Welcome to our Reading List! Find new recommended reads here every month, find spotlights and recommendations for our book world friends, and shop with us!
A portion of the proceeds from all of your purchases at our store on Bookshop.org are donated back to us, helping us keep our fight for cultural equity going!
Kick off the New Year with reads by award-winning authors from the margins!
2021 PEN America Literary Awards Longlist by award-winning and bestselling author Carmen Maria Machado- In the Dream House: A Memoir
Winner, National Book Awards 2020 for Translated Literature- Tokyo Ueno Station
A Little Life- This heartbreaking, beautifully written masterpiece is quite a ride; it was also a winner of The Kirkus Prize, A Man Booker Prize Finalist, and a National Book Award Finalist (warning: this book is intense and has some graphic and disturbing content that may be triggering to some readers).
Award-winning and bestselling author Angie Thomas gives us a prequel to The Hate U Give this month: Concrete Rose, which follows Maverick Carter, Starr's father, as he grows up in Garden Heights 17 years earlier.
Patsy- Winner of the Lambda Literary Award [Lesbian Fiction], Longlisted - PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, American Library Association - A Barbara Gittings Literature Award Honor Book (Stonewall Book Awards), Finalist - Aspen Words Literary Prize, Finalist - Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, New York Times Book Review - Editors' Choice Selection, Kirkus Reviews - Most Memorable Fictional Families of the Year, plus more!
Plus!
Liza's monthly Healing Reads Installment:
Preparing My Daughter for Rain by Key Ballah
Liza: There is so much forgiveness and freedom in this book.
The Source of Self Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations by Toni Morrison
"Morrison is more than the standard bearer of American literature. She is our greatest singer. And this book is perhaps her most important song," -The New York Times
Carmen Maria Machado- In the Dream House: A Memoir
Nonfiction
2021 PEN America Literary Awards Longlist by award-winning and bestselling author
"A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties
In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming."What happens to a country that tells generation after generation of white men that they deserve power? What happens when success is defined by status over women and people of color, instead of by actual accomplishments?"- Bookshop.org
Yu Miri- Tokyo Ueno Station
Adult Fiction
FINALIST FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATED LITERATURE
"A surreal, devastating story of a homeless ghost who haunts one of Tokyo's busiest train stations.
Kazu is dead. Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Japanese Emperor, his life is tied by a series of coincidences to the Imperial family and has been shaped at every turn by modern Japanese history. But his life story is also marked by bad luck, and now, in death, he is unable to rest, doomed to haunt the park near Ueno Station in Tokyo." - Bookshop.org
Hanya Yanagihara- A Little Life
Adult Fiction
WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE
A MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST
A NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
"A Little Life follows four college classmates--broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition--as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara's stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves."- Bookshop.org
Angie Thomas- Concrete Rose
Young Adult Fiction
International phenomenon Angie Thomas revisits Garden Heights seventeen years before the events of The Hate U Give in this searing and poignant exploration of Black boyhood and manhood.
"If there's one thing seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows, it's that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows how: dealing for the King Lords. With this money he can help his mom, who works two jobs while his dad's in prison.
Life's not perfect, but with a fly girlfriend and a cousin who always has his back, Mav's got everything under control.
Until, that is, Maverick finds out he's a father."- Bookshop.org
Nicole Dennis-Benn- Patsy
Adult Fiction
Winner - Lambda Literary Award [Lesbian Fiction]
Longlisted - PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
American Library Association - A Barbara Gittings Literature Award Honor Book (Stonewall Book Awards)
Finalist - Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize
New York Times Book Review - Editors' Choice Selection
Kirkus Reviews - Most Memorable Fictional Families of the Year
"A beautifully layered portrait of motherhood, immigration, and the sacrifices we make in the name of love from award-winning novelist Nicole Dennis-Benn."- Bookshop.org
LIZA'S HEALING
SELECTIONS
The Healing Reads List is a reading list that goes beyond anti-racism books. This list is all about healing and uplifting within and across communities. The books shared on this list have been sources of healing for us throughout this year. This is a rolling list so stay tuned for new healing reads being added!
Key Ballah- Preparing My Daughter For Rain
Poetry
"There is so much forgiveness and freedom in this book."- Liza
Toni Morrison- The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
Nonfiction
"Morrison is more than the standard bearer of American literature. She is our greatest singer. And this book is perhaps her most important song" -The New York Times
Ibi Zoboi- My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich
Middle Grade
"Highlights the importance of imagination and learning to celebrate what it means to be different in a world that demands conformity."- Horn Book
Black Imagination - Curated by Natasha Marin
Anthology
"(D)on't think for one minute that Black Imagination is easy. As you will read here, it is hard-earned and sometimes dangerous, but it's necessary, and radical, to claim and work towards. Listening to my people in this book gave me so much life, and I'm pretty sure, dear reader, you're in for the same."- from the Foreword by Steven Dunn
Upile Chisala- Nectar
Poetry
These poems celebrate, encourage, and offer the reader a new perspective on hope and self-love.
Yrsa Daley-Ward- bone
Poetry
Yrsa Daley-Ward's collection bone captures desire, vulnerability, and joy beautifully. This book is a place to find solace..
Liza Michelle Bevams is a writer and multimedia artist exploring life in the Rocky Mountains. She is currently working on her first novel.
