I also remember how natural it all felt then. How unquestioned. The early mornings and the long days my mother kept. The way care was given so fully, and then quietly folded away. I didn’t think about it in any formal way, but I noticed things—how certain women held themselves, how they moved through other people’s homes, attentive to what was needed and careful not to take up too much space. Even then, there was a sense, difficult to name but impossible to ignore, that some lives were expected to unfold in the background.

In many ways, this is the space the stories in my own book, Layaway Child, come out of—a desire to stay with these lives, and to bring what is often held at the margins into clearer view. What I return to is the question of what it might mean to remain with her. To follow the woman who leaves for work long before the world rises and returns when it is asleep. The woman who moves through spaces that depend on her but do not fully see her. To sit within that experience, rather than simply gesture toward it.

The seven books gathered here move in that direction. They resist easy explanation and refuse to turn these lives into symbols. Instead, they attend closely to the daily realities of the work, while also making space for the interior lives that play out alongside it. Together, these works offer a way of seeing migrant labor that resists simplification. They remain with the quiet, often overlooked moments, and in doing so, reveal the full and complex lives unfolding within them.

Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid

Lucy remains, for me, one of the clearest and most intimate expressions of the female migrant worker experience. A young woman arrives from the Caribbean to work as an au pair in the United States. What unfolds is not simply a story of employment, but of observation. Lucy watches everything: the family she works for, the culture she has entered, the expectations placed upon her. She understands, very quickly, that she is both essential and peripheral. By the end, what becomes clear is not just the shape of Lucy’s circumstances, but the clarity of her seeing—what it means to understand exactly where you stand, and to refuse to disappear within it.

Minaret by Leila Aboulela

Najwa, a Sudanese woman living in London, works as a domestic servant after her family’s political and economic fall. The novel follows her as she moves through the city—between households, between versions of herself—while gradually reorienting her sense of identity. Her work places her inside intimate spaces, caring for children, maintaining homes, and navigating the expectations of those who employ her. At the same time, she is reckoning with faith, memory, and loss, coming to understand that the life she once imagined for herself is no longer available to her, and that something else must take its place. What makes Minaret particularly striking is its attention to interiority. Najwa’s labor is constant but never sensationalized; instead, it becomes part of the texture of her daily life. The novel offers a clear, steady look at what it means to exist within someone else’s world while slowly reshaping one’s sense of purpose, dignity, and belonging.

How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa

This collection of short stories follows Laotian immigrants and refugees across North America as they navigate work, family, and language. Many of the characters are employed in forms of labor that often go unseen—nail salons, factories, service jobs—where repetition and precision shape their days. The stories are brief but exacting, capturing moments that reveal how deeply work can structure a life. Rather than focus on dramatic events, Thammavongsa attends to the small, telling detail: a conversation misunderstood, a task performed over and over, a body adapting to new demands. The result is a collection that shows how labor is carried not only in what people do, but in how they move, speak, and understand themselves within the world.

Win Me Something by Kyle Lucia Wu

Willa Chen, a biracial woman in New York, takes a job as a nanny for a wealthy white family, entering a world that is both familiar and inaccessible. Her role requires her to care deeply for the child in her charge, while also maintaining a careful awareness of her position within the household. As Willa moves through her work, she becomes increasingly attuned to the subtle ways she is both included and excluded. The novel explores how domestic labor extends beyond physical tasks into emotional and social navigation, revealing the complexities of care work in spaces where belonging is never fully granted. Slowly, Willa’s proximity to wealth, to whiteness, to comfort shapes her understanding of herself. 

The Son of the House by Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia

When Nwabulu and Julie, two women from different classes of Nigerian society, are kidnapped and held together, they begin telling each other the stories of their lives. Nwabulu has worked as a housemaid since she was a child, sent from home with promises that are never fulfilled. Julie, by contrast, comes from a wealthy, educated background, but finds her life increasingly shaped by the expectations placed on her as a wife and mother. he novel moves between their lives as their stories unfold, revealing how class, gender, and power influence the possibilities available to each of them. Domestic labor sits at the center of Nwabulu’s experience, shaping both her vulnerability and her sense of self, while Julie’s story exposes a different kind of constraint—one that operates within privilege rather than outside it. Held together, their narratives offer a layered account of how women’s lives are shaped in unequal but deeply connected ways.

Songbirds by Christy Lefteri

Set in Cyprus, Songbirds centres on Nisha, a Sri Lankan domestic worker who has left her young daughter in order to support her family from abroad. She works as a nanny and housekeeper, caring for Petra’s daughter and maintaining the rhythms of a household that is not her own. When Nisha suddenly disappears, the novel shifts to Petra as she searches for Nisha and, in doing so, confronts how little she truly understood about Nisha’s life. What emerges is a portrait of a woman whose presence has been essential yet largely unseen. Nisha’s story—revealed in fragments through others—captures the realities of migrant domestic work: the distance from one’s own child, the constant negotiation of belonging, and the quiet sacrifices that sustain lives across borders. 

Clean by Alia Trabucco Zerán

Clean unfolds through the voice of Estela García, a domestic worker who has spent years working for a wealthy family in Santiago. Speaking from an interrogation room after the death of the family’s young daughter, Estela recounts her time in the household. Over the years, she has become deeply embedded in the family’s daily life, responsible for the child, the home, and the small, repetitive tasks that structure each day. Hers is a portrait of a life lived in close proximity and near invisibility. Estela is present for everything—meals, arguments, private moments—yet is often treated as if she were not there at all. The novel lingers in that tension, where intimacy does not lead to recognition, and where being indispensable does not mean being seen. In giving Estela the space to speak, Clean turns that invisibility inside out, revealing a voice that is observant, controlled, and no longer willing to remain in the background.

The post 7 Books About Women Migrant Workers appeared first on Electric Literature.

It’s a question that has, in a sense, escaped containment in recent years, where entire media ecosystems may be based on outright lies and propaganda, where mis- and disinformation are spread online both deliberately and not, and where the boundaries between reality TV and social media stardom seem to be eroding. How did we get here? And why are so many of us still lapping it up? 

We—Stevie and Ilana—cemented our friendship in grad school by watching The Bachelor franchise every week, and we began asking each other these and many other questions. For example: Why does the franchise keep casting leads who used to play professional football and have really thick necks? And why oh why don’t these people ask each other basic questions about each other’s political views before deciding to get engaged? What started as a way to turn off our brains for a couple hours increasingly became another place to use our critical thinking skills. We couldn’t help it; there was so much there to dissect. 

Our joint anthology, Here For All the Reasons: Why We Watch The Bachelor, was born out of our conversations surrounding the franchise, as well as the question we kept asking each other—and that we knew other fans, friends and online strangers alike, asked themselves too: “Why are we still watching this?” The result is a polyvocal collection of personal essays sharing the thoughts, opinions, images, theories, and critiques of nearly 30 contributors with the world. It’s the first anthology of its kind—dedicated specifically to a reality TV product’s fandom—and we’re eager for readers to join the conversation. 

The eight books below also engage with reality TV in unique and interesting ways. These authors showed us we’re not alone in thinking reality TV is a genre full of legitimately rich texts that reflect back to us so much of what is wrong with our contemporary social and economic structure, while at the same time giving us glimmers of true human compassion and hope, albeit via extremely imperfect vehicles. Each of these books is thought-provoking and engaging—and proves that whether you love it, hate it, or love to hate it, reality TV is a genre with enough cultural cachet and sticking power to be taken seriously. 

Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV by Emily Nussbaum

In this thorough history of the reality TV genre, New Yorker staff writer Nussbaum begins by contextualizing it with what came before: audience participation shows on the radio like Queen For a Day, which started in 1945 and involved women talking about their financial and emotional hardships in the hopes of winning financial help and whatever items sponsors donated to the show. (Audiences in the US, Nussbaum shows, have long enjoyed schadenfreude-tinged entertainment.) The book also introduces readers to what many consider to be the forerunner of our contemporary understanding of reality TV: An American Family, a 1973 cinéma-vérité project that followed the Louds, a typical middle-class white family, as they went about their seemingly ordinary lives. Except it turned out that audiences found nothing mundane about getting to pruriently peer into another family’s dysfunction. Nussbaum doesn’t stop there, of course—she brings readers all the way up to the present with the making of an American reality TV star president. 

Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen

GLAAD-award winning journalist—and Here for All the Right Reasons contributor!—Allen’s debut novel (after her first nonfiction book, Real Queer America) is a hell of a hoot. Patricia Wants to Cuddle follows contestants in a Bachelor-like reality TV dating show who are all vying—with varying degrees of sincerity—for the heart of the dull entrepreneur Jeremy Blackstone. Each of the final four contestants will feel familiar to reality TV aficionados. There’s Lilah-May, a Christian influencer; Amanda, a fashion vlogger; Vanessa, a model; and Renee, an HR rep. For the last two weeks of filming, the cast and crew arrive on a small, isolated island in the Pacific Northwest that has a dark history of women hikers disappearing there. As tensions rise among the contestants, and between them and the cutthroat producers, rumblings in the woods begin to threaten not only the show itself but the very lives of its participants. But what if whatever—or whoever—is out there just wants to be loved too? 

Dekonstructing the Kardashians: A New Media Manifesto by MJ Corey

Even if you’ve never seen a single second of Keeping Up with the Kardashians or their Hulu revival, The Kardashians, you’ve heard of the Kardashian-Jenner family. Whether you’re fascinated or disgusted by them, the fact is that the clan has managed to make themselves relevant and stay that way despite not having any particular talent other than the accrual of fame and money. Then again, in the US, the accrual of fame and money is itself a highly valued kind of talent. MJ Corey, the voice behind the popular @kardashian_kolloquium Instagram account, has written a fascinating deep dive into the Kar-Jenner dynasty, examining how Kim in particular has used the contemporary media landscape to self-mythologize and cement herself as an icon. Kim, Corey argues, has made herself the medium, and her various transformations—through costuming, contouring, and plastic surgery alike—connect her to icons of yore, informing us that she’s as important to the culture as they are. Whether we like it or not, Corey argues, she’s right. 

Dream Facades: The Cruel Architecture of Reality TV by Jack Balderrama Morley

In Dream Facades, Morley, managing editor at Dwell, argues that the houses so many reality TV shows take place in and around are crucial to understanding the genre, our relationship to it, and how thoroughly it reflects the woes of the ongoing colonial mindset of US culture. In Selling Sunset, for instance, they point to how so many of the houses being sold have panoramic views of the sprawling and expensive city of Los Angeles, and how this showcases the eventual owners’ positionality—they are literally above the smog, the dirt, the plebs. As for The Bachelor mansion—of particular interest to us, of course—Morley shows us how its Mediterranean Revival style is actually local to nowhere and barely Mediterranean, really; it’s instead a kind of colonial fantasia. We’ve gotta be honest here—we’ve spent years considering reality TV from what we thought was every possible angle . . . but Morley’s book showed us how much we were missing by not taking a deep look at the spaces in which the genre is set.

The Compound by Aisling Rawle

The reality show in Aisling Rawle’s debut novel is like a supercharged version of Big Brother: Amid a vaguely dystopian background, contestants occupy an extremely isolated compound where they have to complete challenges to get even their most basic needs met. Lily, the narrator, wakes up on the compound. She and the other women await the arrival of the men, who are forced to trek across the surrounding desert to arrive at the house and its grounds. Once they arrive, things begin to heat up quickly as they complete group and individual challenges for rewards like a front door, coffee, food, and water. Meanwhile, Lily makes it clear that getting on the show can be a literal lifesaver, a way to achieve status and financial options in the outside world. It’s bleak, but then again, how many people get into reality TV these days for the same reason?

Here for the Wrong Reasons by Annabel Paulsen and Lydia Wang

In Paulsen and Wang’s debut rom-com, Here for the Wrong Reasons, seemingly straight competitive rodeo rider Krystin signs up for the dating show Hopelessly Devoted with the hopes of, well, becoming hopelessly devoted to its leading man. Lauren, meanwhile, is gay as a three-dollar bill, but she’s closeted to enough people in her life that she’s able to secure a spot on the show, and she plans to get as far as she can in order to grow her influencer brand. Once she gets big enough, she figures, she’ll be able to come out to her audience. When the two women begin to have feelings for each other, they have to reckon with their individual goals outside of the show, and what it might mean to change everything for a chance at a true happily ever after.

True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us by Danielle J. Lindemann

Lindemann (who blurbed our anthology) is a professor of sociology at Lehigh University—and this year a visiting professor at Princeton—and argues that reality TV is worth interrogating because of how it affects us, the viewers. (We heartily agree, obviously!) In her deeply researched book, Lindemann sidesteps the question of how real reality TV is—because, as she points out, it doesn’t really matter when it can teach us how much our own reality is socially constructed—and instead examines the ways reality TV portrays the many intersecting identities of those who appear in them and how those portrayals largely uphold the status quo of contemporary power dynamics. She also explores how concepts like coupledom and family are constructed on reality TV, and shows how conservative ideals are nearly always the foundation for whatever seemingly liberal shenanigans we might witness onscreen. Lay readers, have no fear—while Lindemann may be an academic, this delightful book is geared toward a general audience, not the ivory tower. 

Real Love by Rachel Lindsay

Rachel Lindsay is Bachelor Nation royalty. The first Black Bachelorette, Lindsay is beloved by many in Bachelor Nation for being openly critical of the franchise and its treatment of contestants and leads of color. In her debut novel, Real Love, written with author Alexa Martin, Lindsay explores what might have happened if someone a little bit like her had said no to being on a Bachelor-like dating show. When Maya Johnson turns down the opportunity to go on Real Love and recommends her best friend Delilah instead, she feels good about it. After all, her life is going according to plan. But when Delilah becomes the show’s lead, Maya begins to wonder: Did she make a mistake? Delilah seems so happy and in love, her life entirely transformed. And while Maya might have a great career, she’s beginning to think that her grand plans for a stable, predictable future might not be fulfilling her as she’d always imagined. When her sister comes for a visit, along with a good-looking fellow traveler, Maya discovers that there might yet be some surprises and swoons in store for her too. 

The post 8 Thought-Provoking Books About Reality TV appeared first on Electric Literature.

Of course, perspective matters. The story of a family is dictated by whomever undertakes the task of explaining why their family is like that. Depending on who’s asked among my own relatives, my Great-Aunt Cindy is either a heretic or a saint (though we all agree she should stop picking fights online). Even when the Great-Aunt Cindys of our worlds are on their best behavior, other characters emerge with their own brand of trouble, which we—often to our chagrin, sometimes to our delight—must help sort out. 

For me, the best family portraits in fiction strike this balance: chaos outpaced by deep-rooted love. Love so big that words must stretch to contain all its particularities. There is sadness and grief because there are always those things, but it’s the love in these novels I remember, and that I hope other readers go looking for.

Candelaria by Melissa Lozada-Oliva

You are Candelaria, an 86-year-old Guatemalan immigrant living in Boston. You are making tortillas on Christmas Eve when your daughter Lucia calls: Candy, the youngest of your three granddaughters, is in trouble again. But she is not the only one. Your boyfriend Mauricio soon returns home smelling of nothing, a harbinger of the apocalypse to come. You stab him in the gut with your kitchen knife, and the earth begins to tremble. This is the opening scene that launches a romp of a novel, one that follows three generations of women—Candelaria, Lucia, and her daughters, Paola, Bianca, and Candy. Narrated in alternating second-person (Candelaria) and third-person (the granddaughters) perspectives, they grapple with a multitude of crises. Addiction and intergenerational trauma and Latinidad, but also, zombies, a fertility cult, cannibals, and the most persistent of horrors: men. Together, these women endure it all, laughing maniacally along the way. 

Worry by Alexandra Tanner

After surviving a suicide attempt, Poppy moves in with her older sister and Worry’s narrator, Jules, a post-MFA writer surviving in Brooklyn through a patchwork of unfulfilling remote jobs. The arrangement is meant to be temporary while Poppy finds her footing in New York and works through her severe anxiety. Instead, Poppy stays. She adopts a three-legged dog named Amy Klobuchar who destroys most everything. Meanwhile Jules loses her job, her humdrum relationship, and all sense of privacy. For comfort, she nosedives into the anti-vaxx vortex of Mormon mommy bloggers, a move paralleled by their toxic mother’s flirtation with pyramid schemes and Jews for Jesus. As the year progresses, Jules and Poppy navigate their claustrophia—physical, emotional—and an ever-growing capitalist hellscape. It’s a wry, funny tailspin that captures the madness specific to sisters. 

Leave Your Mess At Home by Tolani Akinola

This debut novel follows four Nigerian-American siblings living in Chicago: Sola, Anjola, Ola, and Karen Longe. Their family relationship is strained due, in large part, to their mother, Latifat, and the pressures and/or leniencies she places on each of them (though their father’s passive tendencies don’t help). The resulting dynamic is—to invoke another popular diagnosis for families—messy. So messy, so heartwrenching, and so funny. Combined, these elements make their siblinghood incredibly vivid. As the novel rotates between the siblings’ perspectives, Akinola reveals layered histories and suppressed secrets that build to an explosive climax at Thanksgiving. The unfolding crisis forces the family into reflection. Some go willingly, while others resist accountability altogether. In the end, the siblings must decide for themselves which relationships are worth fighting for and which are better let go. 

Fire Exit by Morgan Talty

From his front porch across the Penobscot river, Charles Lamosway has watched his daughter, Elisabeth, grow up. She is oblivious to their connection. As far as she knows, her father is Roger, the man who raised her. This arrangement was predicated by Charles and Elisabeth’s mother, Mary, to ensure Elisabeth would be raised as a citizen of the Penobscot Nation. If her true parentage were known, she would not meet the tribe’s blood quantum requirement. Charles understands the gravity of this choice, having been raised on the Penobscot reservation for most of his young life by his mother and late stepfather, Frederick. When Charles became a legal adult, he was forced to move across the river, yet his connection to the Penobscot Nation endured. After Frederick’s passing, this connection frayed; when he discovers Elisabeth may have disappeared, it threatens to snap entirely. The fear of losing her spurs him into action, kicking up stones that might be better left unturned. The novel asks us to consider if there is more to belonging than blood, and seems to give its own answer: yes. 

Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra, translated by Megan McDowell

Another tender novel featuring stepfamilies. Zambra is heralded as a writers’ writer; he is interested in writers and writing as subjects of narrative exploration. Chilean Poet fits this paradigm. Set in Santiago, a city of poets, the novel opens with Gonzalo and Carla, the former a fledgling poet, as randy teenaged lovers. They part ways, as teenagers are wont to do, and meet again at a gay bar nine years later. Clothes come off, and Gonzalo notices that Carla bears a curious new scar. Since they last met, she’s had a son, Vicente, now six years old. Slowly, they become a family. Seeing the bond between Vicente and Gonzalo grow—negotiating their new roles as surrogate parent and child, Gonzalo imparting his love of poetry to Vicente—is my favorite part of this novel. Their dynamic is kaleidoscopic: warmhearted, awkward, funny, full of care. 

Then, there is a turn. This is Zambra, after all, who delights in chicanery, and poetry is the backdrop. Naturally, a volta is required: Betrayal upends the new family’s happiness, breaking them apart. Readers are left wondering how and if Vicente and Gonzalo will find their way back to one another. Luckily, it’s a joy to find out. 

Three Parties by Ziyad Saadi

Firas Dareer is turning twenty-three. The stakes for this particular birthday have been upped: in addition to throwing a blowout bash, Firas will use this day to come out to his entire social circle, including his conservative Muslim parents. The Dareers are Palestinian refugees; they fled Gaza for Detroit after Firas’s grandmother was shot by an Israeli occupation soldier during the Second Intifada. Coming out means risking his family and his only tether to home. Despite a painstaking itinerary, disruptions abound that threaten to implode his special day: his cantankerous Jido, escaped from the nursing home; Maysa, the Dareers’ housekeeper, who constantly meddles with his decor and once caught him blowing another boy at a party; a brigade of neighbors, friends, and secret lovers; his evasive sister, Suhad, and his youngest brother, Mazen, who preoccupies the family’s collective imagination, having recently survived a suicide attempt. As the day unravels, Firas’s party snowballs into much more than a tragicomic birthday celebration; it becomes—without spoiling too much—a sort of homecoming. 

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

For some friends, I am the only writer they know, which generally means I am also the only reader they know. That means I’m called upon as Book Recommender often, and Girl, Woman, Other is one of my staple suggestions. It’s an immersive book with equal parts seriousness and levity. There is something for everyone here. A novel-in-stories, it offers a window into the lives of 12 Black British women, ages spanning from their teens to well into their nineties. Though not all of the main cast meet on the page, they are almost all interconnected in some way—as mothers, daughters, aunts, mentors, friends, lovers. (For the curious, search engine results will reveal maps hand-drawn by readers who’ve gone through the trouble of sorting all the links.) The novel tackles several thorny topics through an intersectional lens: feminism, immigration, racism, sexuality, class, and gender identity, though these hardly scratch the surface. But the characters are not always victims. In an interview about the novel, Evaristo explained that the inclusion of “Other” in the title refers, yes, to how they’re othered by society, but also sometimes by one another. For me, this book encapsulates the full meaning of family, because it includes community as part of its working definition.

The post 7 Novels About Dysfunctional (But Charming) Families appeared first on Electric Literature.

Among the archives is my father’s unpublished memoir, Daruma: The Indomitable Spirit, a chronicle of his imprisonment and release from Tule Lake, an incarceration camp in Northern California, where he spent nearly four years, from the age of 10 to 14. When I began to write my own memoir, A Place for What We Lose: A Daughter’s Return to Tule Lake, I knew that I needed to begin with my father’s words.  

Building on the groundbreaking work of memoirists like Deborah Miranda (Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir), I wanted an intergenerational, dialogic approach to writing about Japanese American incarceration. To accomplish this, I had to recontextualize, repurpose, and even contradict sections of my father’s book. Through this multivocal approach, I learned how to grieve, finally, the early loss of my dad and reckon with my family’s history.

In the books gathered below, authors unearth and incorporate family archives in creative, innovative, poetic, and genre-bending ways. By sharing their personal inheritances, they prevent history from becoming a faded-sepia matter of the past.

The Poet and the Silk Girl by Satsuki Ina 

Psychotherapist Satsuki Ina is herself a survivor of Japanese American incarceration; she was born at Tule Lake, where my father and his family were incarcerated. Building on her documentary work, including Children of the Camps, her book is a painstaking compilation of her parents’ translated letters and poetry during their internment. But it is also a moving account of Ina’s reckoning with this legacy and her inspiring movement into cross-racial solidarity and activism.

The Unwritten Book by Samantha Hunt 

The Unwritten Book is a hybrid literary memoir of essay and biography that deeply engages with Hunt’s father’s writing, found only after his death. Hunt includes part of his unfinished novel on the left-hand side with her annotations on the right-hand side. The resulting book is fascinated with haunting, hoarding, and the echoing significance of objects we leave behind after death.

The Grave on the Wall by Brandon Shimoda

The Grave on the Wall is an inventive, lyrical, and meditative journey in search of Shimoda’s Issei grandfather who was incarcerated during World War II, moving from California to Montana to Hiroshima, Japan. This essay collection uses photographs by and of the author’s grandfather as well as reminiscences from oral history interviews, emails from family members, and excerpts from his grandfather’s file in the National Archives. Shimoda’s work is thought-provoking and poignant, and this collection is no exception.

Mother Archive by Erika Morillo

Described as an “image-text memoir” and “a collage” by Julia Fierro, the Dominican American author Erika Morillo’s work includes not just family photographs and letters but also film stills and portraits, resembling Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s book Dictee. Morillo was also a photographer before the publication of Mother Archive. “[There] was so much of my family history I had to come to terms with or at least understand,” she noted in a 2020 interview. “Making work about it gave me some agency over my own history.”  Once the memoir was published in 2024, Morillo described the book as “a personal case against erasure” and her “attempt to create the bond and spaces for discussion” that she had longed for in her own mother-daughter relationship. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Morillo’s memoir is a striking exploration of motherhood and historical amnesia.

Letters to Memory by Karen Tei Yamashita 

Letters to Memory began with Yamashita’s discovery of two manila folders full of typed letters on onionskin paper from her Aunt Kay after her death. Piecing together the story of her Japanese American family’s incarceration, the author quickly expanded the letters into this book as well as a family project: the Yamashita Family Archives housed at the University of California Santa Cruz. Some family artifacts appear in the book as color reproductions, while others are found in the pages dividing each section—addressed as letters to larger concerns such as poverty, modernity, love, death, and laughter. It’s difficult to describe this inventive journey through family history, wartime incarceration and resettlement, but it’s poetic, funny, and deeply intelligent.

The Girl I Am, Was, And Will Never Be by Shannon Gibney 

Gibney’s speculative memoir uses a sort of “sliding doors” approach to her life as a transracial adoptee. Who would she be if she had been able to stay with her birth mother? Who did she become as a result of being adopted, and transracially? Gibney’s book includes facsimiles of different family documents and photographs that provide vivid illustrations of these two different lives.

Seattle Samurai by Kelly Goto 

Seattle Samurai is a loving and beautifully designed compilation of author Kelly Goto’s father Sam Goto’s comic strips, which he wrote and drew for The North American Post, a Japanese American community newspaper in Seattle. After his passing, Goto organized and selected her father’s comic strips and also took stock of his wider interests and collections, such as samurai swords, that provided historical and cultural context for his work. Kelly’s background in graphic design is evident in the photographs, the arrangements of the strips, and the white spaces which allow her father’s work to come to life off the page. 

The post 7 Books That Use Family Archives to Break Generational Silence appeared first on Electric Literature.

To be honest, it’s nice to be able to celebrate something. The book that claims the title as the winner of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction will get media attention, and it’ll be just plain wonderful to see some energy spent on books and stories.

Winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is, of course, a big deal. The new winner will join the ranks of such classic books as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, and, most recently, Percival Everett’s James. It’s quite the company, indeed.

My task of predicting what title might win is a tough one. Could we see a double winner, like in 2023, when Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead and Hernan Diaz’s Trust claimed the Prize? Could we see another 2012, with no winner? Could something shock us all—maybe a magnificent small wonder like Paul Harding’s Tinkers?

As per my usual, I’ve tried my best to stay away from my own literary opinions in compiling this prediction list, which is why you won’t find several of my favorite fiction books of the year—Dan Leach’s Junah at the End of the World, Julia Elliott’s Hellions, Susan Gregg Gilmore’s The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush, Scott Gould’s Peace Like a River, Emma Ensley’s The Computer Room, or Robert Busby’s Bodock—included below. Instead, I rely on other awards, critical and reader buzz, and my own intuition in offering these Pulitzer hopefuls.

So, here we go. In order from dark horses to definite contenders, below are my predictions for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction:

10: The Slip by Lucas Schaefer

The Slip was among the very first books I read during 2025, and it lingered with me throughout the year. It’s many things, but at its core, it’s a book about sports, sex, and race. It was one of the early winners in the literary award cycle, picking up the esteemed Kirkus Prize. It also showed up on multiple best-of lists. While The Slip is a debut, and debuts aren’t frequent winners for the Pulitzer, Schaefer’s novel is absolutely fantastic and would be a worthy winner.

9: The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

I know this one is another debut, but when I talk to folks about books from 2025, Virginia Evans’ epistolary gem is the one I hear about the most. Readers absolutely love this book. However, it’s not only readers who are celebrating it. Critics are on board, too. Venues such as NPR, The Washington Post, and others included it on best-of lists, and it was longlisted for several prizes, including the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. 

8: The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy

Flournoy’s The Wilderness, which is the author’s follow-up to the hugely-acclaimed The Turner House, is another major win. The novel looks at friendship and closely examines modern life. It already received an endorsement from Barack Obama himself, and it was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It’s one to watch!

7: A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar

Majumdar’s latest novel has done very well during the current award cycle, and such acclaim is definitely deserved. What a book this is, exploring issues of morality, climate, and love. A Guardian and a Thief took home the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and it was a finalist for the National Book Award. 

6: The Pelican Child by Joy Williams

Williams has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction before with 2000’s The Quick and the Dead. Last year’s The Pelican Child, a timely story collection with wonderful reviews and accolades, including being longlisted for the National Book Award, brings Williams back as a strong—maybe a very strong—contender.

5: Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story by Wendell Berry

I know I mentioned how I try to keep my own personal feelings out of these predictions as much as I can, but this is the great Wendell Berry I’m writing about. During the summer of 2025, I spent time tending my garden, teaching a bit, and reading, again, all of Berry’s Port William series, which is set in the kind of place I don’t really want to leave. Marce Catlett features Berry writing about the things he writes about best of all. There is memory, love, family, and an exploration of our connection to the land. The book hasn’t garnered the literary trophies and buzz that often help in predicting these major literary awards, but Berry is deeply beloved, with a career that’s given us numerous masterpieces of rural America. Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story is an underdog, perhaps, but it’s a mighty one.

4: Buckeye by Patrick Ryan

Patrick Ryan’s Buckeye is a brilliant book that captured me from the first page to the last one. It’s brimming with big moments and even bigger characters. It covers a lot of territory, including sex, secrets, grief, and redemption, as it spans multiple generations, and I think it definitely earns the title of “Great American Novel.” Readers love it. Critics adore it. It’s shown up on many, many “best-of” lists from venues such as The New York Times Book Review, NPR, and People.

3: The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

Desai’s previous novel, The Inheritance of Loss, was a major critical success—a major one—when it was released nearly 20 years ago. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, full of family and love and much more, is following in similarly successful footsteps. Among other accolades, the novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and made the year-end lists of Lit Hub, The New Yorker, Library Journal, and others.

2: Flashlight by Susan Choi

Choi’s widely-acclaimed new novel, Flashlight, depicts, among other things, the complexities of memory. It’s shown up at so many places as one of the best books of 2025, and it’s received nomination upon nomination, including being featured on longlists for the National Book Award, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the Andrew Carnegie Medal. I expect it to show up come Pulitzer day.

1: The Antidote by Karen Russell

Karen Russell is a previous finalist for the Pulitzer, and I have to believe that this is her year to take it home. The Antidote is Russell at her absolute best. There is magic aplenty, and even more complexities of the human heart inside these pages. Set around the Dust Bowl, this wonderful novel explores memory in such a complex and important way, showing readers that to remember is to better understand our own identity. The Antidote is timely, certainly, but there’s also something about it that feels timeless. Like I said, there’s magic here. It’s already been named as a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The New York Times, NPR, and numerous others loved it. I think it’s the winner.

The post Predicting the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (and How to Watch It Live!) appeared first on Electric Literature.

This list of books by Québécois authors, primarily published first in French, demonstrates the city’s unique identity. Montreal is a hub of cultural contradictions, a home to many thousands of immigrants, an erotic city bursting with sensuality, a queer-friendly atmosphere set alongside deep religious roots, and a place of seasonal extremes: deadly hot in the summer (we read in parks), endlessly frigid in the winter (we read at home). There are characters around every corner, in every fresh bagel shop, independent bookstore, hip cinematheque, and lush green park. In other words, Montreal certainly has a reputation, but it’s one that is so baroque and multifarious that it always comes back around feeling unexpected. The literature of the city, particularly the books that are set within it, frequently, perhaps unavoidably, reflect this.

The list below is an attempt to offer an introduction to the city’s literary tradition. Each book takes place in or around Montreal. Patterns emerge: there are many debuts here, and many semi-autobiographical immigrant tales, and many examinations of the rural/urban divide in Québec. It is also a mixture of noted classics, alongside some less obvious examples. No matter where you start, though, you’ll be brought squarely into what makes Montreal so stubbornly singular.

How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired by Dany Laferrière, translated by David Homel

First published in 1985, Laferrière’s debut remains one of Québec’s most acclaimed and widely-read books. It tells the story of a Haitian immigrant in Montreal, surviving in the city’s poverty-stricken slums. Laferrière, himself, born and raised in Port-au-Prince before coming to Montreal at age 23, puts much of that experience into the book, which is, surprisingly, a comedy. It is also provocative, going into detail about the narrator’s interracial affairs with white women, and the deeply felt racism of the era. The narrator and his friend are also pursuers of cultural and intellectual life, finding a home within the city’s jazz and literary circles. Again, this loosely reflects the author’s own experiences of his first years in Montreal, all while sharply satirizing the city’s prejudices. In short, it’s a classic for a reason.

The Orange Grove by Larry Tremblay, translated by Sheila Fischman

Tremblay, whose primary occupation is as a celebrated playwright, wrote this tragic tale about twins, Amed and Aziz, caught in an unnamed, war-torn country. Their relatively tranquil lives in their family’s orange grove are disrupted by the ravages of an unwanted war and the troubling consequences of revenge. Early passages can be hard to bear, but Tremblay’s prose is confident and devastating in its detail. Later, the story moves to the cold winter of Montreal, as one of the twins is involved in a play about war, and his own story influences the shape that the show takes. While a short read, much is packed into these pages.

Bottle Rocket Hearts by Zoe Whittall

Zoe Whittall’s debut is a stirring Bildungsroman, evocatively placing readers in the run-up to Québec’s 1995 referendum when the province’s citizens voted on whether or not to separate from Canada. 18-year-old Eve is fired up not only about secessional politics but about queer rights and feminist ennui following the mainstreaming of riot grrrl aesthetics. Then she meets an older woman who awakens her sensibilities—sexual, political, cultural—to an even higher degree. Whittall renders this revolutionary spirit and discovery of the self and the other with thrilling directness and intensity. As a result, the city’s own intensities at that moment in history become personal.

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill

O’Neill, one of Montreal’s most-beloved working writers in English, is an excellent place to start for any reader eager to immerse themselves in the life of the city. You could go with The Lonely Hearts Hotel, about two Montreal orphans in the early 20th-century, or When We Lost Our Heads, about the clash of the classes in 19th century Montreal; but your best bet would be her debut, Lullabies for Little Criminals, a rough and often dark story of a young girl with a junkie father, growing up in squalor and, ultimately, being forced to raise herself. What stands out in each novel is O’Neill’s careful attention to Montreal itself, from the dangerous to the stunningly beautiful and how the two uncomfortably overlap.

Ru by Kim Thúy, translated by Sheila Fischman

Kim Thúy, who fled with her parents from Vietnam at the age of 10 to the Montreal suburbs, hit the bestseller list with her debut, Ru, a tale of a refugee’s journey from Saigon to Montreal. The structural and temporal architecture of the book is a treat for readers, as Thúy demonstrates unbelievable control over the narrative’s back and forth, and the vagaries of memory across decades of excitement and disappointment. The book is written via fragments which accumulate into something cohesive and moving. While there are many literary explorations like this one, subtly taking apart the nuances of the American (or Canadian) dream, the specificity and verve of Thúy’s storytelling puts Ru a step above.

Whore by Nelly Arcan, translated by Bruce Benderson

Another short autobiographical book, Nelly Arcan’s confrontational story of Québec’s religious, sexual, and cultural dysfunction is, to use a cliche, genuinely raw. Like Ru, it is told mostly through vignettes, though with a more unwieldy, angry spirit. The book draws from Arcan’s rural Catholic upbringing, and it is unsparing in detailing the protagonist’s turn to prostitution. The style may not be for everyone, and Arcan’s tragic suicide adds an even heavier register to the book’s contents, but it is nevertheless an essential read for those interested in Québec history, and how it intertwines with personal trauma.

Dandelion Daughter by Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay, translated by Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch

Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay, an actress, turned to literature with her debut, Dandelion Daughter, a coming-of-age story about the prejudices of rural Québec and a protagonist who realizes they were assigned the wrong gender at birth. It is a story of transgender discovery told with radical honesty and a deep understanding of character—nothing about the self is ever simple. As the protagonist moves to Québec City and then Montreal, the book excavates poetry from deep emotional wounds and demonstrates what it means to own your identity.

What I Know About You by Éric Chacour, translated by Pablo Strauss

While Chacour’s book largely takes place in 1980s Cairo, the Montreal native pulls from his own family history to tell a remarkable story about queerness and expectations. The structure is daring, as we begin in second-person narration of Tarek, taking over his father’s medical practice in the Egyptian capital, before turning to first-person, and finally to an omniscient narrator. The result, as we track the emergence of an impossible queer love for Tarek and, later on, his melancholy life in Montreal, is a gentle but sophisticated narrative about the calcifying power of secrets, and the constant reminders of how effective perspective can be as a storytelling tool.

The post 8 Quintessentially Québécois Novels Set in Montreal appeared first on Electric Literature.

So really, it should’ve stung—should’ve smarted—that someone I’d grown up with could even bear to nurse a thought so acrid, so casually cruel. But at thirteen, in the greenness of teenagehood, I took great pride instead in being the Muslim that could stomach an insult, proffer a critical remark with no hint of defensiveness, brag about never having kept a fast during Ramadan—so I merely shrugged and nodded in acquiescence. By the time we’d left the waffle shop and stepped into the mugginess of Mumbai, the sky was tinged with magenta and Bani’s remark had already faded from consciousness. This was in 2014, shortly after the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party rose to power in India in a landslide victory, ushering in a new era of Hindu nationalism which sought to sweep religious minorities to the sidelines. 

Twelve years on, Bani’s remark seems to have foreshadowed a chain of events unfurling in the political landscape of India: reports of cow vigilantes lynching Muslims on suspicion of eating beef, non-vegetarian renters being denied housing in major Indian cities, beef being banned in twenty out of twenty-eight states. What is it about food, I wonder, that can drive one to murder, to be entirely stripped of remorse? Why does the aroma of a certain meal feel like an insult so personal, so scathing, that the only acceptable response is hot, vicious rage? 

The answer lies in the fact that food and politics are immersed in a strange dance, of sorts, where one not only informs but also augments the other—a fact reinforced by political scientist Gopal Guru, who argued that food is a “site of humiliation” for Dalits in a caste-based system like ours. In 2011, the India Human Development Survey found that women in about a quarter of Indian households eat last, stoically gleaning the remnants once the men had eaten their fill. For those hovering at the margins—women, Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis—these facts underscore a jarring truth: food isn’t merely fuel, it determines if they get to survive at all. 

The seven books below encapsulate this sentiment by asking questions that are as jarring as they are necessary: what is acceptable to eat, who is handed the leftovers, whose meals are considered dirty, who toils in the kitchen. And somewhere in between stories of vengeful women, debates about inter-dining, and ethnographic accounts of the beef ban, we stumble upon the realisation that food can be both life-affirming and life-destroying, all at once. 

Chhaunk by Abhijit Banerjee

How are roadside chowmein and foreign policy related? What does a disappointing New Year’s Eve have in common with Universal Basic Income? Few authors can extrapolate the dreary slog of everyday life to economic theories without being overly didactic, but Banerjee suffers from no such predicament. Every chapter begins with a juicy anecdote about food—in one, a sanyasi suckles lasciviously at a ripe mango on a crowded train, putting on a show for his scandalised audience; in another, a group of friends skip lunch to make their evening meal of sutli kebabs feel more rewarding, only to find that hunger has fettered every ounce of their mental energy.

Then, almost as if by chance, Banerjee begins to drift away—drawing unexpected parallels to Xi Jinping’s domestic policy, India’s malnutrition problem, the erosion of democracy, undertrial prisoners. Nothing is too frivolous, everything is related, and it almost always circles back to food. But while Chhaunk is a sobering reminder that the personal has always been political, Banerjee’s writing is laced with levity, making it an easily digestible read in spite of its heft. 

Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada by Shahu Patole

Amidst an ever-swelling pile of desi cookbooks, Shahu Patole’s memoir stands out, not only for the age-old recipes etched into its pages, but because its very existence is an act of subversion. It is true, after all, that Dalit recipes never wriggle their way into the mainstream, into the glossy cookbooks that sit smugly on front-facing displays in bookstores; that has long been a feat reserved only for the upper-caste. “Even my own siblings didn’t like my writing this book in such great detail,” Patole admits in the preface. “But this is the story of the food my parents ate and their parents ate—an acquired taste, one acquired through centuries of discrimination.”

Through a series of vignettes, we learn how Dalit communities—often driven by paucity—use every part of the animal in their cooking, how non-vegetarianism is weaponised to uphold caste hierarchies in India, how some ingredients have historically only been available to the upper caste. And upon reaching the raw, tender marrow of the book, we find ourselves stumped by a more rudimentary question: why has nobody even noticed that Dalit recipes are missing from mainstream media?

Eating Women, Telling Tales by Bulbul Sharma

If Patole’s work has a grim undercurrent, this cheeky collection of short stories pivots sharply, with plotlines that are as piquant as Indian cooking. At first, the characters seem run-of-the-mill, unassuming. But a sardonic tone runs through the book, coaxing a self-conscious giggle out of the oblivious reader, and eventually, giving way to a sticky, viscous malaise that lingers for days after. Perhaps it’s the realization that the mother trying to ‘earn’ her son’s love by cooking for him feels oddly familiar, as does the wife attempting to clog her good-for-nothing husband’s arteries by glutting him with rich, greasy food. 

After all, the women in this book are women we recognise—mothers, daughters, aunts—who spend their lives toiling in the kitchen, their worth forever hinging on how aromatic their tadka is, how thinly they can slice a radish, how swiftly they can plump up a too-thin husband. It is through food that these women are controlled, tyrannised, shown their place. But it’s also through food that they find solace, validation, and sometimes even revenge. 

Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian by James Staples

Emerging out of two decades of ethnographic research in South India, Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian takes a long, hard look at what it means to consume beef in a country where cows have historically been considered sacred. Within the first thirty pages, Staples gently tosses aside the cut-and-dried way in which we usually speak of the beef issue—as a clash between the cow-slaughtering Muslims, Dalits, and Christians and the cow-worshipping Hindus.

While there is, of course, some truth to this notion, Staples brings in a more nuanced view, acquainting us with cow slaughterers who refuse to eat beef, Dalit cattle herders who feel a sense of kinship with their animals, upper caste Hindus who devour beef in secret, and those that wilfully turn a blind eye to the exploitative practices of the meat industry. It is through these encounters that he makes a case for the messy complexity of beef-eating. Especially now, at a time when gau rakshaks are lynching religious minorities on suspicion of eating beef, a book as nuanced as this one feels like a welcome respite, an oasis in drought.

Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai

In the initial segment of this book, we meet Uma, a spinster who spends her days at the beck and call of her parents, only to be met with vitriolic remarks in return. Despite feeding those around her, Uma’s life in India is one of fasting—starved of freedom, education, new experiences. The latter half follows Uma’s brother, Arun, who moves in with an American family, the Pattons, after he enrolls in a college in the United States. The Pattons lead a life of excess—they buy an obscene amount of groceries, have a freezer crammed with meat, and their daughter Melanie obsessively snacks on candy bars only to vomit everything back up.

While their circumstances are unalike, Uma and Melanie are similar in that they’re both unhappy with their lives, which has the effect of thwarting their appetite, both literal and symbolic. There is, after all, a sense of aliveness to hunger—a reaching outwards, a wish for nourishment, the sign of a body functioning as it should. What can be understood of a hunger that is quashed, diminished like theirs? Does it point to a barren inner world? A belief that one’s needs will forever remain unmet? A quashing of desire itself? 

The Flavours Of Nationalism by Nandita Haksar

The urge to pen this book came to Haksar as early as the 1980s, while attending a human rights conference in Amritsar, Punjab. There, a South Indian delegate asked for rasam (a dish typically only prepared further South) despite the conference having a lavish spread of local Punjabi food. This interaction first annoyed and then amused Haksar—who’d grown up with “the Nehruvian idea that we must appreciate the cultures and cuisines of others”—and eventually inspired her to work on a book she imagined would be titled ‘Rasam in Amritsar’.

Only, what set out to be a light-hearted work grew progressively more dismal once the culinary tastes and recipes of India revealed themselves to be mired in socio-political strife. It is with this understanding that Haksar unpacks the Gandhi-Ambedkar debate on inter-dining, the impact of privatisation on the Goan food industry, and the ban on eating beef. But while it unfolds as a narrative, The Flavours of Nationalism is, at its heart, an act of questioning: where do our meals come from? Who is permitted at the table? What food provokes violence? What doesn’t? And more importantly, perhaps, what does that mean for us as a people?

Khabaar by Madhushree Ghosh

Whether it’s buying meat and fish at Chittaranjan Park in New Delhi or watching her mother fry rohu in mustard oil, Ghosh, the daughter of Bengali refugees, nurses her memories of India with utmost fondness after immigrating to the United States for graduate school. In the decades after, she finds herself oscillating between past and present, rootedness and adriftness, belonging and alienation—as is a rite of passage for most immigrants.

It’s only in the aftermath of her baba’s death, and eventually ma’s, as well, that she tries to keep alive her Indian heritage and the memory of her parents, through Bengali food: preparing goat curry in remembrance of her childhood meals, making a “bastardised version” of raita with kefir instead of yogurt, haggling with a local fisherman while buying fresh fish the way her father had taught her to. (“We absorb the fish’s life. We live because they did… Never forget, Puchkey, fresh fish. For fresh life. Always.”) As much as Khabaar is a tale of grief and cultural identity, it is also one of vitality, of recognizing that there is presence even in absence, and that memory—of those departed, of homes left behind—does not have to destroy us. 

The post 7 Books About the Messy Politics of Indian Meals appeared first on Electric Literature.

This year, we’re highlighting indie bookstores that focus on intersectional LGBTQ+ literature. Save a queer, read a book!

Giovanni’s Room (Philadelphia, PA)

Giovanni’s Room has the bragging rights to being the oldest LGBTQ+ bookstore in the US. A Philly favorite selling both new and used books, it’s part of the queer family that is Philadelphia AIDS Thrift, a gem whose mission is “to sell lovely, useful, interesting, amusing, and sometimes mysterious stuff.” A federally recognized 501(c)(3), they’ve distributed over $5 million to local organizations committed to the fight against HIV/AIDS. Don’t miss Philly Queer Book Club, hosted monthly by the charming and stylish self-proclaimed Book Club Kid, Danny Maloney! You’ll read classics like Sula, Zami, and Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, as well as hot new titles.

Firestorm Books (Asheville, NC)

This queer, radical activist co-op has been a feminist collective and social movement since 2008, and they need your help! Like many small businesses in Asheville, the worker-owned, non-hierarchal, self-managed business was hit hard by Hurricane Helene. Sales are down, costs are up, capitalism is the worst. The bookstore, which provides critical community space and serves as a hub of mutual aid, has been enlisting community support to bridge their gap in revenue and expenses. Even so, they’re continuing to facilitate civic programming like “Your Book Club Has Been Designated a Terrorist Threat,” which disseminates essential knowledge about the landmark Dallas-Fort Worth case after activists were convicted of “material support for terrorism.” Join this beloved indie, become a Firestorm Sustainer today! 

Pocket Books (Lancaster, PA)

Owned by three best friends (who we all want to be our best friends), Pocket Books is an independent, queer, feminist indie committed to “the idea that bookstores are places for communities to share knowledge, wisdom, resources, and connections.” If you’re looking for a hot new title (Horror? Sexy? Sexy Horror?), their book recs are fantastic! They curate an “intentional and eclectic” stock of books, including titles by local writers and small presses; their monthly subscription, Pocket Picks, features early career writers and prioritizes women, queer writers, and writers of color. Pocket Books is so popular and beloved, they recently doubled in size and love, opening their second location in Lancaster, PA. They ship nationwide and offer 15% on all pre-orders! 

Loyalty Bookstores (Washington, DC)

Founded by Hannah Oliver Depp, a Black and Queer bookseller, and now co-owned by Christine Bollow, a Queer, disabled, and biracial Filipina bookseller, Loyalty highlights diverse voices to reflect Washington, DC’s intersectional community. Their motto is, “We Like Books, We Like You, Welcome.” There are many book clubs to choose from: Meet Cute, which reads across sub-genres within Romancelandia; In the Margins, which focuses on marginalized authors; the Big Ass Book Club for ambitious books; and Agatha Christie & Sherry, which pairs Christie with sherry and tea. Loyalty Bookstores is located in Petworth, DC, in the Pop Up at Walter Reed. 

Asbury Book Cooperative (Asbury Park, NJ)

Asbury Book Cooperative is a community-run 501(c)(3) nonprofit bookstore, supported and run by members and volunteers who are always delighted to offer their take on a great book. Selling both new and used books (including a pretty solid poetry section for a store of its size), and located downtown in gay Asbury Park, ABC is an excellent stop on your way to the 5^th Avenue Beach. Not only are there readings, workshops, and book clubs—such as an excellent Racial & Social Justice Reading Group—but Friday nights at ABC are usually a great time to catch live music!

Inkwood Books (Haddonfield, NJ)

Located in walkable downtown Haddonfield, not far from a beloved water ice shop, Inkwood Books serves as a community hub, holding story times, book clubs, and walk-ins. They carry more than 18,000 books, including a dedicated children’s section and independent authors and presses. A lively, charming, and welcoming indie, it’s beloved by locals for being a South Jersey “gem.” Pride Book Club runs monthly on Tuesdays! 

Rainy Day Books (Kansas City, KS)

A fan favorite and a highlight at 2024 AWP-Kansas City, Rainy Day Books is one of the oldest independent bookstores in the region. It began in the 1970s as a used bookstore with a unique paperback exchange, enabling customers to trade books for credit. Now, Rainy Day Books is deeply involved in the local community, hosts hundreds of author events each year, and promotes literacy as a cultural hub for readers of Kansas City. They partnered with Lead to Read KC to host the “Story by Story: KC Book Fair,” celebrated queer AWP at Missie B’s, and recently hosted a “Potions & Devotions Tour.” 

Under the Umbrella (Salt Lake City, UT)

Under the Umbrella is a proud safe space for queer folks of all ages to congregate: queer authors, queer stories, queer perspectives. “No other bookstore in the area specifically caters to the queer community,” writes owner Katlyn Mahoney. The indie, which includes a café, also features small presses and self-published writers. Under the Umbrella, prioritizes, “the stories of Black queers—especially Black transgender women—Indigenous queers, and other queers of color, disabled queers, fat queers, two-spirit people, intersex people, asexual and aromatic people, incarcerated queer people, queer sex workers, and other identities within the queer community that experience further marginalization, even within the queer community.” They offer HRT support meetings, skill building workshops, pop-up markets for local artisans, and Queer Speed Date events. For their contributions, they received the ACLU Torch of Freedom Award in 2024 and the 2026 University of Utah Pinnacle of Pride Award.

Women & Children First (Chicago, IL)

Women & Children First celebrates over 45 years of inclusive feminist bookselling in Chicago. They carry 20,000 books that center marginalized voices, facilitating programming and in-kind donations to offer safe, inclusive spaces for the Windy City. They have ongoing partnerships with Chicago Books to Women in Prison, Liberation Library, and Chicago Abortion Fund. Favorite community events include Weekly Morning Storytime, Banned Books Book Club, and a regular array of visiting author events. They’ve even hosted Hot Potato Hearts, a speed dating event that pairs people randomly (some would say “adventurously”) regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Find your personalized reading list for talking to teens, abolishing ICE, or freeing Palestine.

BookWoman (Austin, TX) 

This historic institution is one of the oldest feminist bookstores in the United States. BookWoman was founded in 1975 and is celebrating 50 years of continued community outreach. Originally launched as a women’s collective (The Common Woman Bookstore), it focuses on feminist and LGBTQ+ literature with an emphasis on intersectionality. There are regularly scheduled readings, open mics, poetry evenings, and speakers. BookWoman creates a community space for learning, discussion, and activism. In 2026, this indie is often described as a safe haven and sanctuary bookstore in a red state.

The Nonbinarian Bookstore (Brooklyn, NY)

The Nonbinarian hot pink book bike can often be spotted throughout Brookly, distributing free books to readers in “book deserts” throughout the city. Part of the post-2020 explosion of queer indie bookstores in NYC, The Nonbinarian centers trans, enby, and queer voices with a focus on visibility and community-building. Established in 2022 as a mobile mutual-aid initiative, it has evolved into a queer social hub and community space in Crown Heights. The Nonbinarian is a trans, disabled, Asian-owned collective that is volunteer powered, exclusively queer, and carries new, used, and free books, as well as gifts, and resources. Upcoming events include: Quiet Queers (Silent!) Reading Hour, a T4T Clothing Swap, and bike pop-ups at the Brooklyn Public Library.

Always Here Bookstore (Portland, OR) 

This community-rooted, queer bookstore is a recent addition to the indie landscape. Thanks to community support, the pop-up recently moved into a physical storefront in Portland’s North Williams area and has been creating space for queer gathering. The indie features books with intersectional social justice themes and curates for a diverse readership, including queer and trans people, Latinx communities, and neurodivergent readers. Always Here Bookstore identifies as a living queer community, and they host community gatherings, queer book swaps, and member social hours. 

All She Wrote Books (Somerville, MA) 

Another newer addition, All She Wrote Books is an inclusive queer feminist bookstore that centers socially conscious nonfiction and fiction. Its mission as “an intersectional, inclusive feminist and queer bookstore” is to “support, celebrate, and amplify underrepresented voices through a thoughtfully curated selection of books spanning across all genres.” All She Wrote Books hosts queer-friendly book clubs and community gatherings, facilitates trans and nonbinary voices programming, and offers “Friends of Ruby” memberships for local readers. Upcoming events include a Bookworm Comedy Show, Gentle Yoga for Booklovers, and Queer Literary Speed Dating. After starting as a three-shelf Ikea cart, they’re now at their new brick-and-mortar location in Somerville! 

The post Queer Bookstores Across America to Support This Independent Bookstore Day appeared first on Electric Literature.

Whatever their effect, there’s no doubt that these in-between spaces make perfect breeding ground for stories. The term “mofussil,” used for places outside the major metropolitan cities in India, expresses the intricacies of these locations perfectly. These mofussil spaces can be small towns where everyone knows everyone’s business, where anonymity is impossible and the bonds of community are still strong. On the other hand, it can also refer to the tier-2and tier-3 cities—once smaller, they now sprawl in all directions, rapidly re-inventing themselves. None of these spaces are silent backgrounds. They are active presences that shape the lives and histories of their people, particularly in a country like India. Perhaps this is why stories set away from the major Indian cities are becoming popular with global audiences. The latest example of this subtle shift is the success of the film Homebound, which was on the shortlist for Best International Feature Film at the 2026 Oscars.

The following seven novels are set in these twilight places spread across the length and breadth of the country. Whether it’s the Himalayas looming in the background or the sea on the edge of the town, a place in the terai or a dusty town hard to find on the map—these places make for stories worth telling, sometimes acting as catalysts, sometimes as accomplices.

English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee

Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August is the story of Agastya Sen, who has been posted to Madna after joining the elite civil service. This hot, dusty town is far removed from Kolkata and Delhi, where Agastya has spent most of his life, and the contrast between his life so far and the life he is expected to lead in this outpost lies at the center of this darkly humorous novel. Chatterjee brings the quintessential small town of the ’80s to life through descriptions of slow-moving bureaucracy and the portrait of a place where cattle camp in the corridors of government offices and the walls of buildings are splotched “maroon with paan spittle.” As Agastya’s existential crisis intensifies, Madna refuses to stay in the background, gradually becoming the catalyst to his struggles and driving the novel towards its conclusion.

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

Kiran Desai’s novel moves between New York and Kalimpong, a small town in the Eastern Himalayan region, weaving the stories of multiple characters. There’s a retired, Cambridge-educated judge clinging to colonial ways; his granddaughter, Sai; and their cook’s son, Biju, an undocumented immigrant struggling in New York. The action unfolds during a tumultuous period in the region’s history as the Nepali-speaking majority demands its own state, turning the quiet, misty town into a “ghost town.” With the mighty Kanchenjunga looming over its treacherous terrain, a sharp class divide and political tensions on the rise, Kalimpong becomes an active presence shaping the trajectory of its characters’ lives.

The Small-Town Sea by Anees Salim

Set in an unnamed small town where the sea is a living, breathing presence, The Small-Town Sea is narrated by an unnamed 13-year-old boy. The boy has moved to this “small, depressing town” from a “big, overcrowded city” to fulfil the wish of his dying father. This mofussil town thus becomes the space where he must draw the map of his many griefs, including the life he has left behind. Written in sparse prose in the form of a letter addressed to a literary agent who had rejected his father’s manuscripts, The Small-Town Sea captures the claustrophobic feeling of growing up surrounded by the anxieties of childhood.

Lunatic in My Head by Anjum Hasan

Hasan’s Lunatic in My Head is set in ’90s Shillong and tells the story of three characters who live most of their lives in their heads. Eight-year-old Sophie Das, aspiring civil servant Aman Moondy, and college lecturer Firdaus Ansari are all “dkhars”—outsiders—whose identities become closely intertwined with their feelings for their city. Shillong, with its hilly terrain and rain-soaked streets where “pine trees dripped slow tears,” charms while also making the characters long to leave it all behind. That push-and-pull is at the heart of this novel in which nothing grand happens, nevertheless offering insight into a space that is irrevocably tangled with the lives of the people who inhabit it.

The Courtesan, Her Lover and I by Tarana Husain Khan

The Courtesan, Her Lover and I is set in Rampur and narrates the story of Rukmini, who returns to her hometown with her husband after a few years in Dubai. Unhappy with her teaching, she almost unwillingly begins researching the cultural history of Rampur, which leads her to the nineteenth century courtesan Munni Bai Hijab, a poet herself and muse of the famous Urdu poet Dagh Dehlvi. As we move in time, Rampur stays in the background as a powerful force. It’s a city in flux, a city where “the circle of life is transcribed within the mohallas,” but which is also turning into a “smart city” even as its men—however well-meaning—tend to define the trajectory of a woman’s ambition. This in-betweenness shapes the life of Rukmini, weaving Rampur closely into the stories of both women.

Alipura by Gyan Chaturvedi, translated by Salim Yusufji

Gyan Chaturvedi’s Alipura is set in the Hindi heartland of the late 1960s. The novel takes readers to a typical village to meet the Dube family, who are low on money but high on dreams and struggling to fulfill their ambitions, however small. Chaturvedi uses humor and satire to bring out the bleak realities of life in a small village riddled with casteism, corruption, outdated beliefs, and a deeply patriarchal mindset. Alipura is a place where women are supposed to stay away from cosmetics because they tend to bring “dishonour to the family” while masculinity and muscle-power go hand-in-hand. A site of colorful characters with bleak futures, Alipura defines as well as confines its characters. It is a place where dreamers thrive but dreams refuse to come true.

The Folded Earth by Anuradha Roy

Set in Ranikhet, a small town in the foothills of Northern Himalayas, The Folded Earth is the story of Maya, a young widow. She has come in search of sanctuary, and The Folded Earth shows a small town becoming a safe haven. At the same time, it reveals the fragility of such peace and tranquillity when faced with powerful local forces that thrive on conflict. Roy gives local color in descriptions of this charming town as well as through characters like the aristocratic Diwan Sahib and the young Charu—people who can only be found in India’s mofussils. Never in a hurry to reach its destination, The Folded Earth moves at a languid pace, capturing the feeling of strolling along winding, hilly roads of the town it describes.

The post 7 Novels That Let India’s Smaller Towns Shine appeared first on Electric Literature.

These formidable female brains aren’t a modern phenomenon. As a Shakespearean, I’ve studied how the teenage girls in his plays use their newly sharpened cognitive abilities to challenge the status quo and craft their own fates. Juliet Capulet is nearing “the change of fourteen years” when she imagines, orchestrates, and almost achieves her forever future with Romeo—against the tyrannical will of her father and Verona law. And while popular images of Ophelia cast her as a vulnerable, hysterical girl waiting for the perfect guy to save her, she actually spends most of Hamlet observing, remembering, and speaking out about the rotten Danish history that the corrupt court seems intent on forgetting.

My book, Monsters in the Archives, chronicles what I discovered when Stephen King granted me what Shakespeare couldn’t: unprecedented access to early drafts of his iconic works, with all of his handwritten margin notes and edits. In one of our conversations, I asked King about the changes I saw him making to an early, very inhuman version of Carrie. He told me why and how he rewrote her as “an All-American girl,” a bullied teenager that readers could root for on some level as she harnesses her mental powers to flip the script. What he (like Shakespeare) understood was that girls who use their brains aren’t pathological exceptions, but rather everyday agents of change that audiences and readers recognize.

The following seven stories feature girls who use their cognitive abilities to challenge social norms and imagine their own destinies. They don’t always succeed in the ways they hope—and, in one case, girl power threatens to destroy all of humanity, not just the prom—but they all turn their minds toward making better futures.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

McCullers’ novel, set in a 1930s mill town, tracks multiple interconnected characters over the course of one year; but it’s Mick Kelly’s heart and mind that power the story’s lonely hunt for meaning. Mick begins as a 12-year-old tomboy with dreams of becoming an inventor and famous musician; by the end, she’s almost 14 and leaving school to work at Woolworth’s so that she can help her struggling family. McCullers poignantly captures the disjunction between a pubescent girl’s rapid physical growth and the simultaneous restrictions society puts on her future. But she also describes Mick moving her big ideas to the “inside room” of her mind—they aren’t gone, they’re just more private. And in the end, Mick’s still connected to that earlier expressive dreamer: “Maybe it would be true about the piano,” she thinks, as she saves a few dollars each week toward buying one, “and turn out O.K.”

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

“Why is the measure of love loss?” This question drives Winterson’s memoir about growing up with an abusive adoptive mother, searching for her past, and making her future. The elder Winterson locks Jeannette outside in the winter and forbids all books except for the Bible. When she discovers that 14-year-old Jeanette is sleeping with her girlfriend, she has a Pentecostal minister force her daughter through three brutal (and unsuccessful) days of conversion therapy. Eventually, Jeanette saves herself by escaping into fiction. She works her way through every work of literature, A-Z, in her local library; and, after Mrs. Winterson evicts her at 16, gets herself into Oxford where she becomes a fiction writer. Here, she writes about how stories give words to those who have been silenced: “We get our language back through the language of others.” Fiction “isn’t a hiding place. It’s a finding place.”

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

Trisha isn’t a teenager (she’s “nine going on ten”), but she quickly starts thinking like one when she gets lost on the Appalachian Trail for nine days: During that time, she goes from being “the invisible girl” trying to glue the broken parts of her divorced family together to a self-reliant survivor. King focuses on Trisha’s mental gymnastics as she staves off the “no-brain roar of terror” with wilderness lessons she’s learned in science class and Little House on the Prairie. The only supernatural horrors are the ones she hallucinates, but she’s able to mute them with the intentional powers of her imagination: She conjures her favorite Red Sox player, pitcher Tim Gordon, to walk alongside her and offer advice on how to establish dominance over the opposing player. She channels the “ice water in his veins,” and his stance and decisive throw as she battles one last predator.

The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish

Published in 1666, Cavendish’s Blazing World is one of the first examples of science fiction. It begins when a young lady, kidnapped by a lecherous merchant, washes up on the shore of a strange new world after the crew freezes to death. The Emperor grants her absolute power, which she uses to create new, female-friendly laws and customs. She also summons her animal-human hybrid subjects to debate their observations of the natural world with her. Cavendish, the first woman granted a visit to the exclusive Royal Society (a scientific academy), was later mocked by member Samuel Pepys: “I did not hear her say any thing that was worth hearing.” No wonder she turned to utopian fiction to find her inner girl boss. “I have made a world of my own,” she tells her readers, “for which no body, I hope, will blame me, since it is in everyone’s power to do the like.”

Fat Ham by James Ijames

Ijames transports Shakespeare’s Hamlet to a southern backyard BBQ in his hilarious, Pulitzer Prize-winning play. He reimagines all of the young characters as queer and Black, including Opal/Ophelia (who loves girls and wants to run a shooting range), and Juicy/Hamlet. Opal speaks for them both when she says, “we on the verge of gaining our powers but there’s something that’s like holding us back.” She’s the one who imagines a different future for Juicy where he doesn’t have to become the hard, avenging killer his father’s ghost wants him to be, or feel badly about the “softness” that his stepfather relentlessly bullies him about: “What he thinks is your weakness gonna save you Juicy.” But Opal’s also looking out for herself. Rather than go mad or drown, she refuses to enable the tragic ending that Shakespeare first staged. In Fat Ham’s jubilant climax, she announces: “I ain’t dying for nobody.”

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

Ng imagines a not-too-distant American dystopia where children are taken from their parents to “protect” them from unpatriotic ideas—namely, challenges to the anti-Asian narrative the government has manufactured to justify its authoritarian takeover. The main character, Bird, hasn’t seen his Chinese-American mom for years: rather than risk her son being “re-placed,” she disappears. He’s almost forgotten her when he meets Sadie, a 13-year-old who’s been taken from her family and bounced between foster homes. She’s a fearless truth seeker, asking the teachers where all the missing books are and secretly researching the history of Bird’s mom. When she discovers that her parents have moved with no forwarding address, she runs away and gets herself to New York City, where she helps reunite Bird with his mother. By the end, she still hasn’t found her parents, but she won’t stop searching for them, or for “a way out of all this.”

The Power by Naomi Alderman

What would happen if girls had all the power? Naomi Alderman brings this thought experiment to life by imagining an alternate history of the world: Across the globe, adolescent girls suddenly develop the ability to shoot deadly electricity through their fingertips and to awaken it in the “skeins” of adult women. Initially, the results are exhilarating: females from Riyadh to Moldova remake the world by toppling tyrants and killing sex-traffickers. The novel’s teenage protagonists also use the Power to fight their male oppressors: Allie kills her sexually abusive foster father, and Roxy executes the man who killed her mother. But then Allie, like matriarchs around the world, starts rewriting scripture and law to justify oppressing males. It isn’t until Roxy’s skein is cut out and stolen that she realizes the corruptive effects of power on the mind, and the toll it takes on humanity, regardless of who wields it.

The post 7 Literary Characters Who Break the “Teen Girl” Trope appeared first on Electric Literature.