Bookshop Santa Cruz staff recommendation:

Moraga is one of the most powerful voices of Xicana feminism. In this biography of her mother Elvira, she grapples with the struggles and erasure of women (especially of indigenous women) in the Mexican diaspora. Elvira is the strong, difficult backbone in Moraga’s life journey from the mixed-race Los Angeles household of her childhood to the hard-won “queer familia” of her present. A beautiful reclamation of language, memory, and culture. - Clara

While working in a large hospital in Philadelphia, Dr. Virji realized that due to the number of his patients he was assigned, he was practicing “turnstyle” medicine. Upon hearing of a shortage of doctors in rural communities, he and his family moved to a town of 1400 people in Minnesota, where he opened a clinic. After a few years, he was finally practicing personable medicine in a community that seemed warm and welcoming. Then the 2016 elections hit. Virji, a devout Muslim, woke to find a swastika on his sidewalk. The atmosphere in the town seemed to shift overnight and things got dangerous and intense. At the verge of leaving entirely, a town meeting was called and Virji found himself in the burdened position of having to educate and explain his religion to a less-than-open crowd. Love Thy Neighbor offers a view of the bravery that is required and the shifts that can take place when compassion and faith are used to combat fear. - S.M.C.

When Michele Filgate, the editor of What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About, wrote an essay about her stepfather’s abuse, she revealed the fracture that the abuse caused between her mother and her. The essay went viral and Filgate realized that there was much to be learned about what happens in the intimate bond between mother and child when things go unsaid. Filgate gathered 15 writers to explore the topic. Some of the essays are hilarious; others heartbreaking; but there is such strength and resilience in this collection. I kept recalling Leonard Cohen’s line, “There is a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.” - S.M.C.

This is the kind of science fiction that invites you to flex your imagination and think in creative swoops you weren’t yet capable of. Chiang isn’t tied down by genre. These stories swing from a Scheherazade-style storytelling to Asimov-esque self-reflective automata to Silicon Valley relationship turmoil. I don’t know if Chiang has answers about free will or the order of the universe, but these stories—no matter how wild or mundane—bring us closer to understanding our own existence. - Clara