The Family Outing (nonfiction/memoir – hardbound) by Jessie Hempel
Jessi Hempel was raised in a picture-perfect, middle-class American family. But the truth was far from perfect. By the time Jessi reached adulthood, everyone in her family had come out: Jessi as gay, her sister as bisexual, her father as gay, her brother as transgender, and her mother as a survivor of a traumatic experience with a serial killer. Yet coming out was just the beginning, starting a chain reaction of other personal revelations and reckonings that caused each of them to question their place in the world in new and ultimately liberating ways.
In the Time of Our History (fiction- paperback) by Susanne Pari
Twelve months after her younger sister Anahita’s death, Mitra Jahani reluctantly returns to her parents’ home in suburban New Jersey to observe the Iranian custom of “The One Year.” Caught in the middle of the family is their mother, Shireen who is torn between her fierce love for her surviving daughter and her loyalty to her husband. The standout literary debut that everyone is talking about, In the Time of Our History is also laced with the richness of ancient and modern Persian culture and politics, in a tale that is both timeless and profoundly relevant.
A Short History of Queer Women (nonfiction humor/paperback) by Kirsty Loehr
Queer women have been written out of history since, well, forever. ‘But historians famously care about women!’, said no one. From Anne Bonny and Mary Read who sailed the seas together disguised as pirates, to US football captain Megan Rapinoe declaring ‘You can’t win a championship without gays on your team’, via countless literary salons and tuxedos, A Short History of Queer Women sets the record straight on women who have loved other women through the ages.
Upcoming Events
Tuesday, Jan. 17 @ 6:00 pm (Free-SF Public Library) – Amy Tan & Susan Pari – Women in Rebellion:Daughters of Immigrants on Defying the Double Bind
Longtime friends Susanne Pari and Amy Tan share how their fiction captures the many ways in which women raised by immigrants rebel against familial and societal norms. A discussion and Q&A with the audience will follow. After the presentation, Book Passage will host a signing for Susanne Pari’s novel In the Time of Our History and Amy Tan’s memoir, Where the Past Begins.
Saturday, Jan. 21 @ 3:00 pm (Free- SF Ferry Building) Myra Strober and Abby Davisson authors of Money and Love
MONEY & LOVE: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life’s Biggest Decisions is a guide for navigating life’s most consequential and daunting decisions using research-based insights road-tested in a popular Stanford University course. Should I move in with this person? Should I quit my job? When is the “right time” to have another child? All these life-altering questions at the juncture of money and love can be overwhelming. Often, we answer them either by staying overly rational or by only listening to our – at times fickle – hearts.
Thursday, Jan. 26 @ 5:00 pm (Ticketed Online Event) Paul Auster and Spencer Ostrander authors of Bloodbath Nation
The program includes an intimate and powerful rumination on American gun violence by Paul Auster, one of our greatest living writers and “genuine American original” (The Boston Globe), in an unforgettable collaboration with photographer Spencer Ostrande.
Like most American boys of his generation, Paul Auster grew up playing with toy six-shooters and mimicking the gun-slinging cowboys in B-Westerns. A skilled marksman by the age of ten, he also lived through the traumatic aftermath of the murder of his grandfather by his grandmother when his father was a child and knows, through firsthand experience, how families can be wrecked by a single act of gun violence. In this short, searing book, Auster traces centuries of America’s use and abuse of guns.
A portion of proceeds from this book will be donated to the Violence Policy Center, a nonprofit organization working to stop gun death and injury through research, education, and advocacy.
Top of Your Stack: Recommendations from Book Passage
Published on January 12, 2022
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