La Bastarda

La Bastarda
Author: Trifonia Melibea Obono
Publisher: Feminist Press at CUNY
Total Pages: 61
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1936932245

A teenage orphan’s quest of self-discovery in Equitorial Guinea, and a "unique contribution to LGBTQ literature" (Kirkus Reviews). “Though I live a world away from Equatorial Guinea, I saw so much of myself in Okomo: a tomboy itching to be free and to escape society’s rigged game. I cheered her on with every page, and wished—for myself and all girls—for the bravery to create our own world.” —Maggie Thrash, author of Honor Girl The first novel by an Equatorial Guinean woman to be translated into English, La Bastarda is the story of the orphaned teen Okomo, who lives under the watchful eye of her grandmother and dreams of finding her father. Forbidden from seeking him out, she enlists the help of other village outcasts: her gay uncle and a gang of “mysterious” girls reveling in their so-called indecency. Drawn into their illicit trysts, Okomo finds herself falling in love with their leader and rebelling against the rigid norms of Fang culture.

Go Away Birds

Go Away Birds
Author: Michelle Edwards
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2021-05-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1928433065

Skye is looking for normal. She grew up different and it rankles. Home isnt normal; her mom isnt normal. Her brother, beloved as he is, isnt quite normal, either. Her marriage was kind of normal (Cam is a wealthy, handsome man whos nice enough) and now its a dumpster fire. And look at South Africaentirely NOT normal. Shes got PTSD and shes in mourning. She doesnt know who she is or what she wants. She tries to anchor herself to tangible things: to her cooking, to her neighbours children, to sex. But as she relives her past and tries to plan her future, she feels increasingly dislocated. Skye escapes when things get overwhelming, and realises almost too late that shes about to make everything worse.

The Bastard of Istanbul

The Bastard of Istanbul
Author: Elif Shafak
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2008-01-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1440635846

A “vivid and entertaining” (Chicago Tribune) tale about the tangled history of two families, from the author of The Island of Missing Trees (a Reese's Book Club Pick) "Zesty, imaginative . . . a Turkish version of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club." —USA Today As an Armenian American living in San Francisco, Armanoush feels like part of her identity is missing and that she must make a journey back to the past, to Turkey, in order to start living her life. Asya is a nineteen-year-old woman living in an extended all-female household in Istanbul who loves Jonny Cash and the French existentialists. The Bastard of Istanbul tells the story of their two families--and a secret connection linking them to a violent event in the history of their homeland. Filed with humor and understanding, this exuberant, dramatic novel is about memory and forgetting, about the need to examine the past and the desire to erase it, and about Turkey itself.

Bastard Out of Carolina

Bastard Out of Carolina
Author: Dorothy Allison
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2005-09-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101007176

A profound portrait of family dynamics in the rural South and “an essential novel” (The New Yorker) “As close to flawless as any reader could ask for . . . The living language [Allison] has created is as exact and innovative as the language of To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye.” —The New York Times Book Review The publication of Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina was a landmark event that won the author a National Book Award nomination and launched her into the literary spotlight. Critics have likened Allison to Harper Lee, naming her the first writer of her generation to dramatize the lives and language of poor whites in the South. Since its appearance, the novel has inspired an award-winning film and has been banned from libraries and classrooms, championed by fans, and defended by critics. Greenville County, South Carolina, is a wild, lush place that is home to the Boatwright family—a tight-knit clan of rough-hewn, hard-drinking men who shoot up each other’s trucks, and indomitable women who get married young and age too quickly. At the heart of this story is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a bastard child who observes the world around her with a mercilessly keen perspective. When her stepfather Daddy Glen, “cold as death, mean as a snake,” becomes increasingly more vicious toward her, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that tests the loyalty of her mother, Anney—and leads to a final, harrowing encounter from which there can be no turning back.

Honor Girl

Honor Girl
Author: Maggie Thrash
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2017-05-09
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0763687553

A graphic novel memoir depicting the author's teenage experiences at summer camp where she fell in love with an older girl.

You Have the Right to Remain Fat

You Have the Right to Remain Fat
Author: Virgie Tovar
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Total Pages: 65
Release: 2018-08-14
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1936932326

“In this bold new book, Tovar eviscerates diet culture, proclaims the joyous possibilities of fatness, and shows us that liberation is possible.” —Sarai Walker, author of Dietland Growing up as a fat girl, Virgie Tovar believed that her body was something to be fixed. But after two decades of dieting and constant guilt, she was over it—and gave herself the freedom to trust her own body again. Ever since, she’s been helping others to do the same. Tovar is hungry for a world where bodies are valued equally, food is free from moral judgment, and you can jiggle through life with respect. In concise and candid language, she delves into unlearning fatphobia, dismantling sexist notions of fashion, and how to reject diet culture’s greatest lie: that fat people need to wait before beginning their best lives. “This book feels like spending a margarita-soaked day at the beach with your smartest friend. Virgie Tovar shares juicy secrets and makes revolutionary ideas viscerally accessible. You’ll be left enlightened, inspired, happier, and possibly angrier than when you started.” —Joy Nash, actress “Tovar is a vital voice in contemporary activism, media, and feminism. The joy she takes in her own body and life, combined with the righteous anger she expresses at an oppressive world is a truly radical act. She is deeply thoughtful, but does not equivocate. She confronts bigotry, but does not engage with bullshit.” —Kelsey Miller, author of Big Girl “Long-time body positive writer, speaker and activist Virgie Tovar is gifting brown round girls the book we’ve been hungry for.” —Mitú

Paradise of the Blind

Paradise of the Blind
Author: Thu Huong Duong
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2002-08-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0060505591

Paradise of the Blind is an exquisite portrait of three Vietnamese women struggling to survive in a society where subservience to men is expected and Communist corruption crushes every dream. Through the eyes of Hang, a young woman in her twenties who has grown up amidst the slums and intermittent beauty of Hanoi, we come to know the tragedy of her family as land reform rips apart their village. When her uncle Chinh‘s political loyalties replace family devotion, Hang is torn between her mother‘s appalling self–sacrifice and the bitterness of her aunt who can avenge but not forgive. Only by freeing herself from the past will Hang be able to find dignity –– and a future.

The Seine was Red

The Seine was Red
Author: Leïla Sebbar
Publisher:
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2008
Genre: Algerians
ISBN:

Toward the end of the Algerian war, the FLN, an Algerian nationalist party, organised a demonstration in Paris to oppose a curfew imposed upon Algerians in France. The protest was brutally suppressed by the Paris police. This incident provides an intimate look at the history of violence between France and Algeria.

A Woman Is No Man

A Woman Is No Man
Author: Etaf Rum
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2019-03-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062699784

A Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist for Best Fiction and Best Debut • BookBrowse's Best Book of the Year • A Marie Claire Best Women's Fiction of the Year • A Real Simple Best Book of the Year • A PopSugar Best Book of the Year • A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A Washington Post 10 Books to Read in March • A Newsweek Best Book of the Summer • A USA Today Best Book of the Week • A Washington Book Review Difficult-To-Put-Down Novel • A Refinery 29 Best Books of the Month • A Buzzfeed News 4 Books We Couldn't Put Down Last Month • A New Arab Best Books by Arab Authors • An Electric Lit 20 Best Debuts of the First Half of 2019 • A The Millions Most Anticipated Books of the Year “Garnering justified comparisons to Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns... Etaf Rum’s debut novel is a must-read about women mustering up the bravery to follow their inner voice.” —Refinery 29 The New York Times bestseller and Read with Jenna TODAY SHOW Book Club pick telling the story of three generations of Palestinian-American women struggling to express their individual desires within the confines of their Arab culture in the wake of shocking intimate violence in their community. "Where I come from, we’ve learned to silence ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence will save us. Where I come from, we keep these stories to ourselves. To tell them to the outside world is unheard of—dangerous, the ultimate shame.” 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.

Amora

Amora
Author: Natalia Borges Polesso
Publisher: AmazonCrossing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020-05-19
Genre: Women
ISBN: 9781542019774

From an emerging talent comes an exquisite collection of stories exploring the complexity of love between women, each a delicate piece in a mosaic transcending the boundaries of literary romance. Amora dares explore the way women love each other--the atrophy and healing of the female spirit in response to sexual desire and identity. These thirty-three short stories and poems, crafted with a deliberate delicacy, each capture the candid, private moments of women in love. Together, these stories and the women who inhabit them reveal an illuminating portrait of the sacred female romance, with all its nuances, complexities, burdens, and triumphs revealed. Violence, sickness, chaos, tenderness, beauty, and freedom adorn these pages in a mosaic of unforgettable moments, including a lesbian granddaughter discovering unexpected commonalities with her grandmother, a teenager's tryst with her friend after disenchanting sex with a boy, and an old couple's dreamy Sunday-morning ritual. Sweeping nearly every major Brazilian literary prize in 2016--including the Prêmio Jabuti and Prêmio Açorianos de Literatura--Amora has propelled Natalia Borges Polesso to the forefront of the international literary world.