In the poetry collection “Hermosa”, Yesika Salgado brings forth a life in multitudes as she writes about her home of Los Angeles, lingering love, the healing power of friendship, childhood memories brought into the stark light of adulthood, complicated deaths of people who were difficult to love, the cultured gender norms in her Salvadoran family, and more. Salgado both grieves for the LA she recognizes as being deformed by gentrification while honoring her deep love for it, reveling in the anonymity of city life and her Polaroid-picture-nostalgia for its nooks and quirks.
With bright, crisp language, Salgado’s poetry is a fiery heart laid open. Each verse thrums with energy as Salgado gives space for every emotion and every detail—from heartbreak to soil tracked into the house, from long, running verses, to just a line or two that needed to be written all on their own. Salgado is a natural storyteller whose pride in all of her brilliant, flawed, and tender self truly shines through in the collection.
…those were my favorite stories. women doing what women don’t do. I imagined all the beer I’d drink when I got older. I’d chug it down like a cold soda and burp loudly on purpose. I’d cackle big and booming. wouldn’t care when the mujeres say ¡esa nina es tremenda! instead I’d lift another beer and say ¡asi es! ¡salud!
After coming out as a lesbian to her religious, Puerto Rican family, Juliet leaves the Bronx for the first time to take on an internship with a celebrity-status, feminist author in Portland. She arrives in this alien city characterized by a subculture of “hippie white” both elated by the prospect of living and learning with her feminist hero and wounded by the rift her identity has created between her and her mother.
Roxane Gay began this anthology in an attempt to unravel the nebulous concept of “rape culture”– to engage with the question, “What is it like to live in a culture where it often seems like it is a question of when, not if, a woman will encounter some kind of sexual violence?” Ultimately, this piece became a place where diverse individuals across the gender spectrum could reclaim their own stories, free from expectations about what it means to carry the burden of trauma.
In the Affairs of the Falcóns, Rivero illustrates the complex politics and emotions at play within a single family trying to make their way as immigrants in a the US: the racism and classism within the Peruvian community, strained loyalties and the dissolution of marriages, children being raised as Americans but frequently reminded that they are outsiders, the economic and political regimes that cause widespread displacement, and the sacrifices people will justify in the name of love and survival.
From an outsider’s view, Wang’s identity stands apart from the common conception of someone with schizoaffective disorder—she is ivy-league educated, exceedingly well-dressed, and “high-functioning” when she is not in the grips of psychosis. After being kicked out of her university for her mental health status, Wang begins a never ending journey into a health system whose diagnoses, treatments, and policies are often at odds with her autonomy and humanity.
From the beloved queer Chicana feminist writer Cherríe Moraga, Native Country of the Heart is a memoir told in parallel with the memoir of her Mexican mother, Elvira. Elvira is the foundational stone on which Moraga builds her own Chicana feminism and family, a woman whose beauty, rage, and fuerza incansable were unmatched in the eyes of Cherríe. Cherríe Moraga’s life story is one of reclamation and resistance: reclaiming her indigenous Californian and Mexican roots in a Gringo world, while resisting the shame and guilt forged by the patriarchy and religion of her family’s culture.
Reading Mouthful of Birds feels like occupying some kind of hybrid world of dreams and folklore, where the subconscious masquerades as a stream of characters enacting scenes that aren’t fully coherent with reality, but every moment is vivid and visceral. The short stories are full of nightmarish scenarios, like someone auditioning to be an assassin by proving their capacity for violence, a man being held captive at a train station indefinitely because he didn’t have the correct change for a ticket, or a teenage girl who will suddenly only eat live birds. The protagonists are oblivious to the bewildering circumstances they are about to endure, and like many of us in our truest nightmares, the characters find themselves misunderstood or full of regret.
Shaker Heights is the kind of community where garbage is stored always out of sight from the street, and every last detailed is planned, from the diversity of its population to the color scheme of each house. When a free-spirited artist, Mia, and her daughter Pearl move to town, their lives become entangled with the members of the Richardson family, each of whom are either enamored with or infuriated by Mia and Pearl’s nonconformity. After a public scandal arises surrounding the custody of an abandoned baby, everyone in town is obliged to take sides in a controversy that will put ambiguous ethics at odds with family loyalties.
An author and humanitarian worker, Malka Older’s novel Infomocracy comes at a pertinent time– when illegitimate information is being weaponized, and accuracy and transparency of data feels increasingly fragile. In Older’s utopian world of Infomocracy, Information with a capital “I” is glorified in a new world order. Here, groups of 100,000 people elect their own government, and things like the nation-state, guns, and war are obsolete.
In this debut collection of stories, Fajardo-Anstine weaves together an exquisite tapestry of Indigenous Chicana women. Set in modern Denver as gentrification morphs the landscape into something unrecognizable, the characters navigate an unrelenting world through sheer determination and lack of any other alternative. These are stories about displacement and female relationships—about physical realities that are easily and carelessly destroyed, as well as the deep roots that persist through generations.
ode to shelf-care 