Books like The two kinds of decay by Sarah Manguso

The Last Lecture is a memoir by computer‑science professor Jeffrey Zaslow, who, after a terminal cancer diagnosis, reflects on life lessons, childhood ambitions, and the impact of illness on himself and his family.

A memoir that traces a violent lesbian relationship, dissects psychological abuse, and challenges queer stereotypes while weaving literary tropes and cultural critique into an innovative narrative structure.

A groundbreaking memoir that blends personal narrative with rigorous theory, charting Maggie Nelson’s queer romance, pregnancy, and the politics of love and family.

A boy named Jimmy is born on the day his grandfather dies. During a storm, the dying Grandfather, Josef Tock, unexpectedly speaks and predicts five dark days in Jimmy’s life, each revealing a hidden truth.

The author's account of his own life when he was suffeing from a brain tumor.

A poetic novella that blends classical myth with modern themes, following the longing and self‑discovery of the winged figure Geryon as he navigates love, identity, and the world of photography.

At 25, television producer Richard M. Cohen is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and later faces colon cancer, yet he writes a hopeful memoir about resilience, family, and living fully amid chronic illness.

"In the tradition of Brain on Fire and Darkness Visible, an honest, beautifully rendered memoir of chronic illness, misdiagnosis, addiction, and the myth of full recovery that details author Porochista Khakpour's struggles with late-stage Lyme disease. For as long as writer Porochista Khakpour can remember, she has been sick. For most of that time, she didn't know why. All of her trips to the ER and her daily anguish, pain, and lethargy only ever resulted in one question: How could any one person be this sick? Several drug addictions, three major hospitalizations, and over $100,000 later, she finally had a diagnosis: late-stage Lyme disease. Sick is Khakpour's arduous, emotional journey--as a woman, a writer, and a lifelong sufferer of undiagnosed health problems--through the chronic illness that perpetually left her a victim of anxiety, living a life stymied by an unknown condition. Divided by settings, Khakpour guides the reader through her illness by way of the locations that changed her course--New York, LA, New Mexico, and Germany--as she meditates on both the physical and psychological impacts of uncertainty, and the eventual challenge of accepting the diagnosis she had searched for over the course of her adult life. With candor and grace, she examines her subsequent struggles with mental illness, her addiction to the benzodiazepines prescribed by her psychiatrists, and her ever-deteriorating physical health. A story about survival, pain, and transformation, Sick is a candid, illuminating narrative of hope and uncertainty, boldly examining the deep impact of illness on one woman's life."--

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.

A biography that reveals the hidden life of Samuel M. Steward—novelist, poet, professor, and post‑Stonewall tattoo artist—through unpublished diaries and research correspondence, illustrating early homosexual existence in America.

A poignant memoir about a child's acceptance of her uncertain past and a life adrift in modern America.

After a fatal liver illness forces him into a hospital bed, Inga Clendinnen turns to memory and imagination, weaving childhood recollections, vivid hallucinations, and historical research into a memoir that blurs fact and fiction.

Sarah Manguso reflects on the life‑changing impact of twenty‑five years of meticulous diary keeping, how pregnancy and motherhood altered her memory, and the quiet meditation on mortality that emerged from the process.