Humiliation, forced feminization, forced homosexuality, castration, brainwashing, slavery, solitary confinement, despair I have been born into a prison, and my body is my prison. I was never allowed to be the real me, and this life is a mere transient state to which I could never call home, and all my life I have been waiting, waiting to escape, to return home, to a world that is mine. This entire existence is my prison. I cannot think. I cannot move. I must endure silently. I still remember the times I saw my mother being fucked by my step dad and I had to look away, in disgust, in horror, and in envy. Even though I turned away, I would jealously leer at them, fighting back tears of unfulfilled desire. How much I wish it was to me that my step dad would show the same affection. The sight of my mother being filled to the brim with his powerful white cock made me tingle, and, ever since I could remember, I resented my little asian peepee. I wished I was an Asian girl so I could be fucked by my white step dad too, but he simply refused to touch me. He would complement me on how feminine I was, how little I was, how much he loved the fact that asian boys are basically interchangeable with girls, and how often he jokingly referred to me as a girl, but he never actually treated me like the girl I am. He never loved me the way he loved mommy. I hated him. Yet I loved him and looked up to him, and even worshipped him. And as long as I can remember, I have always wished that I could find a white man just like my white step dad, but unlike my step dad, my white man will castrate me, keep me as a girl for the rest of my life. I want to be fucked in the same way my white step dad fucked my asian mother.

I have been born into a prison, and my body is my prison. I was never allowed to be the real me, and this life is a mere transient state to which I could never call home, and all my life I have been waiting, waiting to escape, to return home, to a world that is mine. This entire existence is my prison. I cannot think. I cannot move. I must endure silently. I still remember the times I saw my mother being fucked by my step dad and I had to look away, in disgust, in horror, and in envy. Even though I turned away, I would jealously leer at them, fighting back tears of unfulfilled desire. How much I wish it was to me that my step dad would show the same affection. The sight of my mother being filled to the brim with his powerful white cock made me tingle, and, ever since I could remember, I resented my little asian peepee. I wished I was an Asian girl so I could be fucked by my white step dad too, but he simply refused to touch me. He would complement me on how feminine I was, how little I was, how much he loved the fact that asian boys are basically interchangeable with girls, and how often he jokingly referred to me as a girl, but he never actually treated me like the girl I am. He never loved me the way he loved mommy. I hated him. Yet I loved him and looked up to him, and even worshipped him. And as long as I can remember, I have always wished that I could find a white man just like my white step dad, but unlike my step dad, my white man will castrate me, keep me as a girl for the rest of my life. I want to be fucked in the same way my white step dad fucked my asian mother.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

You're twelve years old. A month has passed since your Korean Air flight landed at lovely Newark Airport. Your fifteen-year-old sister is miserable. Your mother isn't exactly happy, either. You're seeing your father for the first time in five years, and although he's nice enough, he might be, well--how can you put this delicately?--a loser. You can't speak English, but that doesn't stop you from working at East Meets West, your father's gift shop in a strip mall, where everything is new. Welcome to the wonderful world of David Kim.

Alex, whose birthday it is, hijacks a story about Birthday Bunny on his special day and turns it into a battle between a supervillain and his enemies in the forest--who, in the original story, are simply planning a surprise party.

He lied about his age to enlist. Now he'll have to lie about everything else to survive! Survive the war. Outlast the enemy. Stay alive. That's what Henry Forrest has to do. When he lies about his age to join the Marines, Henry never imagines he'll face anything worse than his own father's cruelty. But his unit is shipped off to the Philippines, where the heat is unbearable, the conditions are brutal, and Henry's dreams of careless adventuring are completely dashed.Then the Japanese invade the islands, and US forces there surrender. As a prisoner of war, Henry faces one horror after another. Yet among his fellow captives, he finds kindness, respect, even brotherhood. A glimmer of light in the darkness. And he'll need to hold tight to the hope they offer if he wants to win the fight for his country, his freedom . . . and his life. Michael P. Spradlin's latest novel tenderly explores the harsh realities of the Bataan Death March and captivity on the Pacific front during World War II.

From Sigrid Nunez, the National Book Award-winning author of The Friend, comes A Feather on the Breath of God: a mesmerizing story about the tangled nature of relationships between parents and children, between language and love A young woman looks back to the world of her immigrant parents: a Chinese-Panamanian father and a German mother. Growing up in a housing project in the 1950s and 1960s, she escapes into dreams inspired both by her parents' stories and by her own reading and, for a time, into the otherworldly life of ballet. A yearning, homesick mother, a silent and withdrawn father, the ballet--these are the elements that shape the young woman's imagination and her sexuality.

An inspirational memoir chronicling the life of Joseph Kim, who not only survived and escaped the devastating famine in North Korea as an abandoned young boy, but made it to the United States and is now thriving in college here.

"Geisha of a Different Kind bravely engages with the struggles and triumphs of Asian American gay men as they inhabit American society and its gay mainstream. A lucid study with anunflinching focus on the daily contingencies of these men's lives, this book isan important contribution to the scholarly understanding of contemporary U.S.sex/gender systems and their fraught links to racial formations."--Martin F. Manalansan IV, author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora.

Renowned artist and architect Maya Lin's visual and verbal sketchbook—a unique view into her artwork and philosophy. Walking through this parklike area, the memorial appears as a rift in the earth -- a long, polished black stone wall, emerging from and receding into the earth. Approaching the memorial, the ground slopes gently downward, and the low walls emerging on either side, growing out of the earth, extend and converge at a point below and ahead. Walking into the grassy site contained by the walls of this memorial, we can barely make out the carved names upon the memorial's walls. These names, seemingly infinite in number, convey the sense of overwhelming numbers, while unifying these individuals into a whole.... So begins the competition entry submitted in 1981 by a Yale undergraduate for the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. -- subsequently called "as moving and awesome and popular a piece of memorial architecture as exists anywhere in the world." Its creator, Maya Lin, has been nothing less than world famous ever since. From the explicitly political to the un-ashamedly literary to the completely abstract, her simple and powerful sculpture -- the Rockefeller Foundation sculpture, the Southern Poverty Law Center Civil Rights Memorial, the Yale Women's Table, Wave Field -- her architecture, including The Museum for African Art and the Norton residence, and her protean design talents have defined her as one of the most gifted creative geniuses of the age. Boundaries is her first book: an eloquent visual/verbal sketchbook produced with the same inspiration and attention to detail as any of her other artworks. Like her environmental sculptures, it is a site, but one which exists at a remove so that it may comment on the personal and artistic elements that make up those works. In it, sketches, photographs, workbook entries, and original designs are held together by a deeply personal text. Boundaries is a powerful literary and visual statement by "a leading public artist" (Holland Carter). It is itself a unique work of art.