Books from United States

Asian American mothers are often reduced to a familiar stereotype: strict, demanding parents obsessed with their children’s academic success. In Not Tiger Moms, sociologist Miliann Kang challenges this narrow narrative, revealing how racism and xenophobia shape perceptions of Asian American motherhood. Drawing on candid interviews with mothers born or raised primarily in the United States, Kang explores the pressures they face as they navigate parenting, cultural identity, education, work, and belonging. Their stories reveal lives far more complex than the stereotypes allow, exposing the contradictions between being seen as a model minority and being treated as perpetual outsiders. Thoughtful and illuminating, this book reimagines motherhood beyond racial expectations and asks how society might better support mothers in all their diversity.

Caught between her Palestinian heritage, her queer identity, and an overwhelming hunger for love, an unnamed young woman struggles to find somewhere she truly belongs. When a painful breakup sends her spiralling, she enters an unconventional treatment centre for what is described as love addiction. Through fragmented memories spanning Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and the United States, she confronts her complicated relationship with her mother, the shame surrounding her sexuality, and the emotional wounds shaping her destructive romantic patterns. Intimate, provocative, and darkly funny, this novel explores the fine line between desire and obsession—and the difficult journey toward accepting yourself when you feel you are always too much for the world.

What does it mean to belong to a homeland you may never fully know? In this moving collection of essays, Palestinian-American writer Zaina Arafat explores the complexities of diaspora, inherited memory, and the longing for home. Moving between Nablus, Amman, the Appalachian Mountains, and Manhattan, she weaves together her family’s history, her experiences of identity and motherhood, and the pain of watching Palestine from afar. With tenderness, anger, and sharp insight, Arafat examines what it means to preserve a culture across generations while confronting displacement, erasure, and the shifting meaning of belonging. Our Arab is both an intimate family portrait and a powerful meditation on what it means to be Palestinian today.

Three years after a car accident kills his pregnant wife, Wolo is slowly learning to live with his grief. Then a letter arrives from Victoria, the woman responsible for her death, asking to meet him. Against the wishes of his family, Wolo agrees, opening the door to an encounter that challenges everything he believes about guilt, forgiveness, and healing. A moving novel about the complicated ways love survives loss—and whether compassion can exist alongside unbearable pain.

When sharp-tongued literary critic Selina Chan delivers a devastating review of novelist Parker Navarro’s work for the second time, their private animosity erupts into a viral public feud. But behind the headlines and cutting remarks, an unexpected connection begins to grow. A witty, slow-burn romance set in the world of books and publishing, Bad Words explores ambition, vulnerability, and the complicated relationship between art, criticism, and the people who create it.

In this powerful memoir, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil recounts his detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in March 2025 and the fight against his threatened deportation. A Columbia University graduate student and legal permanent resident, Khalil became a prominent voice in student protests against the war in Gaza. His arrest separated him from his pregnant wife and home in New York, transporting him to a detention facility in Louisiana, where he faced uncertainty about his future and the possibility of being forcibly removed from the country. Drawing on the diary he kept during his imprisonment, Khalil describes the psychological toll of detention, the precarious lives of fellow detainees, and the unexpected solidarity that develops among people deprived of their freedom. He also traces his family’s history of displacement—from Palestine to a refugee camp in Syria—and his own journey through Lebanon to the United States. Combining personal testimony with political reflection, this memoir examines exile, belonging, and the consequences of speaking out against injustice. It asks what freedom and security truly mean when a person’s right to remain at home can be challenged for exercising their right to protest.

The Radiance is a literary novel that explores spiritual awakening, personal identity, and the search for meaning in a fractured contemporary world. The story follows a writer whose life is transformed by a near-fatal hit-and-run accident on a country road. As he struggles to understand what happened, he experiences an unsettling spiritual awakening that blurs the boundary between revelation and madness. Drawn toward a brilliant colleague at a university, the narrator becomes entangled in an intense relationship and a scandal that threatens to destroy them both. As the investigation into his accident unfolds, buried family secrets emerge, forcing him to confront questions about memory, faith, desire, and his own understanding of reality. Moving between rural America and Europe, and exploring the intersections of Islam and Christianity, Akhtar examines the tensions between personal belief and public life. Blending psychological suspense with philosophical reflection, the novel asks whether moments of profound disruption can reveal something meaningful about existence, even when the truth remains uncertain.

In this darkly humorous and deeply personal memoir, Katya Suvorova recounts her childhood as an undocumented Russian immigrant in Houston, Texas, after her mother brought her to the United States in search of a better life. Arriving at just three years old, Katya grows up amid instability, poverty, and a succession of her mother’s husbands. Instead of experiencing a carefree childhood, she learns to navigate a world of uncertainty while taking on responsibilities far beyond her age, including caring for her younger sister. At seventeen, Katya discovers her mother’s advertisement in a mail-order bride catalogue from the 1990s, prompting her to reconsider her family’s history and the sacrifices behind their immigration. As she grows older, she confronts painful questions about motherhood, obligation, and whether a child’s future must be repayment for a parent’s sacrifices. Combining sharp humour with an unflinching account of family trauma, Suvorova explores immigration, generational conflict, and the complicated relationship between gratitude and personal freedom.

Until the Last Gun Is Silent examines the role of Black Americans in the Vietnam War and the movement to bring the conflict to an end. Historian Matthew F. Delmont traces the experiences of Black servicemen, veterans, activists, and peace protesters who confronted both the violence of war abroad and racial injustice at home. Their stories reveal the contradictions of fighting for democracy overseas while experiencing discrimination within the United States. The book also explores how Black communities challenged official narratives about military service, patriotism, and the purpose of the war. By connecting battlefield experiences with political activism and the struggle for civil rights, Delmont presents a broader account of the forces that helped end American involvement in Vietnam and reshape debates about citizenship, equality, and national responsibility.

In Happy Land, Dolen Perkins-Valdez uncovers a remarkable chapter of African American history through the story of a family whose identity is deeply rooted in the legacy of a forgotten kingdom. Nikki Berry has been estranged from her grandmother, Mother Rita, for years. When her grandmother unexpectedly summons her to the mountains of western North Carolina, Nikki hopes to understand the family conflict that has separated generations. Instead, she discovers a story that transforms her understanding of her ancestry: her great-great-great-grandmother, Luella, was the queen of the Kingdom of the Happy Land, a real community established by formerly enslaved people after the American Civil War. As Nikki learns more about the kingdom and the lives of those who built it, she discovers how her ancestors created a place of independence and belonging in a society that continued to deny Black Americans equality. But the family’s connection to the land faces a new threat when outside interests seek to take it away. Nikki must confront both the secrets that have shaped her family and the responsibility of protecting its inheritance. Moving between Nikki’s present-day struggles and Luella’s nineteenth-century experiences, Perkins-Valdez weaves together two generations of women whose lives are shaped by the pursuit of freedom, dignity, and self-determination. The novel explores the importance of ancestral memory, the lasting consequences of racial injustice, and the deep connection between land and identity. Inspired by the historical Kingdom of the Happy Land, the novel celebrates the courage of people who dared to imagine a different future and asks what it means to preserve a legacy for generations to come.

A disgraced English professor, separated from his wife and forced out of his job, visits an idyllic country house for sale, hoping to begin again. The realtor introduces him to the mysterious Helen, the former owner who built a life close to nature and outside conventional expectations. As the evening unfolds, the viewing becomes a surreal journey through the professor’s resentments, regrets, and carefully constructed sense of self. Philosophical, darkly humorous, and formally inventive, Helen of Nowhere questions the fantasies we build around happiness, freedom, and starting over—and what we must surrender to find a more meaningful life.

A brilliant Iranian-Indian American scholar has a PhD from UCLA, an underwhelming academic career, and a growing fear that she has failed to achieve the comfortable life her immigrant parents worked so hard to build. When her best friend jokingly suggests she marry rich, she takes the idea seriously, embarking on a summer of one hundred dates with wealthy Angelenos. Armed with spreadsheets and intellectual confidence, she approaches romance as another problem to solve. But when a family emergency takes her to Tehran, an unexpected queer attraction challenges her carefully constructed plans and forces her to reconsider what she wants from love, family, and her future. Witty, provocative, and deeply perceptive, Liquid explores the contradictions of ambition, the pressures of cultural expectations, and the search for belonging between different worlds. With sharp humour and emotional honesty, it turns the familiar romantic comedy into a thoughtful examination of identity, desire, and the lives we imagine for ourselves.