#OfWomenandSalt is a collection of stories spanning two family lineages, made up of women in various states of strength, and vulnerabilities, in Cuba, The U.S. and Mexico. It was really fascinating to be able to picture a time period in Cuba that I have much to learn about, in the 1800s, and how families that took different paths have dealt with life in general. There's also stories of the shitty immigration processes of this country we love to call "free."
Listening to Gabriela Garcia talk about her experiences traveling, being a daughter of immigrants, and working with immigrants, give that much more credibility to these beautiful stories.— Word Up collective - Emmanuel Abreu
Talia Hibbert never disappoints. She writes incredibly good stories featuring well developed (and diverse!) characters and satisfying happily ever afters. In Take a Hint, Dani Brown, book two in the Brown Sisters trilogy, a PhD student Dani Brown and university security guard and former rugby player Zafir Ansari become an internet sensation when Zaf rescues Dani in the midst of a fire drill and images of the rescue go viral. A fake relationship ensues and develops into something real. A prefect gift for the frazzled grad student in your life!
— Word Up - D'Lonra E.
[Word Up Founder Veronica Liu was one of three judges for the 2020 Kirkus Prize in Fiction, alongside Amy Reiter and Chang-rae Lee. Below is the judges statement.]
Raven Leilani's debut, LUSTER, takes off with a bang and never lets up, offering an exhilirating, propulsive literary roller-coaster ride rife with unpredictable twists and turns, dips and soars. With Edie—the unapologetically bold, badass young Black woman at the book's center—Leilani creates an unforgettable character whose agency is as seductive as the urgency with which her unusual story unfolds. The author tackles race and gender, sex, class and power with a knack for nuance, a generous spirit and a keen eye for revelatory details, bringing us an eye-opening novel that is candid and compassionate, dangerous and disarmingly orignial. Emotionally raw and virtuosically polished, LUSTER feels like both a story that will stand the test of time and the novel we need right now.
— Word Up Founder - Veronica L.
This is a book that will stay with me for a long time. I wasn't sure what to expect knowing that this is a book about domestic abuse within a lesbian relationship, but the author does a really great job of weaving her story so you can understand the context of their relationship without feeling like all you're getting is trauma. Same-sex domestic abuse often isn't talked about and the author addresses that and shows the humanity of queer women and lesbian relationships and that they aren't removed from the realities and problems of "typical" heterosexual relationships. The detail and descriptions the author gives felt visceral to me as a queer woman - I could relate to the sweetness of the moments they share together and feel the moments when it sours. As someone who doesn't usually like memoirs, I'll be recommending this book for a while!
— Word Up Volunteer - Claire B.
Written nearly entirely in verse, Zoboi and Salaam move in and out of the past, present, and future of young Amal's story: a young Black boy falsely convicted of a violent crime. While topically relevant with the concerns of the day, it is still such a poignant and unexpected read. It sometimes deals with important topics like the school-to-prison pipeline, mass incarceration and art as activism plainly, but the story brought to life with the incredible lyricism of the poetry. It is perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds, Elizabeth Acevedo, and Walter Dean Myers.
— Word Up Staff - Memphis W.
PAPI is one of the most creative books I've ever read. Told in the perspective of a little girl growing up with her dad, who happens to be a drug dealer who is loved, and chased, by everyone.
The way in which each chapter wraps your mind into a world that only a little girl could see, but everyone can feel, is so imaginable that I wish this were turned into an animated series asap. (What's up Netflix?) You're taken on a crazy adventure full of castles, and begging leeches, fancy cars, bug houses, too many clothes, and hiding from the ones who want a piece of Papi's riches.
Figuring out what lies beneath every chapter's story is maybe my favorite part of this book. It is the most unique way I've seen someone put into perspective a process of a child dealing with some pretty traumatic events in her life.
I would love to know people's thoughts if you've read this book, or if you've listened to any of the Artist's music!
— Word Up - Emannuel A.
I am in love with Ghetto Klown, John Leguizamo's graphic (in both senses) memoir of growing up, acting, and, gradually, learning how to create his own kind of theater. His artistic collaborators for this Eisner-nominated work, Crista Cassano and Shamus Beyale, do an amazing job of getting Leguizamo's kinetic persona across, and contribute their own share of visual comedy. If you love New York City, the art of the one-person show, crazy personal stories—or just have a soft spot for Johnny Legs—this is the book for you.
— Word Up Volunteer - Ellen L.
If you have a super silly kid who loves unusual rhymes, eye-expanding color, daring physical feats, strange animals, vicious competition, and sometimes "can't sleep [because they are] too excited and dancing in [their] bed all through the night," then get them this hilarious and participatory book by Adam Rubin, who paid a visit to Word Up earlier this year.
— Future Word Up Volunteer - Lester (Age 4)
Esta obra afectó profundamente mi perspectiva sobre el feminismo y la domesticidad. Bernarda Alba te recordará a tu abuela. Gran libro para practicar cómo leer y analizar la literatura española.
— Word Up AGC - Carolina V.
There is a novelistic weight to the complexity of the worlds Jamel Brinkley creates in each story in A Lucky Man. Whole stories can turn on a line—sometimes so subtle that its heft could nearly be missed—and in those lines, these sudden exposures of truth, the culmination of lies that one tells oneself to survive in the world are revealed. Even when you think you are just getting to the heart of some of these stories—while sitting on the bank of Quantico Creek, returning to the steps of Good Shepherd, or beating the shit out of a dog—you find, no, there’s more, and Jamel Brinkley is gonna go there and take us along, pools of lamplight and sun-sprinkled paths like coins lighting the way through the book. In each story, the stakes get so high, but Mr. Brinkley doesn’t shy away from meeting them, “peeling back” his characters’ histories, through “language to a hard core, like the spiked stones of peaches” the boys in “A Family” used to throw at stray dogs.
I honestly can’t remember the last time I read a contemporary short story collection so full with the weight of our city lives that also so brazenly delivered.
— Word Up Founder - Veronica L.
An exciting story of teenagers resisting an oppressive dystopian society that just happens to be the United States in the War on Terror. Full of practical tips on how to survive and resist in a surveillance society -- for example, check out the instructions on how to detect hidden spy cameras on page 85.
— Word Up Volunteer - Brian Z.
When grown-ups come in and ask for a book on social justice for their 3-year-old, this is what I tell them: that this book shares how even poetry giant Pablo Neruda—who wrote of the injustices of the world and felt their burdens so deeply—eventually had to learn about simple beauty in the world around us. And that it was okay for him to write and feel deeply about that too. No word is wasted in this children's book, with pictures that perfectly complement the spare words. And the papers on each of the book block are made of onion skin!
— Word Up Founder - Veronica L.
Una colección de crónicas tiernas, hermosas, feroces, que cuentan de amor, de tristeza, de la vida muy ordinaria y lo alucinante, que comentan tanto sobre el contenido de nuestros sueños como el imperialismo. Uno de los mejores libros que nunca he leído. Es de esos libros que te dejan con ganas de devorar sus páginas una y otra vez.
— Word Up Volunteer - Allison C.
This graphic memoir is a tale of a strange place - a summer camp in the American South unchanged since the author's grandmother was a girl - where the author is trying to do a (somewhat) strange thing: win a shooting badge. She also ends up falling in love. This story of rivalry, queer romance and lots and lots of bulls-eyes will stay with you for a long time.
— Word Up Volunteer - Ellen L.
While I expected to laugh, I really did not expect to *learn* as much as I did when reading Trevor Noah's take on South Africa, neighborhoods, people, whole systems and social structures. . . . Incredible storytelling with hilarious callbacks befitting of a seasoned comedian. The best paragraph I read all year was in this book.
— Word Up Founder - Veronica L.
This multi-prize-winning story of a young woman and her mentor deals, on the surface, with issues around racism and gentrification that are as relevant to our community as to the rapidly changing Portland, Oregon that Renée Watson depicts so intimately here. But it also transcends time and place, because it talks about the dynamic of giving and receiving. What does it mean when you are someone who people always want to help, but all you want is the chance to help someone else? This book will provide extra inspiration for someone who, like Jade, the protagonist, hopes for a career in the arts.
— Word Up Volunteer - Ellen L.
This book is the source for the 2019 Netflix mini-series, "The Family." Sharlet is an investigative journalist with first-hand experience in this secretive conservative Christian network of political power brokers. Reported in scrupulous detail, The Family will surprise and disturb you!
— Word Up Volunteer - Elizabeth C.
This book made me fall in love with reading because of its witty, surprise every page plot. If you're looking for a nerdy book about a kid overcoming his bullies (and simultaneously trying to take over the world) this is the one for you!
— Word Up Volunteer - Mason B.
If you wish Game of Thrones had more sex and violence and were real, try this book.
— Word Up Volunteer - Brian Z.
This outdoors adventure book about a kid who escapes his tame city/suburb life to live alone over winter on a wild mountain taught me so much: that it was ok to be alone for a while; that you can learn by failing then trying again; that you can tame through consistency; that you can learn things your parents don't know; that you are part of the natural world.
— Word Up Volunteer - Jeri
Nnedi Okorafor’s writing is as keen and unflinching as her novel’s eponymous protagonist, who bears the terrible weight of her post-apocalyptic world from infancy, yet takes on an epic quest to save it. The magic of Who Fears Death is as deeply rooted as its realism, the former in Okorafor’s ancestral Igbo spirituality, the latter in tragically contemporary cruelties and the timeless power of love to sustain and endure.
— Word Up Volunteer - Ann
The first in the Neopolitan Novels series, which, taken together, is one of the finest works of fiction of all time. Start here, strap in, and enjoy.
— Word Up Volunteer - Katy B.
You've never read historical fiction like this. Packed with verve, wit, and life, it beings a distant era thrillingly into focus through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell, an often-derided figure who becomes complicated and sympathetic under Mantel's gaze.
— Word Up Volunteer - Katy B.
The adventures of a gay couple living and embracing all the strangeness, sorrows, challenges, and joys of ancient Greek society. How could you not love a book that follows Alexias, a runner, as he falls in love as a young man with the 20s-ish Lysis, a wrestler, and student of Socrates, and lets you meet the whole crew, including Alcibiades, Plato, Critias, Xenophon, Crito and Socrates himself, as they all live through the Peloponnesian War, the fall of Athens first to the 30 Tyrants and then to the Spartans, famine, loss, horrific death, but also takes you with Alexias and Lysis to the Isthmian Games where they compete with athletes from all around Greece... it's hard to describe how much emotion and lived history is packed into this book. See ancient Greece from a very different perspective. Mary Renault's first book about ancient Greece, and I think possibly her best.
— Word Up Volunteer - Jeri
Virginia Woolf's first novel; I love this book because of the unexpected adventure of watching a young, enthusiastic and perceptive British woman take a voyage to South America with a bunch of interesting characters (including Clarissa Dalloway, who later would get her own novel). You meet the Americas as though for the first time, in all their wild beauty. And Virginia W's politics are straightforwardly anti-imperialist to boot (the novel was published in 1915, in the US in 1920!). This book *does* pull some punches -- supposedly critics told her to take some things out -- so, if you want more tart Woolfian political critique of colonialism, and homosexuality and women's suffrage, go look for the "reconstructed" 1912 early version of the novel, which was originally titled Melymbrosia, reassembled by Louise DeSalvo (Cleis Press 2002).
— Word Up Volunteer - Jeri
Heavy is devastating and incredible. In this memoir Kiese recalls his childhood in Mississippi, his complicated relationship with this mother, his loving relationship with his grandma, and his own relationship to his body. He traces the ways he’s been loved and hurt by the black women in his life, and how he’s loved and hurt them back. He grapples with what it means to tell the truth, when all we’d really like to hear is a lie.
— Word Up Volunteer - Allison C.
A seeking, and at times, uncomfortable exploration into the emotional haze that encompass youth who enter the foster care system. The narrator―Sequoyah―navigates the complexities that face children of color in child welfare, in a white world, and bearing the burden from the events leading up to their displacement.
— Word Up Volunteer - Robby K.
The first book in Ness’ trilogy is a relentlessly compelling science fiction adventure with astonishing thematic depth. Todd, a human colonist on an alien planet, is on the run from his town’s maniacal preacher--and soon learns his entire understanding of the world is riddled with lies. As Todd uncovers more of the truth, he becomes embroiled in unavoidable violent compromise. Each book is a cliffhanger, so consider getting them all at once!
— Word Up Volunteer - Becky F.
Read the beautifully written coming of age essay of Julia’s childhood. She was, is, and always be strong minded and she encourages you to be strong minded. It’s a story of love, having wisdom and being a Latina in the United States.
— Word Up Volunteer - Marisol C.
A really interesting take on the Filipino diaspora and its effect on a family and community in California. As someone who's tried to read a full breadth of Filipino-American fiction, this book takes on issues like queerness and rebellion (of family and society) in a way that felt particularly relevant to today. Would recommend!
— Word Up Volunteer - Clair B.
This is an amazing utopian novel offering intensely original (and sometimes even humorous) solutions to some of the most pressing problems we face: in particular, this book takes on capitalism, sexism, racism, homophobia, and urban planning, and imagines a future world in which we all choose our own names, have three self-aware and gender-varied "mothers," regularly communicate with animals (including our cranky cats), can take out the Mona Lisa on loan to hang in our room for a few weeks if we are willing to wait our turn, use a transit system based on bike-sharing, have grown up with a strong sense of our own self, and are socially mature, insightful, and self-directed in ways you never even thought about! Despite its imagining a future without New York City (!), I still love this Bible of What Might Be Possible If We Actually Fulfilled Our Human Potential. Not to mention its hero is a 37-year-old Chicana kick-ass mother and possible future science whiz, and that the book occasionally shifts into Spanish and back to English again. Ahead of its time in so many ways!
— Word Up Volunteer - Jerise F.
Each picture is detailed and trancing with each sentence capturing some part of the world it wants to develop. If you want a dark world to envelope you, than I think this is the graphic novel for you.
— Word Up Volunteer - Christian M.
One word description: Relatable. Unlike any other YA fiction book I’ve read, Sanchez was able to preserve the integrity of what it is to be a modern Mexican-American daughter. She covers topics like mental health to remind all that at the best and worst of times, we are still human. Best fiction I’ve read in years!
— Word Up Volunteer - Dulce M.
An Ivorian comic book about life in the big city of Abidjan. The story, loosely based on the author's childhood, follows ordinary girls and boys in Western Africa, far from the mass-media representations of political dramas and generalizations. We witness firsthand a multitude of endearing, well-drawn characters in their warm, animated neighborhood.
— Word Up Volunteer - Arthur
Alisha Rai is a master of emotionally rich romance novels. (You should also follow her on TikTok, if you’re into that kind of thing.). Girl Gone Viral is book two in her Modern Love series and follows Katrina King, a former model with a panic disorder, and her bodyguard Jasvinder Singh to Jas’s family peach farm where they flee to escape unwanted social media attention. Their attraction is deep, but both resist until they simply can’t anymore. A perfect gift for the romance reader and history buff in your life who wants to know more about the Punjabi farming community in Northern California!
— Word Up - D'Lonra E.
A grim magisterial masterpiece. The history of the last fifty years on planet Earth is strewn with repressive regimes propping up bad deals like Salvador Dalí elephants drooping over stilts. Surprise surprise, people die when they’re made to pay what they can’t afford for what they need. Economics isn’t rocket science, it’s a revolting horror movie, and Klein expertly catches still-wriggling monsters in the act of booglarizing the body politic. Best read through those plastic sheets they hand out at Gallagher concerts.
— Word Up Volunteer - Michael
The New York Trilogy takes you on a wild ride through a detective's world. Paul Auster to me is one of the greatest living writers; he's earned a loyal readership and continues to surprise and delight with each new publication. This is a classic that should be read by everyone, inspiring love for well-written, entertaining, and engrossing detective stories.
— Word Up Volunteer - Marisol C.
Saga is an astonishing story, a Romeo-and-Juliet-like epic in an exuberant universe mixing space opera, science fiction, and fantasy. It follows several colorful and diverse characters on opposing sides of a never-ending war. This graphic novel broaches some interesting and mature subjects, including outer space parenting, with intelligence and often off-the-wall humor. This edition, illustrated by Fiona Staples, is also very beautiful and would make for an excellent gift ;)
— Word Up Volunteer - Arthur
While Adichie is known as a controversial and celebrated public speaker, her writings deserve much greater attention and praise. This brief book channels a Riot Grrrl spirit, navigating difficult subjects and offering enlightening perspectives. The book began as an answer to a friend's seemingly simple question, "How do you raise a baby as a feminist?" and given Adichie's considerate and luminous response I would gladly pass this great read along to my future child, however that child identifies.
— Word Up Volunteer - Marisol C.
While Adichie is known as a controversial and celebrated public speaker, her writings deserve much greater attention and praise. This brief book channels a Riot Grrrl spirit, navigating difficult subjects and offering enlightening perspectives. The book began as an answer to a friend's seemingly simple question, "How do you raise a baby as a feminist?" and given Adichie's considerate and luminous response I would gladly pass this great read along to my future child, however that child identifies.
— Word Up Volunteer - Marisol C.
A really powerful graphic novel detailing the many kinds of violence women suffer physically and psychologically. The story mixes historical facts of life in Margaret Thatcher's England with the author's autobiographical recollections. It outlines the failures of modern society, from the brutality of policing to the hidden traumas of family life.
— Word Up Volunteer - Arthur
A book that's hard to put down—Victor LaValle takes us on a journey with the main character, Pepper, through a modern-day nightmare. We see the dark insides of a mental institution, meet the other patients locked up there, and go on our own adventure of self-discovery and reckoning. A novel that's haunting, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny. One of my all-time faves!
— Word Up Volunteer - Cynthia P.
This is an amazing utopian novel offering intensely original (and sometimes even humorous) solutions to some of the most pressing problems we face: in particular, this book takes on capitalism, sexism, racism, homophobia, and urban planning, and imagines a future world in which we all choose our own names, have three self-aware and gender-varied "mothers," regularly communicate with animals (including our cranky cats), can take out the Mona Lisa on loan to hang in our room for a few weeks if we are willing to wait our turn, use a transit system based on bike-sharing, have grown up with a strong sense of our own self, and are socially mature, insightful, and self-directed in ways you never even thought about! Despite its imagining a future without New York City (!), I still love this Bible of What Might Be Possible If We Actually Fulfilled Our Human Potential. Not to mention its hero is a 37-year-old Chicana kick-ass mother and possible future science whiz, and that the book occasionally shifts into Spanish and back to English again. Ahead of its time in so many ways!
— Word Up Volunteer - Jerise F.
A brave and brilliant young girl armed with a stolen techno-magical storybook charts a world-saving course through a near-future dystopia. One of Neal Stephenson’s most sharply faceted, finely wrought, and fully envisioned epic gems."
— Word Up Volunteer - Anne