We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

There is so much going on in this short novel that was long-listed for the International Booker Prize in 2026. The Argentinian author has written a tale that is based on a true story and contains a healthy amount of magical realism that is a good if somewhat disorienting at times read. The book reconstructs the wild, surreal life of Antonio de Erauso, a 17th-century Basque nun who escaped the convent, lived as a man, and became a soldier, conquistador, and outlaw. It opens as Antonio, hiding deep in the rainforest of the New World, writes letters to his aunt, the prioress of the Basque convent he once escaped. Having rescued two young Guaraní girls from enslavement and facing pursuit from the colonial army he deserted, Antonio reflects on his monumental metamorphosis. The setting sharply contrasts the stagnant, rigid conventions of the Spanish Empire with the vibrant, magical "seething" life of the South American jungle. All told, it is a queer positive satire and a powerful subversion of Latin American history as told by Spain. It serves as an understated critique of colonialism, religious tyranny, and the brutal subjugation of Indigenous people. As an example, Antonio goes to Potosí, where historical estimates suggest that up to 8 million indigenous people and enslaved Africans died working in the mines there in Bolivia during the colonial era but that horror is understated at best in this recounting.

The True True Story of Raja the Gullible by Rabih Alameddine

I picked up this book because it won the National Book Award and interestingly was not listed by the New York Times in their hundred notable books for 2025. I have read one book by this author previously and I have to say upon reflection this book is nothing like that one and yet it they are both equally enjoyable. It takes place in a tiny Beirut apartment, where sixty-three-year-old Raja and his mother live side by side. He is both a beloved high school philosophy teacher and "the neighborhood homosexual", his words. Raja relishes books, meditative walks, order, and solitude. Zalfa, his octogenarian mother, views her son's desire for privacy as a personal affront. She demands to know every detail of Raja's work life and love life, boundaries be damned. Mother and son are both equally irritating as well as entertaining. When Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing couldn't be better. It arrives on the heels of a series of personal and national disasters that have left Raja longing for peace and quiet away from his mother and the heartache of Lebanon. But what at first seems a stroke of good fortune soon leads Raja to recount and relive the very disasters and past betrayals he wishes to forget. With little left unsaid between the sharp-tongued mother and her self-aware son, humor and poignance bring their challenges — close living quarters, difficult family members, financial turmoil, and wartime trauma — into bittersweet perspective. In summary this is a vivid story set in Beirut over six decades, that juxtaposes life changing moments from a gay man’s coming of age with the upheaval of a city in perpetual strife.

Things In Nature Merely Grow by YiYun Li

Even when compared to other memoirs that cover the landscape of a personal response to tragedy, this is a standout. I have been a mental health professional for 40 years and I have heard a lot of tragic stories. This stands alone. Her experience is so particularly moving and painful that I would say she really opens her broken heart very wide-- she writes about the suicide of her 19-year-old son, James, in 2024 after having healed --- to an extent --- from the death of her 16-year-old son, Vincent, who did the same in 2017. It’s devastating yet so practical, humbling and numbing that it will take readers down many paths of their own and keep this book on their shelves as a message for grief in all shapes and sizes. Reading through her understated and clear eyed way of living with her pain will help you stop in your tracks and try to face the next time anyone you love upsets you with gratitude. To see them is to have another chance to appreciate them, something she no longer can do. It is a reminder to live each day fully and to try to find beauty even where it might be deeply hidden.

Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ

I took this out of the library because I was looking for a travel memoir about Taiwan. My spouse and I are in the early stages of planning a vacation there, and thought this would be perfect--but in fact it is not so much a travelogue as a work of fiction that is set in Taiwan, to be sure, and there is a fair amount of travel and food described, but it is not a memoir. It did, however, win the National Book Award for translated fiction, and was interesting, set in the 50 years when Taiwan was part of Japan. Here is the story: Aoyama Chizuko is a young Japanese writer whose book has been adapted for film and has therefore become relatively successful. She is invited to run a sort of lecture tour, introducing the film for schools and associations throughout Taiwan, known as the Island during Japanese expansionist times, while Japan is referred to as the Mainland. She also has to write some articles about her travels throughout Taiwan, although she does her best not to get coopted into the glorification of Japan’s Southern Expansion policy. She has a reputation as a bit of a glutton, and she soon wants to explore all the sights, smells and tastes that the colourful Island has to offer. After initially being escorted by the rather stiff government official Mishima, she is assigned an interpreter, a former schoolteacher, whom she soon befriends and addresses as Chi-chan. Chi-chan has no qualms about travelling around the island and introducing Chizuko to all the delicacies of the local cuisine, as well as some of the culture and history of Taiwan. And so it goes, each chapter covering a dish and a bit of history of the island.

Black Moses by Caleb Gayle

This was recommended by Jacqueline Woodson, author of Brown Girl Dreaming, and of course also by the National Book Award as well. It is about Edward Preston McCabe, who was born free to free parents, and who appears to be a classic success story of the Reconstruction period. In 1878, after stints as a clerk in New York and Chicago, he arrived at the forlorn town of Nicodemus, Kansas, and took over the local government. He enticed more settlers and helped to foster the town’s increasing prosperity. After two terms as state auditor, McCabe then lit out for the Oklahoma Territory, where he co-founded the town of Langston, played a prominent role in the founding of Langston University and served as the territory’s assistant auditor. In 1890, he met President Benjamin Harrison in the White House, where he angled for an appointment as territorial governor. But McCabe was a Black man in Jim Crow America, and while he appeared to have a lot of things going for him, the reach of his dreams of a place for black Americans to be in charge, to command their own fate, became too great a liability for white Americans. Racism shaped the contours of his ambition, and then it crushed him. The retelling of his life is one way for him to live on, which makes it extra important to read and know about.