Alexis Isabel

chicana, queer, marxist, social worker in the making, student #voteforberniebabyyyy

We may earn commissions for purchases made via this page

Book Recommendations:

AI

Recommended by Alexis Isabel

Crying in H Mart is such a special book like truly one of my favorite things I’ve ever read in my entire life (from X)

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir book cover

by Michelle Zauner·You?

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American—“in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself” (NPR). • CELEBRATING OVER ONE YEAR ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

AI

Recommended by Alexis Isabel

I’m reading the book version of gone girl and even knowing the plot twist it is soooooooo good and unexpected and brilliant, wish I didn’t know the plot twist bc it probably would’ve hit even harder but it’s still probably my fav fiction book so far this year!! (from X)

Gone Girl book cover

by Gillian Flynn·You?

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “mercilessly entertaining” (Vanity Fair) instant classic “about the nature of identity and the terrible secrets that can survive and thrive in even the most intimate relationships” (Lev Grossman, Time “One of the Best Books of the Decade”) ONE OF TIME'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME, ONE OF CNN'S MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE, AND ONE OF ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S BEST BOOKS OF THE DECADE ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Janet Maslin, The New York Times, People, Entertainment Weekly, O: The Oprah Magazine, Slate, Kansas City Star, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer? ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: San Francisco Chronicle, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Chicago Tribune, HuffPost, Newsday

AI

Recommended by Alexis Isabel

4. They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie Jones-Rogers. A must read for all nonblack women, this book shows how yt women owned slaves and fought hard for their right to do so. They were not passive about slavery but brutal owners. https://t.co/syDlPbpptX (from X)

Winner of Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery 2020 Harriet Tubman Prize Winner of the Los Angeles Times 2019 Book Prize in History Winner of the Southern Association for Women's Historians 2020 Julia Cherry Spruill Prize for the best book in southern women's history Winner of the Southern Historical Association 2020 Charles S. Sydnor Award for the best book in southern history published in an odd-numbered year Winner of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic 2020 Best Book Prize Winner of the Organization of American Historians 2020 Merle Curti Social History Award for the best book in American social history "Compelling."--Renee Graham, Boston Globe "Stunning."--Rebecca Onion, Slate "Makes a vital contribution to our understanding of our past and present."--Parul Sehgal, New York Times Bridging women's history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave‑owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South's slave market. Because women typically inherited more slaves than land, enslaved people were often their primary source of wealth. Not only did white women often refuse to cede ownership of their slaves to their husbands, they employed management techniques that were as effective and brutal as those used by slave‑owning men. White women actively participated in the slave market, profited from it, and used it for economic and social empowerment. By examining the economically entangled lives of enslaved people and slave‑owning women, Jones-Rogers presents a narrative that forces us to rethink the economics and social conventions of slaveholding America.

AI

Recommended by Alexis Isabel

@dontkauf i’ve read it! great book, def worth a re-read (from X)

First published in Portuguese in 1968, Pedagogy of the Oppressed was translated and published in English in 1970. Paulo Freire's work has helped to empower countless people throughout the world and has taken on special urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is ongoing. This 50th anniversary edition includes an updated introduction by Donaldo Macedo, a new afterword by Ira Shor and interviews with Marina Aparicio Barberán, Noam Chomsky, Ramón Flecha, Gustavo Fischman, Ronald David Glass, Valerie Kinloch, Peter Mayo, Peter McLaren and Margo Okazawa-Rey to inspire a new generation of educators, students, and general readers for years to come.