“It’s sad really…She thought if she could get us out of China, we’d be safe. But she couldn’t outrun her mental illness. It was waiting to devour us. She always was a drowning woman, trying desperately to throw me on the shore so I would not drown with her.” In her evocative, genre-defying graphic memoir,…
Category: Memoir
Slow Noodles by Chantha Nguon
“The memory of hunger is a curse that never leaves you.” From Goodreads: A haunting and beautiful memoir from a Cambodian refugee who lost her country and her family during Pol Pot’s genocide in the 1970s but who finds hope by reclaiming the recipes she tasted in her mother’s kitchen. With over 20 Khmer recipes…
Thunder Song: Essays by Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe
“When my great-grandmother handed the composer the tape that held Chief Seattle’s voice, she was asking the whole world to listen. She was asking us to consider something better, something stronger. I am asking you the same thing. Are you listening yet?” In this heartbreaking and riveting collection, Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe recounts different parts of…
Crude: A Memoir by Pablo Fajardo and Sophie Tardy-Joubert
“After 25 years of fighting, I’m starting to think justice is a fiction, a nice story to tell children.” From Goodreads: A gripping, richly illustrated recounting of the battle indigenous Ecuadorians and their allies waged against Texaco/Chevron over the energy company’s destruction of portions of the Amazon. As a teenager, Pablo Fajardo worked in the…
Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology by Jess Zimmerman
“When you embrace imperfection, your own imperfection stops consuming you. When your own imperfection stops consuming you, the imperfection itself can be art.” Described as “A fresh cultural analysis of female monsters from Greek mythology, and an invitation for all women to reclaim these stories as inspiration for a more wild, more “monstrous” version of…
Cassandra Speaks by Elizabeth Lesser
“The world wold have been different – and better – if women had had an equal say in the development of literature, medicine, chemistry, physics, peace and economics. Better, not because women are better, but because they are more than half of humanity, representing more than half of what it means to be human.” Cassandra…
What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo
“But the sadness of a lost childhood feels like yearning, impossible desire. It feels like a hollow, insatiable hunger.” Stephanie Foo looked like a success on paper. She had her dream job and a loving boyfriend, however, behind closed doors she was prone to panic attacks and sobbing at her desk. In this deeply personal…
Infused: Adventures in Tea by Henrietta Lovell
“I dream about tea when I’m not drinking it. It’s there beside me, my most constant companion. I can’t conceive of a morning, let alone a day, without it.” Henrietta, known as “The Rare Tea Lady”, is on a mission to revolutionize the way that people drink tea. She wants to replace all the little…
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
“It felt like the world had divided into two different types of people, those who had felt pain and those who had yet to.” Described as an unflinching memoir of growing up Korean American, Crying in H Mart details Zauner’s relationship with her mother before, during, and after her cancer diagnosis. Filled with complex family…
The White Mosque by Sofia Samatar
“To say ‘it’s just fiction’ is useless; there’s nothing more powerful than a story, especially if one encounters it in an open, impressionable state.” In the late nineteenth century, a group of German-speaking Mennonites traveled from Russia into Central Asia, where their charismatic leader predicted Christ would return. Over a century later, Sofia Samatar joins…
The Great Book Wyrm 