Winick

Raina Telgemeier tells the coming‑of‑age tale of a young girl who hurts her front teeth in a Girl Scout mishap, faces bullying after braces, and finds unexpected friendship among a quirky group of classmates.

A personal, illustrated memoir of Marjane Satrapi’s childhood in Tehran, her coming‑of‑age during the Islamic Revolution, teenage years in Vienna and eventual exile from Iran.

In a blustery Wisconsin winter, two brothers navigate sibling rivalry and a budding romance as they grow up in an isolated rural setting.

David Small’s graphic memoir chronicles his battle with throat cancer, the loss of his voice, and his escape toward an artistic future.

Explores the grassroots fight against the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York, detailing the rise of ACT UP, the fight for affordable treatment, and the lives of activists and patients who demanded medical progress and civil rights.

A teenager’s honest memoir of bullying and living with HIV, showing how she turns hardships into a catalyst for positive change.

A tender and lyrical memoir of a gay man's love story, winner of the Lambda Literary Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The search for a “patient zero”—popularly understood to be the first person infected in an epidemic—has been key to media coverage of major infectious disease outbreaks for more than three decades. Yet the term itself did not exist before the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. How did this idea so swiftly come to exert such a strong grip on the scientific, media, and popular consciousness? In Patient Zero, Richard A. McKay interprets a wealth of archival sources and interviews to demonstrate how this seemingly new concept drew upon centuries-old ideas—and fears—about contagion and social disorder. McKay presents a carefully documented and sensitively written account of the life of Gaétan Dugas, a gay man whose skin cancer diagnosis in 1980 took on very different meanings as the HIV/AIDS epidemic developed—and who received widespread posthumous infamy when he was incorrectly identified as patient zero of the North American outbreak. McKay shows how investigators from the US Centers for Disease Control inadvertently created the term amid their early research into the emerging health crisis; how an ambitious journalist dramatically amplified the idea in his determination to reframe national debates about AIDS; and how many individuals grappled with the notion of patient zero—adopting, challenging and redirecting its powerful meanings—as they tried to make sense of and respond to the first fifteen years of an unfolding epidemic. With important insights for our interconnected age, Patient Zero untangles the complex process by which individuals and groups create meaning and allocate blame when faced with new disease threats. What McKay gives us here is myth-smashing revisionist history at its best.

Ana's Story chronicles a young woman's journey from a difficult childhood with HIV to finding hope, love, and determination while protecting herself and others.

In 1989, poet Mark Doty confronts grief when his long‑time partner, Wally Roberts, dies of AIDS, turning memoir, journal and elegy into a poignant tribute to love and loss.

Dale Peck blends memoir, essay, and reportage to chart the 1987‑1996 era of the AIDS crisis, exploring ACT UP, serial killings of gay men, and the shifting fortunes of LGBTQ activism.