Reader's Place: May 2026
Welcome to spring! May includes Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, Haitian Heritage Month, and Jewish American Heritage Month, and our Reader’s Place list for May celebrates all three. Enjoy!
This Is Not About Us, by Allegra Goodman (Catalog)
When their beloved sister passes away, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein are unmoored. A misunderstanding about apple cake turns into a decade of stubborn silence. Busy with their own lives—divorces, dating, career setbacks, college applications, bat mitzvahs and ballet recitals—their children do not want to get involved. As for their grandchildren? Impossible.
With “This Is Not About Us,” master storyteller Allegra Goodman—whose prior collection was heralded as “one of the most astute and engaging books about American family life” (The Boston Globe)—returns to the form and subject that endeared her to legions of readers. Sharply observed and laced with humor, “This Is Not About Us” is a story of growing up and growing old, the weight of parental expectations, and the complex connection between sisters—a big-hearted book about the love that binds a family across generations.
The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe, by Marlene L. Daut (Catalog)
Slave, revolutionary, traitor, king, and suicide, Henry Christophe was, in his time, popular and famous the world over. Born to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, Christophe first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, to gain their freedom from France. Yet in an incredible twist of fate, Christophe ended up fighting with Napoleon's forces against the very enslaved men and women he had once fought alongside. Later, reuniting with those he had betrayed, he offered to lead them and made himself their king. But it all came to a sudden and tragic end when Christophe--after nine years of his rule as King Henry I--shot himself in the heart, some say with a silver bullet.
“The First and Last King of Haiti” is a riveting story of not only geopolitical clashes on a grand scale but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval.
Indian Country, by Shobha Rao (Catalog)
In this fearless novel from the award-winning author of “Girls Burn Brighter,” a couple from India—so different from generations of white colonialists who came before them—move to Montana, only to discover how brutal and unforgiving hubris can be. A bold, ambitious, stunningly beautiful yet brutal novel about colonialism and the rippling ramifications still felt today, “Indian Country” is a tour de force modern-day classic.
Under the Eye of the Big Bird, by Hiromi Kawakami (Catalog)
From one of Japan's most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists, this speculative fiction masterpiece envisions an Earth where humans are nearing extinction, and rewrites our understanding of reproduction, ecology, evolution, artificial intelligence, communal life, creation, love, and the future of humanity.
In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of "Mothers." Some children are made in factories, from cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and light, like plants. The survival of the race depends on the interbreeding of these and other alien beings--but it is far from certain that connection, love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering new world.
Unfolding over fourteen interconnected episodes spanning geological eons, at once technical and pastoral, mournful and utopic, “Under the Eye of the Big Bird” presents an astonishing vision of the end of our species as we know it.
Everything Inside: Stories, by Edwidge Danticat (Catalog, Hoopla)
Rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity, set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, Everything Inside is at once wide in scope and intimate, as it explores the forces that pull us together, or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant.
In these eight powerful, emotionally absorbing stories, a romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends; a marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences; a young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival; two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives; a baby's christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new; a man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life he is about to lose.
The Lotus Shoes, by Jane Yang (Catalog, Hoopla)
As a child, Little Flower is sold to Linjing's wealthy family to become a muizai. In a fit of childish jealousy over her new handmaiden's ladylike bound feet and talent for embroidery, Linjing ensures Little Flower can never leave her to ascend in society.
Despite their starkly different places in the Fong household, over the years the two girls must work together to secure both their futures through Linjing's marriage. As the two grow up, they are by turns bitter rivals and tentative friends.
Until scandal strikes the family, and Linjing and Little Flower's lives are unexpectedly thrown into chaos. Linjing's fall from grace could be an opportunity for Little Flower - but will their intertwined fates lead to triumph, or tragedy for them both?
As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us, by Sarah Hurwitz (Catalog, Hoopla)
An urgent exploration of how antisemitism has shaped Jewish identity and how Jews can reclaim Judaism on their own terms, by the celebrated White House speechwriter and author of the critically acclaimed “Here All Along.”
Good People, by Patmeena Sabit (Catalog)
The Sharaf family is the picture of success. Successful, rich, happy. They came to this country as refugees with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. And now, after years of hard work, they live in the most exclusive neighborhood, their growing family attending the most prestigious schools. Zorah, the eldest daughter, is the apple of her father’s eye.
When an unthinkable tragedy strikes, everyone is left reeling and the family is thrust into the court of public opinion. There is talk that behind closed doors the Sharafs’ happy household was anything but. Did the Sharaf family achieve the American dream? Or was the image of the model immigrant family just a façade?
Like a literary game of ping-pong, “Good People” compels the reader to reconsider what might have happened even on the previous page. Told through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, it is a riveting, provocative, and haunting story of family—sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, and the communities that claim us as family in difficult times.
Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself, and China, by Jung Chang (Catalog)
The magnificent follow-up to “Wild Swans,” the multimillion copy, internationally bestselling sensation that traces the history of modern China through the true stories of three generations of courageous women in one family.
“At the age of fifteen my mother became the concubine of a warlord general . . .” So begins Jung Chang’s epic family memoir, “Wild Swans,” which defines a generation. The book ends in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping opened the door of Communist China, and Jung—twenty-six years old and unstoppably curious, despite years of brainwashing— seized the propitious moment and became one of the first Chinese to leave the tightly sealed country and come to the West. “Fly, Wild Swans” chronicles her journey and that of her family, along with that of China, as it rose from a decrepit and isolated state to a world power challenging American dominance.
“Fly, Wild Swans” is Jung’s love letter and emotional tribute to her extraordinary mother. Profoundly moving, it is filled with drama, love, curiosity and incredible history—both personal and global. Told in Jung’s clear, honest and compelling voice, it is memoir writing at its best.
Compiled by Louis Muñoz Jr.