Reading list

Citizen

Claudia Rankine · 2014

Just Kids

Patti Smith · 2011

Zami A New Spelling of My Name: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography

Geraldine Audre Lorde · 1982

The Clan of the Cave Bear

Jean M. Auel

Emily Dickinson’s Poems

Emily Dickinson · 2016

The Starless Sea

Erin Morgenstern · 2019

Agua Viva

Clarice Lispector · 1989

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Ocean Vuong · 2021

<b>A <i>New York Times </i>bestseller <b>• Nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction <b>• Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling</b></b><br><br><b><i>New York Times </i>Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century</b> <br><br><b>“A lyrical work of self-discovery that’s shockingly intimate and insistently universa</b>l…N<b>ot so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning.” —Ron Charles, <i>The Washington Post</i><br><br>“This is one of the best novels I’ve ever read...Ocean Vuong is a master. This book a masterpiece.”<b>—Tommy Orange, author of <i>There There </i>and <i>Wandering Stars</i></b></b><br><br></b><i>On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous</i> is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, <i>On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous</i> is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. <br><br>With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.<br><br><b>Named a Best Book of the Year by: <br><i>GQ, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, TIME</i>, <i>Esquire, The Washington Post</i>, Apple, <i>Good Housekeeping, The New Yorker</i>, The New York Public Library, Elle.com, <i>The Guardian</i>, The A.V. Club, NPR, Lithub, <i>Entertainment Weekly</i>, Vogue.com, <i>The San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, </i>and more! <br></b>

The Waves

Virginia Woolf · 2021

Things I Don't Want to Know

Deborah Levy · 2014

Bonjour Tristesse

Franȯise Sagan · 1986

Black Swans

Eve Babitz · 2018

<b>"Babitz’s talent for the brilliant line, honed to a point, never interferes with her feel for languid pleasures." —<i>The New York Times Book Review</i></b><br><br>A new reissue of Babitz’s collection of nine stories that look back on the 1980s and early 1990s—decades of dreams, drink, and glimpses of a changing world. <i>Black Swans</i> further celebrates the phenomenon of Eve Babitz, cementing her reputation as the voice of a generation.<br><br>With an introduction by Stephanie Danler, bestselling author of <i>Sweetbitter</i>.<br><br><b>"On the page, Babitz is pure pleasure—a perpetual–motion machine of no–stakes elation and champagne fizz." —<i>The New Yorker</i><br></b>

Brutes

Dizz Tate · 2024

Play It As It Lays

Joan Didion · 2024