Helen Keller’s memoir is unforgettable for many reasons, but is surprising for her admission of having retold a fable (Birdie and His Friends by Margaret T. Canby) as en eleven-year-old when submitting a short story (The Frost King) for her school magazine. Though, more surprising than this acceptance was Mark Twain’s letter to Keller, where…
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September is the best time to buy a book because of the cozy atmosphere that is soon rolling in: from the newest release by a Pulitzer-finalist author to a realistic fiction that takes readers to the streets of Calcutta, India; from sequels of loved fantasy books like Once Upon a Broken Heart and Gideon the…
Read MoreThis debut novel in English by the Spanish poet feels like a collection of short stories that weave back and forth through time. Attempting to bypass and often unknowingly giving in to intergenerational trauma, two working-class women try creating lives of their own for freedom from patriarchal constrictions, financial hardships, and everlasting grief, while these…
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Furthermoor by Darren Simpson Bren is still grieving the tragic loss of his sister Evie and has numbed himself while going through the daily routines of home and school. Simultaneously, the school bully, Shaun, preys on the saddened Bren while also marking down a new kid. Bren is happy he at least has an imaginary…
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In her youth, Tara was wild. She abandoned her arranged marriage to join an ashram, took a hapless artist for a lover, rebelled against every social expectation of a good Indian woman – all with her young child in tow. Years on, she is an old woman with a fading memory, mixing up her maid’s…
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Yasmin Ghorami in twenty-six, in training to be a doctor (like her Indian-born father), and engaged to the charismatic, upper-class Joe Sangster, whose formidable mother, Harriet, is a famous feminist. The gulf between families is vast. So, too, is the gulf in sexual experience between Yasmin and Joe. As the wedding day draws near, misunderstandings,…
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An exquisite collection from a breathtakingly new voice–centered on a constellation of Korean American families, these stories announce the debut of a master of short fiction. A long-married couple is forced to confront their friend’s painful past when a church revival comes to a nearby town . . . A woman in an arranged marriage…
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A Mystery at Lili Villa by Arathi Menon Enid Blyton’s Five Find-Outers meets Carolyn Keene’s Nancy Drew in this small-town mystery set against the beautiful backdrop of Kerala, India. For a desi kid, summer vacations are more than school holidays: they’re the perfect time for meeting up with distant family, delicious food, running wild while the elders napped in…
Read MoreFebruary is here! I had some big reading goals set up for January but sadly, the pandemic reached my house and I had to keep everything on the backburner to focus on my health. Now I’m definitely more enthusiastic for this month, having come back from a long break, ready to tackle my TBR. If…
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Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba—the catastrophe that led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 people—and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, and among their victims they capture…
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