One of the Must-Read Books of 2019 According to O: The Oprah Magazine * Time * Bustle * Electric Literature * Publishers Weekly * The Millions * The Week * Good Housekeeping “There is more life packed on each page of Ordinary Girls than some lives hold in a lifetime.” —Julia Alvarez In this searing memoir, Jaquira Díaz writes fiercely and eloquently of her challenging girlhood and triumphant coming of age. While growing up in housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, Díaz found herself caught between extremes. As her family split apart and her mother battled schizophrenia, she was supported by the love of her friends. As she longed for a family and home, her life was upended by violence. As she celebrated her Puerto Rican culture, she couldn’t find support for her burgeoning sexual identity. From her own struggles with depression and sexual assault to Puerto Rico’s history of colonialism, every page of Ordinary Girls vibrates with music and lyricism. Díaz writes with raw and refreshing honesty, triumphantly mapping a way out of despair toward love and hope to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be. Reminiscent of Tara Westover’s Educated, Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club, and Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries, Jaquira Díaz’s memoir provides a vivid portrait of a life lived in (and beyond) the borders of Puerto Rico and its complicated history—and reads as electrically as a novel.

A New York Times Editors’ Choice and Best Book of the Year at TIME, Esquire, Amazon, Kirkus, and Electric Literature Jeannie Vanasco has had the same nightmare since she was a teenager. It is always about him: one of her closest high school friends, a boy named Mark. A boy who raped her. When her nightmares worsen, Jeannie decides—after fourteen years of silence—to reach out to Mark. He agrees to talk on the record and meet in person. Jeannie details her friendship with Mark before and after the assault, asking the brave and urgent question: Is it possible for a good person to commit a terrible act? Jeannie interviews Mark, exploring how rape has impacted his life as well as her own. Unflinching and courageous, Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl is part memoir, part true crime record, and part testament to the strength of female friendships—a recounting and reckoning that will inspire us to ask harder questions, push towards deeper understanding, and continue a necessary and long overdue conversation.

Friends and family, experts, and Mack herself had long downplayed her "son's" requests for pretty dresses and long hair as a phase. When three-year-old little “M” begs, weeping, to be reborn, Mack knows she has to start listening to her kid. This is an unflinching memoir of M’s coming out-- to her father, grandparents, classmates, and the world. Fearful of the prejudice that menaces M’s future, Mack finds her liberal values surprisingly challenged, and comes to realize it's really the world that has a lot to learn-- from her sparkly, spectacular M. -- adapted from back cover

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE Another masterpiece of remembering from Annie Ernaux, the Man Booker International Prize–shortlisted author of The Years. In A Girl’s Story, Annie Ernaux revisits the season 50 years earlier when she found herself overpowered by another’s will and desire. In the summer of 1958, 18-year-old Ernaux submits her will to a man’s, and then he moves on, leaving her without a “master,” bereft. Now, 50 years later, she realizes she can obliterate the intervening years and return to consider this young woman that she wanted to forget completely. And to discover that here, submerged in shame, humiliation, and betrayal, but also in self-discovery and self-reliance, lies the origin of her writing life.

"Country Girl is Edna O'Brien's exquisite account of her dashing, barrier-busting, up-and-down life."-National Public Radio When Edna O'Brien's first novel, The Country Girls, was published in 1960, it so scandalized the O'Briens' local parish that the book was burned by its priest. O'Brien was undeterred and has since created a body of work that bears comparison with the best writing of the twentieth century. Country Girl brings us face-to-face with a life of high drama and contemplation. Starting with O'Brien's birth in a grand but deteriorating house in Ireland, her story moves through convent school to elopement, divorce, single-motherhood, the wild parties of the '60s in London, and encounters with Hollywood giants, pop stars, and literary titans. There is love and unrequited love, and the glamour of trips to America as a celebrated writer and the guest of Jackie Onassis and Hillary Clinton. Country Girl is a rich and heady accounting of the events, people, emotions, and landscape that have imprinted upon and enhanced one lifetime.

"Powerfully raw, deeply moving, and utterly authentic. Rachel Lloyd has turned a personal atrocity into triumph and is nothing less than a true hero.... Never again will you look at young girls on the street as one of 'those' women—you will only see little girls that are girls just like us." —Demi Moore, actress and activist With the power and verity of First They Killed My Father and A Long Way Gone, Rachel Lloyd’s riveting survivor story is the true tale of her hard-won escape from the commercial sex industry and her bold founding of GEMS, New York City’s Girls Education and Mentoring Service, to help countless other young girls escape "the life." Lloyd’s unflinchingly honest memoir is a powerful and unforgettable story of inhuman abuse, enduring hope, and the promise of redemption.

If you are looking to learn more about perspective then this is the book for you. It shows the point of view of life through a young girl. A lot of people do not like to hear the truth so she decides to tell it anyway. You may begin to question yourself the further you get into the story. Some things may even sound familiar or seem relatable. Being both sympathetic and an empath is a gift and a curse and you will learn more about that. The truth did not set her free but it did give her a reason to write. The purpose of this story is to help others understand the perspective and how different it is for each and every individual.

A poignant narrative of one mom’s journey to support her transgender daughter—showing how any parent can forge a deeper bond with their child by truly listening Mama, something went wrong in your tummy. And it made me come out as a boy instead of a girl. When Marlo Mack’s three-year-old utters these words, her world splits wide open. Friends and family, experts, and Marlo herself had long downplayed her “son’s” requests for pretty dresses and long hair as experimentation—as a phase—but that time is over. When little “M” begs, weeping, to be reborn, Marlo knows she has to start listening to her kid. How to Be a Girl is Mack’s unflinching memoir of M’s coming out—to her father, grandparents, classmates, and the world. Fearful of the prejudice that menaces M’s future, Mack finds her liberal values surprisingly challenged: Why can’t M just be a boy who wears skirts and loves fairies? But M doesn’t give up: She’s a girl! As mother and daughter teach one another How to Be a Girl, Mack realizes it’s really the world that has a lot to learn—from her sparkly, spectacular M.

Set against the backdrop of Japan's seizure of China's entire northeast, Eastern Starlight, a British Girl's Memoir of China in the 1930s is the second of a trilogy by Jean Elder, born in Hwangkutun village near Mukden, Fengtien Province, Manchuria, in 1912, year of the fall of the last Manchu Dynasty. The story continues as Jean and her mother survive the fearsome night assault on Mukden by the Imperial Japanese Army in September 1931, but are forced by the invaders to leave Manchuria. Jean accepts her brother Jim's offer to settle in Peking, intellectual crossroads and cultural oasis of the Orient, safe from China's expanding civil war and continuing clashes with the Japanese in Jehol. We meet her charismatic friends in L'Hotel de Pekin--Italian Count Galeazzo Ciano and his wife, Edda, daughter of Mussolini; Julius Barr, famed American aviator; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; William Henry Donald, referred to by historians as Donald of China; and the acclaimed March of Time photographer "Newsreel" Wong--and become a part of her intriguing social life with them. Chang Hsiao Liang (the Young Marshal), close to Jean and the Elder family, must take a self-imposed year-long exile from China to save face, after which he will be forgiven for the loss of Manchuria. Jim departs with the Marshal for Europe, and during her own leave of absence, Jean shares with us her straight-from-the-heart impressions of America during the Depression and her fascinating life at sea aboard the great liners of the era including Olympic, sister ship of the Titanic. She must defy cannon-firing brigands and snipers along the Yangtze River in order to reunite with Jim in Hupei Province, where the Marshal has reestablished command of his troops. Jean provides an unvarnished insight into the "anything goes" world of China in the 1930s including her harrowing escape in the dark from a pirate vessel while aboard a passenger steamer in the Yellow Sea. In Hankow, she is a frequent guest of the US Navy aboard USS Luzon (PR-7) and USS Tutuila (PR-4) during the swashbuckling days of inshore gunboat diplomacy in scenes much like those portrayed in the movie, Sand Pebbles. After a whirlwind courtship, she marries the love of her life, US Vice Consul Reginald Mitchell. This is the story of a British girl who grew up in China in the hands of an Amah with the good fortune of gaining dual perspectives of life, Chinese and Western, forever loyal to family and friends, compassionate toward others, true to her values, and humble as a person.

Set against the backdrop of Europe with World War II imminent, Eastern Starlight, a British Girl's Memoir as the Wartime Wife of a U.S. Diplomat, is the third book of a trilogy by Jean Elder, the first two of which are about her China years. We join Jean and her husband, US Vice Consul Reginald Mitchell, as the newlywed couple depart Shanghai for their first post together, Warsaw, Poland, an armed camp surrounded by enemy superpowers and a haven for spies. Jean draws us into the fascinating but fiercely demanding Foreign Service world of international relations face-to-face diplomacy in a lifestyle that few of her peers would ever know at age 23. She shares with us her experiences engaging with Ambassadors and Ministers and their wives and Papal Emissaries at grand diplomatic soirees and equally important, as a diplomatic hostess having to plan and manage teas and tiffins and dinner parties at home. Protocol is a carryover from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and rules about formal attire, such as all but swords and medals (ABSAM) and stringent social etiquette, are followed to the letter. Posted to Dublin, Irish Free State, Jean, becomes friends with Sinead O'Flanagan, wife of IFS President Eamon de Valera, who opposes Britain and intends to keep Ireland neutral in any future war with Nazi Germany. Returning "home side", Reg is assigned the newly created position of State Department Press Spokesman and White House Press Liaison. Through Jean's eyes, we have a colorful close-up view of pre-war Washington, a city of lovely parks, Christmas lights along bustling downtown sidewalks, Beaux Arts theaters, and large department stores. Assigned to our Legation in Port-au-Prince following Pearl Harbor, the respect accorded her by Haiti's mercurial President, Elie Lescot, is invaluable in gaining access to medical attention when Malaria strikes her family. Based on her riveting wartime diary, Jean brings to life for the first time her incredible journey as a mother with two young sons aboard a Liberty ship in an armed convoy having to survive multiple German air attacks at night in the Mediterranean to join her husband at the US Consulate, Port Sa'id, Egypt in 1944. Eastern Starlight is about a remarkable woman of her era, not only because of the life she led, but the kind of person she was-----her moral character and compassion, loyalty to family and friends, willingness to put others above herself, acceptance of people of all walks of life, and courage when in peril. This is a compelling story that will resonate with readers of all ages.