Three eye-opening memoirs on Aids, abortion and murder in the American South

All the Young Men, by Ruth Coker Burks

There is nothing more addictive than sliding into someone else's life for a spell. If you love memoirs, you know what I mean. The very best memoirs are an active read; they force you to take on other people's challenges, to pick positions and interrogate your motives. The rewards are a greater understanding of the humans you live alongside - and of yourself.

In All the Young Men (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, $35), Ruth Coker Burks describes her compassionate care for Aids patients in the early days of the epidemic, when little was understood about how it was spread and a diagnosis was a certain death sentence. It took tremendous courage for the young single mother to enter her first quarantine hospital room in the mid-80s and sit with a dying man, especially in her socially conservative home of Hot Springs, Arkansas, where trained nurses were too scared or morally offended to look after Aids patients.

Over time, Burks created an unofficial wrap-around service for men whose own families wouldn't care for them due to shame or fear or both - and word got out that she was an ally, maybe an angel. She found housing and jobs for the healthier patients. For those who couldn't work, she provided hot meals and friendship. When no one claimed their bodies, she buried them in her family cemetery.

Her book brings the American South of 35 years ago to life - the underground gay clubs, the joyous sexual experimentation, the idealised "family values" and the apple-pie-and-icecream veneer that allowed people to ignore what was happening around them. It also exposes pure-hearted goodness - and not just her own. There is the doctor who secretly sees "her guys", the business owners who leave unused, edible food next to the dumpster for her to retrieve, the pottery-maker who gives her urns for the dead; and all the kind, scared gay boys who help her raise her daughter, Alison.

Loved and Wanted, by Christa Parravani

Christa Parravani's Loved and Wanted (Manilla Press, $33) is a far more complicated read. The writing is seductively lush, the dilemma at its centre more nuanced. Where Burks hits you over the head with injustice, Parravani allows it to settle damply on to your skin.

Parravani has just moved her family from California to West Virginia for a university teaching job that will support her family, when she discovers she is pregnant with her third child. Given a history of ectopic pregnancies and lacking the means to raise another child with her screenwriter husband (Anthony Swofford, of Jarhead fame, who does not come off well at all), she seeks a termination.

Abortion is technically legal in West Virginia but accessing one is difficult. She tells her doctor she wants an abortion; he tells her he can't help. She tries another doctor and the receptionist won't make a timely appointment. The state's one provider of the RU486 pill is too far away for practical care. She considers returning to California or to her home state, New York, for treatment. The expense and logistics are prohibitive.

Parravani learns of women who have had botched illegal abortions in West Virginia and been refused follow-up hospital care – literally turned away at the emergency room door. She makes contact with a sympathetic doctor who will perform the abortion in secret but tells her if anything goes wrong, she is on her own and must not mention his name.

Whatever your personal beliefs about abortion, the disdain shown to pregnant women in West Virginia, historically and today, is horrifying. While Parravani struggles with her situation, she can see how much worse it is for others. "West Virginian women live in poverty at nearly twice the national average. Medicaid-funded abortion is illegal. A woman making $17,000 a year will pay $450 to $900 for an abortion, not including transportation, childcare and lodging. Four weeks of her salary for reproductive care."

Memorial Drive, by Natasha Trethewey

One last memoir recommendation from the American South: Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey (Bloomsbury, $30), in which the acclaimed poet recalls her mother's murder at the hands of her stepfather.

It's a heartbreaker but there is such strength in Trethewey's act of creation, of reclaiming her mother Gwendolyn's life as something more than the violence and pain of its final years.

The story is all the more satisfying when you learn that it was in a journal gifted by her mother that Trethewey found her writing voice.