three book recommendations

At the start of this year, I made a personal commitment to read more books. Unsurprisingly, I have been drawn to books in which characters are making sense of a fractured set of cultures they "belong" to. But do those cultures claim them or reject them, celebrate them or shame them? The characters struggle between fitting themselves into predefined cultural boxes versus weaving the threads of these cultures together into a unique identity personal to themselves. Along the way, sometimes they find third circles in themselves, in relationships (familial, platonic or romantic) or not at all. If you're looking for a few good reads, might I suggest:

All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir. A pair of Pakistani teenagers in America face loss and love and the desperate need for escape from self, home and community in order to transform into something greater than what even they believe they are capable of

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera. A recently out Puerto Rican American lesbian from New York City spends a summer exploring her emerging LGBTQ+ identity as well as her race, ethnicity, gender, and other things that she thought she knew

Wahala by Nikki May. The very different relationships that four biracial Nigerian women living in London have with their identities -- from exaggerated expression to code switching to suppression -- significantly impacts their friendships and romantic relationships

Featured Image: Photo by Seven Shooter on Unsplash