Amal Ghandour’s writing is intimate, gripping, and so wonderfully done. Not only does she seamlessly weave in actual historical moments with her more personal back story, but it’s also an eye-opening read into the lives of a group of young people who grew up as the Middle East begin to change into a place of political turmoil.
Read MoreThe crushing, powerful and moving story of a survivor of domestic violence in Trinidad and Tobago, The Bread the Devil Knead nevertheless manages to find glimmers of light, love and wit in the aggressively and painfully patriarchal world inhabited by our protagonist.
Read MoreSmall Deaths begins with death: a murder inside a brothel in the red light district in Calcutta called Shonagachi. A woman named Maya is murdered and no one seems to know who did it. The local authorities don’t care and brush it off as an everyday occurrence in such a neighborhood. Soon it’s up to the other women in the brothel to get to the bottom of whodunit.
Read MoreWhen I picked up Nghi Vo’s debut novel The Chosen and the Beautiful, I was excited to get a more femme retelling of one of my favorite books of all time, The Great Gatsby. What I ended up getting was a new mantra: if white men can rewrite history, women of color can rewrite their books. Let’s face it, literature has stood the test of time better than history, anyway.
Read MoreI had the honor of receiving an advanced copy of Someday Mija, You’ll Learn the Difference Between a Whore and a Working Woman by Yvonne Martinez. Intrigued by the title alone, I gladly ate it up. It tells the story of author Martinez’s tumultuous childhood and young adulthood, as well as what happens after she distances herself from her family.
Read MoreI Let You Fall tells the story of Eve Chapman, an art teacher who leads a seemingly normal life until she finds herself in a coma after an accident. She wakes up in a hospital room and watches in horror as a group of surgeons attempt to save the life of a woman with a terrible head injury. As she takes a closer look, she realizes that the woman on the operating table is none other than herself. It’s an out-of-body experience moment at its finest.
Read MoreFor those of you who love memoirs as much as I do, I encourage you to read An Accidental Parisian. It chronicles author Juliet Young’s journey from Toronto resident to expat in Paris.
Read MoreVirginia Méndez, a Spanish author, speaker and founder of the Feminist Shop, lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland with husband Chris, son Eric and daughter Nora. She is the writer of a feminist book series for children called Mika & Lolo, but what fascinated me was her feminist and gender-creative parenting guide, Childhood Unlimited.
Read MoreAgatha of Little Neon is an unusual debut. The author, Claire Luchette, has described her book as a story about falling out of love, but not with a person, with a vocation.
Read MoreDoes the novelty of This is How You Lose the Time War lie in the authors who penned it, the feminine and LGBTQ themes, the lack of male characters in sci-fi, or the fun reimaging of the time travel subgenre? Yes to all of the above.
Read MoreGahl’s style ranges throughout the book, making it interesting and enrapturing to read. She moves from stream of consciousness to sonnets to free verse to alternate rhymes and beyond. The thread that brings the entire collection together, however, is the theme of dance. Dance clearly holds a special place in the author’s heart. In a lot of ways, it makes sense. Poetry can give you the feeling of dancing across the page as you read.
Read MoreIt is not easy to write a review of a publishing sensation like Sally Rooney, who has captured the hearts of readership in Europe and worldwide. Her latest book, however, has triggered me and I feel, in my small way, that I have a word to say about this publication, so I have decided to dedicate a space to Beautiful World, Where Are You.
Read MoreBuild Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith is one of the best books I’ve read in recent years. It is a brilliant, symbolic exploration of colonialism, generational trauma, women’s bodies, and the history of place. And it’s all told as a ghost story. Yes, I am obsessed. No, I will not stop recommending this book to my friends.
Read MoreI Was Born For This by YA author and illustrator Alice Oseman is a heartwarming and eye-opening look at the often misunderstood world of fandom and online culture, which brings to life a delightful and very human set of characters with compassion and nuance.
Read MoreReading Berlin is like getting punched in the face. She forces you to look at the ugliest parts of humanity while writing in such a direct and entrancing way you can’t escape it. From the first few stories, you’ll realize you’re in for a ride. And even though they’re not obviously connected, many themes repeat along the 470-pages, including alcoholism, racism, abuse, trauma, and pain.
Read MoreElkin’s book is a homage to women walking and wandering the cities of the world, in various forms and for various reasons. It’s a lyrical and contemplative study of the relationship between women and the city, with the act of walking as a mediator through which this relationship is realized, nurtured, and as Elkin demonstrates deftly, conveyed. Part memoir and part an exercise in biography, Elkin intersperses the life stories of women like Jean Rhys, George Sand, Virginia Woolf, and others, with her own experiences of walking in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London.
Read MoreNo One Is Talking About This is not your typical novel. It’s among many books that make me ask, “When can we get a subgenre for novels written by poets?” Laced in metaphor to mirror the confusing layers of information one gets from the internet and told in two main parts rather than three acts, it’s the kind of book you finish in an afternoon, as long as you can get past the daunting and dizzying first few pages. I’ve never gone from laughing to sobbing the way I did reading this book.
Read MoreThe Lying Life of Adults is also set in Naples. The book follows Giovanna as she navigates puberty, her parents’ failing marriage, changing friendships, and issues among estranged family members. The story begins with a bang — Giovanna overhears her father calling her ugly and the world around her begins to crumble (understandably at 13 years old).
Read MoreThe protagonist of Convenience Store Woman, Keiko Furukura is a 36-year-old, you guessed it, convenience store worker. Every day looks the same, she wakes up and takes basic care of herself because that’s what’s good for her job, the same she’s had since she was 18 years old. Keiko forces us to ask ourselves, what is ambition? And why do we chase it?
Read MoreAcross countries and continents and borders and oceans, women feel, wonder, think, experience, regret, worry, and are faced with issues that feel all too familiar. Under Red Skies, told across three generations in China, touches on this (among other things), which is comforting and disheartening all at once.
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