Here are three more books that I have read and heartily recommend.
Do They Hear You When you Cry by Fauziya Kassindja - a memoir of a 16-yr old woman who fled her home in Togo, a small country in Africa, in the mid-90s as she was yanked out of high school and forced into marriage. Her husband was 30 years her senior and already had three wives. On the day of her marriage, she was about to undergo her tribe's ritual genital mutilation. She escaped to the U.S. and most of the book describes her cruel and inhumane experiences in various U.S. detention facilities for immigrants seeking asylum.
First They Killed My Father - A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Loung Ung, a childhood survivor of Pol Pot's regime has written "a riveting narrative of war, desperate actions and the unnerving strength of a child and a family." Because of the starvation and deprivation, the women of Cambodia in the 1970s were so underfed, overworked, and filled with fear that must could not become pregnant and if they did, many suffered miscarriages. In Cambodia today there is a generation of children completely missing. I learned that the reason there are fewer disabled people in Cambodia [from loss of limbs from mines] is because the Khmer Rouge simply killed any people who survived the accidental mine detonations. 
red CHINA blues: My Long March from Mao to Now by Jan Wong - the memoir of a Canadian born ethnic Chinese who, so disaffected with the government and policies and culture of North American, she embraced Maoism and lived in China for many years, as a student and later, as a reporter. She gradually became thoroughly disillusioned with China's government and policies. A witty and very personal strong voice.Note: one individual she wrote about named all of his six children Fu Min, using different ideograms for min, comparable to naming your six kids leslee, lesley, leslie, lezlee, lezley, lezlie. [Joyce - thought you would enjoy this.]
As a student she was assigned to write for a chapter for a book on Chinese history. She chose the Taiping Rebellion, which I had heard of but knew little about. There was a massive peasant uprising with neo-Christian roots that lasted from 1851 to 1864 and resulted in 20 million deaths.
The following took place at a workfarm in which she insisted on particapating when she was a foreign student. "At night, we poured half a bottle of pesticide into a washbasin, diluted it with water, and sprinkled it with our bare hands over the floors and walls until our room reeked. I watched the mosquitoes die in mid-flight and tried not to think what it [might be] doing to my descendants."
I’m convinced that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship, but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely. – Thoreau
