Machado, Carmen Maria. In the Dream House: A Memoir. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2020. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"The author'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."



Midge, Tiffany. Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese's. University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, 2019. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese's is a powerful and inviting collection of Tiffany Midge's musings on life, politics, and identity as a Native woman in modern America"-- Provided by publisher.



Pico, Tommy. Feed. Portland, Oregon: Tin House Books, 2019. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"Feed is the fourth book in the Teebs tetralogy. It's an epistolary recipe for the main character, a poem of nourishment, and a jaunty walk through New York's High Line park, with the lines, stanzas, paragraphs, dialogue, and registers approximating the park's cultivated gardens of wildness. Among its questions, Feed asks what's the difference between being alone and being lonely? Can you ever really be friends with an ex? How do you make perfect mac & cheese? Feed is an ode of reconciliation to the wild inconsistencies of a northeast spring, a frustrating season of back-and-forth, of thaw and blizzard, but with a faith that even amidst the mess, it knows where it's going."–



Reddi, Rishi. Karma and Other Stories. New York: Harper Perennial, 2007. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"In this sparkling collection, award-winning writer Rishi Reddi weaves a multigenerational tapestry of interconnected lives, depicting members of an Indian American community struggling to balance the demands of tradition with the allure of Western life"–



Rum, Etaf. A Woman is No Man. New York: Harper, 2019. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"Palestine, 1990. Seventeen-year-old Isra prefers reading books to entertaining the suitors her father has chosen for her. Over the course of a week, the naïve and dreamy girl finds herself quickly betrothed and married, and is soon living in Brooklyn. There Isra struggles to adapt to the expectations of her oppressive mother-in-law Fareeda and strange new husband Adam, a pressure that intensifies as she begins to have children – four daughters instead of the sons Fareeda tells Isra she must bear. Brooklyn, 2008. Eighteen-year-old Deya, Isra's oldest daughter, must meet with potential husbands at her grandmother Fareeda's insistence, though her only desire is to go to college. Deya can't help but wonder if her options would have been different had her parents survived the car crash that killed them when Deya was only eight. But her grandmother is firm on the matter: the only way to secure a worthy future for Deya is through marriage to the right man. But fate has a will of its own, and soon Deya will find herself on an unexpected path that leads her to shocking truths about her family – knowledge that will force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, the past, and her own future. Set in an America at once foreign to many and staggeringly close at hand, A Woman Is No Man is a story of culture and honor, secrets and betrayals, love and violence. It is an intimate glimpse into a controlling and closed cultural world, and a universal tale about family and the ways silence and shame can destroy those we have sworn to protect."–Publisher's description



Skeets, Jake. Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers: Poems. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2019. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

Selected by Kathy Fagan as a winner of the 2018 National Poetry Series, Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers is a debut collection of poems by a dazzling geologist of queer eros. Drunktown, New Mexico, is a place where men 'only touch when they fuck in a backseat.' Its landscape is scarred by violence: done to it, done on it, done for it. Under the cover of deepest night, sleeping men are run over by trucks. Navajo bodies are deserted in fields. Resources are extracted. Lines are crossed. Men communicate through beatings, and football, and sex. In this place, 'the closest men become is when they are covered in blood / or nothing at all.' But if Jake Skeets's collection is an unflinching portrait of the actual west, it is also a fierce reclamation of a living place'full of beauty as well as brutality, whose shadows are equally capable of protecting encounters between boys learning to become, and to love, men. Its landscapes are ravaged, but they are also startlingly lush with cacti, yarrow, larkspur, sagebrush. And even their scars are made newly tender when mapped onto the lover's body: A spine becomes a railroad. 'Veins burst oil, elk black.' And 'becoming a man / means knowing how to become charcoal.' Rooted in Navajo history and thought, these poems show what has been brewing in an often forgotten part of the American literary landscape, an important language, beautiful and bone dense. Sculptural, ambitious, and defiantly vulnerable, the poems of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers are coal that remains coal, despite the forces that conspire for diamond, for electricity.



So, Anthony Veasna. Afterparties: Stories. New York: Ecco, 2021. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"A debut story collection about Cambodian-American life-immersive and comic, yet unsparing-that marks the arrival of an indisputable new talent in American fiction" (from the publisher)



Vang, Mai Der. Afterland: Poems. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2017. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"Afterland is a powerful, essential collection of poetry that recounts with devastating detail the Hmong exodus from Laos and the fate of thousands of refugees seeking asylum. Mai Der Vang is telling the story of her own family, and by doing so, she also provides an essential history of the Hmong culture's ongoing resilience in exile. Many of these poems are written in the voices of those fleeing unbearable violence after U.S. forces recruited Hmong fighters in Laos in the Secret War against communism, only to abandon them after that war went awry. That history is little known or understood, but the three hundred thousand Hmong now living in the United States are living proof of its aftermath. With poems of extraordinary force and grace, Afterland holds an original place in American poetry and lands with a sense of humanity saved, of outrage, of a deep tradition broken by war and ocean but still intact, remembered, and lived."–Amazon.com



Yu, Charles. Interior Chinatown. New York: Vintage, 2020. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"Every day Willis Wu leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He's a bit player here too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy-- and he sees his life as a script. After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he has ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family, and what that means for him in today's America." -- from publisher's description.



Virji, Ayaz, and Alan Eisenstock. Love Thy Neighbor: A Muslim Doctor's Struggle for Home in Rural America. New York: Convergent, 2019. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"A powerful true story about a Muslim doctor's service to a small town and the hope of overcoming our country's climate of hostility and fear. In 2013, Dr. Ayaz Virji left a comfortable job at an East Coast hospital and moved to a town of 1,400 in Minnesota, feeling called to address the shortage of doctors in rural America. But in 2016, this decision was tested when the reliably blue, working-class county swung for Donald Trump. Virji watched in horror as his children faced anti-Muslim remarks at school and some of his most loyal patients began questioning whether he belonged in the community. Virji wanted out. But in 2017, just as he was lining up a job in Dubai, a local pastor invited him to speak at her church and address misconceptions about what Muslims practice and believe. That invitation has grown into a well-attended lecture series that has changed hearts and minds across the state, while giving Virji a new vocation that he never would have expected. In [this book], Virji relates this story in a gripping, unforgettable narrative that shows the human consequences of our toxic politics, the power of faith and personal conviction, and the potential for a renewal of understanding in America's heartland."–Dust jacket



Mailhot, Terese Marie. Heart Berries: A Memoir. Berkeley, California: Counterpoint, 2018. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder; Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father-an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist-who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame. Mailhot trusts the reader to understand that memory isn't exact, but melded to imagination, pain, and what we can bring ourselves to accept. Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story, and, in so doing, reestablishes her connection to her family, to her people, and to her place in the world."– Provided by publisher.



Grealy, Lucy. Autobiography of a Face. First Mariner Books edition. Boston: Mariner Books, 2016. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"This powerful memoir is about the premium we put on beauty and on a woman's face in particular. It took Lucy Grealy twenty years of living with a distorted self-image and more than thirty reconstructive procedures before she could come to terms with her appearance after childhood cancer and surgery that left her jaw disfigured. As a young girl, she absorbed the searing pain of peer rejection and the paralyzing fear of never being loved"– provided by publisher.



Messner, Michael A. Guys Like Me: Five Wars, Five Veterans for Peace. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2019. Book @ Harvard Library



Washington, Bryan. Lot: Stories. New York: Riverhead Books, 2020. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"In the city of Houston - a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America - the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He's working at his family's restaurant, weathering his brother's blows, resenting his older sister's absence. And discovering he likes boys. Around him, others live and thrive and die in Houston's myriad neighborhoods: a young woman whose affair detonates across an apartment complex, a ragtag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, hurricane survivors, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, a reluctant chupacabra. With soulful insight into what makes a community, a family, and a life, Lot explores trust and love in all its unsparing and unsteady forms." (Publisher's description)



Zhang, C. Pam. How Much of These Hills Is Gold. New York: Riverhead Books, 2021. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

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"An electric debut novel set against the twilight of the American gold rush, two siblings are on the run in an unforgiving landscape-trying not just to survive but to find a home. Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future. Both epic and intimate, blending Chinese symbolism and reimagined history with fiercely original language and storytelling, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a haunting adventure story, an unforgettable sibling story, and the announcement of a stunning new voice in literature. On a broad level, it explores race in an expanding country and the question of where immigrants are allowed to belong. But page by page, it's about the memories that bind and divide families, and the yearning for home."



Shilts, Randy. And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic. New York: St. Martins Press, 2000. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

An examination of the AIDS crisis exposes the federal government for its inaction, health authorities for their greed, and scientists for their desire for prestige in the face of the AIDS pandemic.



Jarman, Michelle, Leila Frances Monaghan, and Alison Quaggin Harkin, ed. Barriers and Belonging: Personal Narratives of Disability. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2017. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

View eBook @ Harvard Library [HarvardKey required]

"What is the direct impact that disability studies has on the lives of disabled people today? The editors and contributors to this essential anthology, Barriers and Belonging, provide thirty-seven personal narratives that explore what it means to be disabled and why the field of disability studies matters. The editors frame the volume by introducing foundational themes of disability studies. They provide a context of how institutions—including the family, schools, government, and disability peer organizations—shape and transform ideas about disability. They explore how disability informs personal identity, interpersonal and community relationships, and political commitments. In addition, there are heartfelt reflections on living with mobility disabilities, blindness, deafness, pain, autism, psychological disabilities, and other issues. Other essays articulate activist and pride orientations toward disability, demonstrating the importance of reframing traditional narratives of sorrow and medicalization." --Publisher description.



Mehta, Suketu. This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"There are few subjects in American life that prompt more discussion and rancor these days than immigration. In [this book], the renowned author Suketu Mehta offers a reality-based polemic that vitally clarifies the debate. Drawing on his own experience as an Indian-born teenager growing up in New York City and on years of reporting around the globe, Mehta subjects the worldwide anti-immigrant backlash to withering scrutiny. As he explains, the West is being destroyed not by immigrants but by fear of immigrants. Ranging from Dubai and Morocco to New York City, Mehta contrasts the phony narratives of populist ideologues with the ordinary heroism of laborers, domestic workers, and others, and he takes readers on a heartbreaking trip to San Diego and Tijuana, where a border fence divides families and damages lives. Throughout, Mehta shows why more people are on the move today than ever before. As civil strife and climate change reshape large parts of the planet, it is little surprise that borders have become so porous. But Mehta also stresses the destructive legacies of colonialism and global inequality in large swaths of the world: when today's immigrants are asked, "Why are you here?" they can justly respond, "We are here because you were there." And now that they are here, Mehta contends, they bring great benefits, enabling countries and communities to flourish. Impassioned, rigorous, and richly stocked with memorable stories and characters, [this book] is an urgent and necessary intervention, and a literary argument of the highest order."--Dust jacket.



Cornejo Villavicencio, Karla. The Undocumented Americans. New York: One World, 2020. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

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"Traveling across the country, journalist Karla Cornejo Villavicencio risked arrest at every turn to report the extraordinary stories of her fellow undocumented Americans. Her subjects have every reason to be wary around reporters, but Cornejo Villavicencio has unmatched access to their stories. Her work culminates in a stunning, essential read for our times. Born in Ecuador and brought to the United States when she was five years old, Cornejo Villavicencio has lived the American Dream. Raised on her father's deliveryman income, she later became one of the first undocumented students admitted into Harvard. She is now a doctoral candidate at Yale University and has written for The New York Times. She weaves her own story among those of the eleven million undocumented who have been thrust into the national conversation today as never before. Looking well beyond the flashpoints of the border or the activism of the DREAMERS, Cornejo Villavicencio explores the lives of the undocumented as rarely seen in our daily headlines. In New York, we meet the undocumented workers who were recruited in the federally funded Ground Zero cleanup after 9/11. In Miami we enter the hidden botanicas, which offer witchcraft and homeopathy to those whose status blocks them from any other healthcare options. In Flint, Michigan, we witness how many live in fear as the government issues raids at grocery stores and demands identification before offering life-saving clean water. In her book, Undocumented America, Cornejo Villavicencio powerfully reveals the hidden corners of our nation of immigrants. She brings to light remarkable stories of hope and resilience, and through them we come to understand what it truly means to be American"– provided by publisher.



Beemyn, Genny, ed. Trans People in Higher Education. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2019. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"More trans students, faculty, and staff are out on U.S. colleges campuses today than ever before. Still, many report enduring harassment and discrimination, and others avoid disclosing their gender identity because they do not feel safe or comfortable at their schools. Trans People in Higher Education is the first book about trans college students, faculty, and staff, and shows that, despite a generally improving environment, trans people continue to face widespread interpersonal and institutional opposition on campuses across the country. This anthology brings together personal narratives and original research, giving readers both individual and large-scale perspectives and providing unprecedented insight into the experiences of trans people in higher education. Among the contributions are the first published studies to focus on nonbinary trans undergraduates and trans graduate students, as well as the largest studies to date of trans students at women's colleges and trans academics. Other groundbreaking contributions examine the sexual health of trans students, the treatment of trans people by individuals with institutional authority, and strategies and lessons learned from one college that successfully became more trans inclusive. Taken together, the chapters illuminate the diversity of trans experiences in higher education, as well as the ways that trans college students, faculty, and staff continue to struggle against discrimination and marginalization." -- Provided by publisher."

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