Kaveh Akbar
Adult
Cyrus Shams, an Iranian American poet in recovery, hunts for meaning in death, family, and a painting that may be his mother. Orphaned, addicted, and allergic to easy transcendence, he turns martyrdom into a question instead of a costume.
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An Iranian American poet tries to make death mean something without turning his mother’s life, or his own addiction, into a slogan. Funny in the places grief usually forbids it.
Adult. Readers who can handle addiction and suicidal ideation on the page. Diaspora as a life, not a metaphor.
What is Cyrus trying to turn into meaning? What refuses to be useful?
Read a chapter, then say one sentence that is true without being inspiring.
Two titles that deepen the same conversation.
Adult
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Ifemelu leaves military-ruled Nigeria for the United States and learns, for the first time, what it means to be Black in America. Obinze, shut out after 9/11, builds an undocumented life in London. Hair, blogs, class, and the difference between becoming American and staying yourself.
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Detransition, BabyTorrey Peters
Reese, a trans woman who wants a child; Ames, who detransitioned and is not done with Reese; and Katrina, Ames’s boss, who is pregnant. Three adults try to invent a family that the available scripts do not cover.
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The Berry PickersAmanda Peters
In 1962 a Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia comes to Maine to pick blueberries. Four-year-old Ruthie vanishes from the fields. Her brother Joe is the last to see her. Decades later, a girl named Norma in an affluent white family begins to suspect her memories are not imagination.
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The SafekeepYael van der Wouden
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Ages 3–8
A Different PondBao Phi
"As a young boy, Bao Phi awoke early, hours before his father's long workday began, to fish on the shores of a small pond in Minneapolis. Unlike many other anglers, Bao and his father fished for food, not recreation.
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Esperanza RisingPam Muñoz Ryan
Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the ...
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Inside Out and Back AgainThanhhà Lai
Inside Out & Back Again is a verse novel by Thanhha Lai. The book was awarded the 2011 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and one of the two Newbery Honors. The novel was based on her first year in the United States, as a ten-year-old girl who spoke no English in 1975.
Ages 8–12
Measuring UpLily LaMotte
"Having just moved to Seattle from Taiwan, twelve-year-old Cici enters a cooking competition to win the chance to see her grandmother again, but she only knows how to cook Taiwanese food."--Provided by publisher.
