San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
New works to energize your spring reading
Spring is positively stacked with new releases tied to the Bay Area, with a wide range of books set in the region or authored by locals. A strong batch of nonfiction leads the pack, along with exciting new poetry collections and writing that embraces physicality and the outdoors, just in time for the changing season.
Nonfiction
The Translator’s Daughter
By Grace Loh Prasad (Mad Creek Books/Ohio State University Press, March 5)
The product of two decades of work, this moving memoir by Bay Area writer Grace Loh Prasad explores a life lived in-between: split by family migrations from Taiwan to the United States and back again, divided by languages and bonds lost and found.
Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History
By Margaret Juhae Lee (Melville House, March 5)
Oakland author and journalist Margaret Juhae Lee tracks down the fascinating history of her grandfather, a student revolutionary in Korea who was honored as a hero decades after his death, forging a new understanding of her own identity and her grandmother’s life.
Tough Broad: From Boogie Boarding to Wing Walking — How Outdoor Adventure Improves Our Lives as We Age
By Caroline Paul (Bloomsbury, March 5)
Combining research, science
and her own experience, bestselling San Francisco author Caroline Paul makes a case for why women should keep adventuring outdoors through their 50s, 60s and beyond.
The Manicurist’s Daughter
By Susan Lieu (Celadon Books, March 12)
When Susan Lieu was 11, her mother, a refugee from Vietnam who’d found success in California, died from a botched cosmetic procedure. Now, the author, who grew up in the Bay Area, adapts her one-woman show “140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother” for the page in this memoir of searching for answers through grief.
Wild Life: Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World
By Rae Wynn-Grant (Get
Lifted Books/Zando, April 2)
In her memoir, wildlife ecologist and National Geographic Explorer Rae WynnGrant charts her path as a Black girl who grew up in the Bay Area and became a renowned scientist. Along the way, she connects the dots between humans, animals and the world we all share.
Chipped: Writing from a Skateboarder’s Lens
By José Vadi (Soft Skull, April 16)
Oakland and San Francisco loom large in José Vadi’s skateboarding memoir-in-essays, which Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Hua Hsu calls “a treasure” that details “public space and private rebellion.” Together, these pieces examine how skateboarding has influenced culture,
power and art.
Did I Ever Tell You? By Genevieve Kingston (Marysue Rucci Books, April 16)
In her debut memoir, UC Berkeley alum Genevieve Kingston expands on her Modern Love essay about a series of gifts that her late mother left behind in anticipation of birthdays and milestones that she’d never witness.
The Whole Staggering Mystery: A Story of Fathers Lost and Found
By Sylvia Brownrigg (Counterpoint, April 23)
A legacy of absent fathers haunts Berkeley author Sylvia Brownrigg, who traces the offthe-grid story of her father in Northern California as well as her grandfather’s far-flung, colorful life in
this probing memoir.
Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire
Edited by Alice Wong (Vintage, April 30)
San Francisco disabled activist, media maker and research consultant Alice Wong brings together a range of voices on how sexual liberation intersects with disability justice. Poetry, images and erotica collide in this joyful, groundbreaking anthology.
Another Word for Love
By Carvell Wallace (MCD x FSG, May 14)
Loss, God and return become organizing principles in this tender memoir by Oakland writer and podcaster Carvell Wallace. The prose reveals the power of flash nonfiction to encompass subjects including coming-of-age, race, career and history.
Poetry
The Palace of Forty Pillars: Poems
By Armen Davoudian (Tin House, March 19)
Berkeley poet Armen Davoudian names his debut collection after a landmark in his birthplace of Isfahan, Iran. Dual identities and reflections emerge as a theme in these poems about migration, queerness and finding the meaning of home.
You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World Edited by
Books continues on G25