Twelve truly thought-provoking essays on what it means to have justice -- and what is required of us to make justice possible -- through the lenses of gender, race, ecology, violence, and more. There are no clear answers here, but plenty of the right kind of question.
Jen Beagins first, Whiting award-winning novel follows Mona on what amounts to a personal odyssey of self-discovery. Nearly 24 at the start, she's living in Massachusetts, dating "Mr. Disgusting," and cleaning houses for characters you have to believe are real, because who could make them up? Winds, fair and foul, take her to New Mexico, where she keeps cleaning, working to scrub that man right out of her grout. With the help of Terry Gross, Yoko & Yoko, big open skies, red dirt and the right kind of drugs, she's on her way. This is one of the truest and funniest coming-of-age novels I've ever read. I fell hard for Mona, and I hope you do, too.
Leave it to the author of the entrancing collection Her Body and Other Parties to follow up with an equally groundbreaking deconstructed/shattered memoir. It serves as a critique of the format and a historical investigation of abuse in queer relationships, at the same time as retelling her relationship with an abusive woman at a critical time in her life as a writer. READ IT.
The Border of Paradise is a California gothic of wildfire, immigration, mental illness, and all that's lost and gained in translation. An intensely moving portrait of a family and landscape in transition.
