Ms. Smith points this out at the start of her tenderly evocative memoir, "Just Kids," but there is even stronger evidence that this book dates back a long time.

An evocative memoir of private lives and public events, distorted by both racism and sexism, in South Africa in the 1950's and since.

An evocative and useful memoir and cookbook to be published later this month captures a child's experiences with food, cooking, gardening and restaurants.

An evocative memoir of an Appalachian coal mining company town at a time not so long ago, with illustrations that are both "honest and beautiful."

Quite a lot, the reader concludes at the end of this evocative and gratifyingly lucid memoir.

Hardly your evocative memoir, mellowed and illuminated by the years.

The most enchantingly evocative memoir of funky-but-chic New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s that any alumnus has yet committed to print.

King of the Hill is Hotchner's evocative memoir of his childhood in St. Louis during the Great Depression.

All this is the subject of "Just Kids," Smith's terrifically evocative and splendidly titled new memoir.

Through it all, Ahmed kept her balance and distance, and that makes her wonderfully evocative memoir all the more valuable to the outsider.