Women Who Shaped the Public World: Underrated Memoirs & Biographies That Deserve Attention from The Seen and the Unseen Podcast

"The Seen and the Unseen" is India's premier long-form podcast hosted by Amit Varma. The podcast, which has been running since 2017, features long-form conversations with intellectuals, writers, economists, historians, and thought leaders from India and around the world.  I am only sharing the books recommended related to Memoirs & Biography: 

Indian Authors

1. My Daughters’ Mum — Natasha Badhwar
2. My Life in Full — Indra Nooyi
3. The Brass Notebook: A Memoir — Devaki Jain
4. Lady Doctors: The Untold Stories of India’s First Women in Medicine — Kavitha Rao
5. Breaking Through: A Memoir — Isher Judge Ahluwalia
6. A Full Life — Sabira Merchant
7. The Memoirs of Dr. Haimabati Sen — Haimabati Sen

International Authors

1. Just Kids — Patti Smith
2. The Odd Woman and the City  and Fierce Attachments — Vivian Gornick
3. An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness — Kay Redfield Jamison
4. Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me — Ada Calhoun

These books show how real lives are built—through compromise, courage, illness, ambition, and quiet persistence, not slogans. They recover forgotten histories and inner lives, especially of women artists, lawyer, doctor and thinkers who shaped institutions and ideas without recognition. Together, they teach that meaning comes from endurance, responsibility, and moral clarity—not from success alone.