Thanks to the help of some Facebook and other crowd-sourcing, I've collected and compiled an incomplete, in-progress list of contemporary memoirs or collections of essays by writers of color. I do not intend this as a definitive or exhaustive source, but merely as a starting point. I'm sure that I've missed a LOT and I did not include all the books by some authors. My hope is that this can influence my own reading and teaching and become a resource for my students, perhaps for others as well. Enjoy! -- Steven
UPDATED 12/9/2015
Adiche, Chimamamba Ngozi: We Should All Be Feminists
Als, Hilton: The Women, White Girls
Anzaldua, Gloria: Borderlands/La Frontera
Anzaldua, Lorde, and Moraga, This Bridge Called My Back
Arnett, Marvin V.: Pieces from Life’s Crazy Quilt
Baldwin, James: Notes of a Native Son, Collected Essays
Bambara, Toni Cade Deep Sightings, Rescue Missions
Blanco, Richard: The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood
Brown, Elaine: A Taste of Power
Broyard, Bliss. One Drop: My Father’s Hidden Life–A Story of Race and Family Secrets
Bulosan, Carlos: America is in the Heart
Cary, Lorene: Black Ice
Castillo, Ana: Massacre of the Dreamers
Castro, Joy: The Island of Bones, The Truth Book
Coates, Ta-Nahesi: Between the World and Me, The Beautiful Struggle
Cha, Therese: Dictee
Chin, Staceyann: The Other Side of Paradise
Cisneros, Sandra: A House of My Own
Coke, Allison Hedge: Ghost, Rock, Willow, Deer: A Story of Survival
Davis, Angela: Women, Race, and Class
Delaney, Samuel: The Motion of Light in Water
Deraniyagala, Sonali: Wave
Early, Gerald: Tuxedo Junction, The Culture of Bruising
Ellison, Ralph: Shadow & Act, Collected Essays
Erdrich, Louise: Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country, The Blue Jay’s Dance
Galeano, Eduardo: The Book of Embraces
Gay, Roxane: Bad Feminist
Ghosh, Amitav: Incendiary Circumstances
Gilb, Dagoberto: Gritos
Gonzalez, Ray: Memory Fever: A Journey Beyond El Paso Del Norte
González, Rigoberto: Butterfly Boy
Guttierez, Stephen: The Mexican Man in His Backyard
Hale, Janet Campbell: Bloodlines
Hernandez, Daisy: A Cup of Water Under My Bed
Harjo, Joy: Crazy Brave
Hongo, Garret Volcano: A Memoir of Hawai'i
Hogan, Linda: The Woman Who Watches Over the World
hooks, bell: Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood, Ain’t I a Woman
Kimmerer, Robin Wall: Braiding Sweetgrass
Kincaid, Jamaica: A Small Place
King Jr., Martin Luther: A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr
Kingston, Maxine Hong: China Men, The Woman Warrior
Kumar, Amitava: A Matter of Rats
Laymon, Kiese: How to Slowly Kill Yourselves and Others in America
Lee, Li-Young The Winged Seed
Lourde, Audre. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name , Sister Outsider
Maathai, Wangari: Unbowed
Martinez, Domingo The Boy Kings of Texas
McBride, James: The Color of Water
Mock, Janet: Redefining Realness
Moraga, Cherríe: Loving in the War Years
Morgan, Joan: When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life as a Hip-Hop Feminist
Mori, Kyoko: The Dream of Water
Morrison, Toni: What Moves at the Margin, Playing in the Dark
Momaday, N. Scott: The Names, The Way to Rainy Mountain
Mura, David: Where the Body Meets Memory
Nafisi, Azar: Reading Lolita in Tehran
Nelson, Marilyn: How I Discovered Poetry
Nguyen, Bich Minh: Stealing Buddha's Dinner
Norris, Michele: The Grace of Silence
Nye, Naomi Shihab: Never in a Hurry
Orduna, Jose: The Weight of Shadows: a Memoir of Immigration and Displacement
Ortiz, Wendy: Excavation
Ortiz-Cofer, Judith: Silent Dancing, The Latin Deli
Páramo, Adriana: Looking for Esperanza
Parms, Jericho: Lost Wax
Pemberton, Gayle: The Hottest Water In Chicago
Rankine, Claudia: Citizen: An American Lyric
Rodriguez, Luis: It Calls You Back
Rodriguez, Richard: The Hunger of Memory, Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father
Rekdal, Paisely: Intimate: An American Family Photo Album
Roripaugh, Lee Ann: Dandarians
Royster, Francesca: Sounding Like a No-No, Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts
Rushdie, Salman: Step Across this Line, Imaginary Homelands
Santiago, Esmerelda: When I was Puerto Rican
Satrapi, Marjane Persepolis
Savoy, Lauret: Traces
Sloane, Aisha Sabatini: The Fluency of Light
Smith, Carmen Gimenez: Bring Down the Little Birds
Sukrungruang, Ira: Talking Thai, Southside Buddhist
Staples, Brent Parallel Time
Trenka, Jane Jeong: Fugitive Visions: An Adoptee's Return to Korea
Tretheway, Natasha: Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast
Vaswani, Neela: You Have Given Me a Country
Walker, Alice: In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose
Walker, Jerald. Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption
Walters, Wendy S.: Multiply/Divide
Ward, Jesmyn: Men We Reaped
Whitehead, Colson: The Colossus of New York
Wideman, John Edgar: Brothers and Keepers, Fatheralong
Wright, Richard: Black Boy
X, Malcolm: The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley.
Yang, Kao Kalia: The Latehomecomer
[1] For the purposes of this list, “contemporary” means “post World War II” (roughly).