What’s Mine and Yours author Naima Coster recommends This Close to Okay by Leesa Cross-Smith.
“This Close to Okay is the kind of novel that allows the reader to slip into a world rich with both comforts and troubles. The story of Emmett and Tallie is delicious, romantic, cozy, and satisfying, and it’s also mysterious, unstable, and loaded with loss. This book opens up hard emotions and truths, but it also offers moments of relief and attention to the sustaining pleasures of life.”
Preorder Naima Coster’s What’s Mine and Yours forthcoming March 2021 and Leesa Cross-Smith This Close Okay forthcoming February 2021.
Ghost of author Diana Khoi Nguyen’s recommends The Joy and Terror are Both in the Swallowing by Christine Shan Shan Hou
“In this explosively frontal collection, Christine Shan Shan Hou’s scope traverses diverse terrains: from the female body in domestic situations to landscapes with predators and megafauna–to even the wilds of the afterlife, where “everyone lives in a hotel.” These leaping, elliptical poems are darkly funny and full of pluck and verve. The speakers of these poems keeps one eye on the terrarium of contemporary life while keeping the other eye on watch for blink-and-you’ll-miss-it death. Here is a hero expressive of desires absurd yet essential: “I want my death to be comfortable and homey, but also victorious and sexy like a pack of half-naked men riding wild animals.” Throughout, Hou’s bold lyric gives way to sections of “The Lost Haikus,” haikus which dot the white pages like small ponds in which we bear witness to transcendent auguries. “Clarity,” Hou writes, is a moment of madness unravelling in real time in a public space,” much like these poems tracing the “obedient” geography of a life caught between the urban and the unknown–I joyfully rode along, as if on my own feral creature.”
Diana Khoi Nguyen’s Ghost of is available now. Preorder Christine Shan Shan Hou’s The Joy and Terror are Both in the Swallowing forthcoming 2021.
Here In Berlin author Cristina Garcia recommends The President And The Frog by Carolina De Robertis.
“A work of stunning insight and beauty, THE PRESIDENT AND THE FROG is a song of hope in despairing times, a meditation on freedom and survival, on the quiet exultations of the ordinary (think Neruda’s Odes to Common Things). A luminous, opulent, and unforgettable novel.”
Cristina Garcia’s Here in Berlin is available now. Preorder Carolina De Robertis’ The President And The Frog forthcoming August 2021.
That’s What You Get author Sheila Maldonado recommends The Life Assignment by Ricardo Alberto Maldonado
“It is surreal and common sensical, disorienting and warm, a city book, an island book. English in the book is sometimes faded and gray, like a mirage, Spanish is its black sober roots, its reality. There is such an intimacy, concealed and revealed. Languages and perceptions mix however they like, blur like the Americas.”
Preorder Sheila Maldonado’s That’s What You Get. Ricardo Alberto Maldonado’s The Life Assignment available now.
Searching for Zion author Emily Raboteau recommends Out of Mesopotamia by Salar Abdoh
“Out of Mesopotamia is extraordinary and a novel every American should read. Salar Abdoh writes page after page of kinetic fiction. A novel so ambitious and exciting,–to say this book is full of truth is to shortchange it; this is a book full of art.”
Emily Raboteau’s Searching for Zion and Salar Abdoh’s Out of Mesopotamia available now
Dominicana author Angie Cruz recommends Girlhood by Melissa Febos
“This is the book I will buy for all the women I love this forthcoming year. Girlhood explores the wild expansive interior of women with incredible insight, rooted in research and a singular kind of she-knowing. In a similar way that her memoir, Abandon Me reminded us that the heart is resilient, Melissa Febos’s smart, intimate and gorgeous book, Girlhood’s enlivens the spirit. I love this book.”
Angie Cruz’s Dominicana is available now. Preorder Melissa Febos’ Girlhood forthcoming February 2021.
