Sarah McBride — Tomorrow Will Be Different (Book Review)
Sarah McBride covers a wide variety of topics in Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality. But given the complexity of gender identity and McBride’s own path, it’s not surprising. This was also a perfect pick for Pride Month. It fits...Anne Fadiman — The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Book Review)
Author Anne Fadiman combines multiple narratives in her fabulous ethnography The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. Most importantly, it’s both an immigration and a medical story of one Hmong...Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai — The Mountains Sing (Book Review)
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is a celebrated Vietnamese poet. With the release of her 2020 book, The Mountains Sing she’s also a novelist. The book is an intimate view of the Tran family and their struggles across decades and generations. Nguyễn uses two story lines to shape...Liz Moore — Long Bright River: A Mystery About Mothering and Addiction (Book Review)
Liz Moore writes a tribute to unconventional motherhood in her 2020 novel Long Bright River. Or maybe my mind is just on that topic with the recent Mothers’ Day holiday. Either way, the story here centers around two sisters, Kacey and Michaela (Mickey) Fitzpatrick....Isabel Wilkerson: Caste (Book Review) — A Racial Justice Must Read
Isabel Wilkerson writes about devastating history in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. It’s long, intense, and absolutely necessary to read. Thinking of the social and societal issues around race as based in a complicated caste system makes perfect sense. And...Elizabeth M. Norman — We Band of Angels (Book Review)
Elizabeth Norman delivers everything I want from narrative nonfiction in her 2000 book We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese. It’s engaging and obviously well-researched, including many interviews with the women...The Language of Threads from Gail Tsukiyama—Women of the Silk Book #2 (Book Review)
The Language of Threads is a continuation of Gail Tsukiyama’s excellent book Women of the Silk. I’m glad to have read both in sequence, which immersed me in the main character’s entire life. In the first book, Pei is taken from her small China village, sold to work...Gail Tsukiyama — Women of the Silk delivers Historical Fiction set in China (Book Review)
In Women of the Silk, a 1991 book from Gail Tsukiyama, times are hard. It’s China in the late 1920s and especially in the small villages nature and politics affect everyone. Our main character is a young girl named Pei. As the story opens, she’s about six, and her...Shuggie Bain — a Heartbreaking Debut from Douglas Stuart (Book Review)
Shuggie Bain, the debut novel from author Douglas Stuart is a gut punch on nearly every page. It’s the story of a kid growing up in Glasgow, Scotland during the 1980s. He’s the youngest of three kids born to an alcoholic mother. His older siblings have a different...Erin French — Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch (Book Review)
Erin French details how she reached success in her upcoming memoir Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch. (Available early April 2021.) It’s not a straight A to Z path, but one that goes backwards, forwards, and even sideways. Of course,...Doris Kearns Goodwin — The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (Book Review)
Doris Kearns Goodwin creates a behemoth of early twentieth century history in The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism. I confess to knowing very little beyond the basics about Roosevelt. Before reading this book, I...Mona Hanna-Attisha Fights for the Children in What the Eyes Don’t See (Book Review)
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha wrote What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City to tell what happened in Flint, Michigan. But it’s not just her story. It’s the story of her clinic, her city, her state, and her country. And they are...Our Malady by Timothy Snyder—Healthcare, Freedom & Politics (Book Review)
Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary by Timothy Snyder is just under 200 pages. While it’s not long, it covers topics we all face daily whether we know it or not—our health and freedom. A Yale professor, historian, and writer, Snyder was not well at...Stacey Abrams on a Fair America: Our Time is Now (Book Review)
Stacy Abrams knows voting rights. Starting in college, she worked on voter registration drives. And this led her to more civic service, including serving for ten years in the Georgia State House of Representatives. You may be more familiar with her because of her 2018...Jason Stanley Offers Stellar Explanation in How Fascism Works (Book Review)
Jason Stanley breaks down How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them in this short, but intense book. We throw the term fascism around a lot these days. Better understand what it is before using it in a sentence. Or so I told myself when starting this book....Bookshop.Org Affiliate
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