May-lee Chai's Reading List

"The Last Fire Season tells a critically important story about climate change, land cultivation, and the fires that broke out in northern California in 2020. Manjula Martin writes about science and history in an accessible and engaging manner, and because she lived through these fires, she makes the story of their impact extremely vivid. Yes, she also weaves in her personal story of disability, showing the interconnectedness of our bodies and ecosystems."

"In Little Seed , Wei Tchou is telling a novelistic personal story of trans-generational trauma—her parents were survivors of China’s Cultural Revolution, and her father had especially bad PTSD—while interspersing chapters about her hobby of raising ferns. At first the juxtaposition might seem jarring, but ultimately she shows how families are like ferns in their need for nurture, the interdependence, and finally independent growth of seedlings. It’s a deeply moving story told in a refreshingly offbeat manner. Our goal was to find the best of the best in autobiography. In order to do that, we read very widely so as not to overlook books that don’t necessarily get a lot of publicity and whose publishers don’t have the money or means to launch huge campaigns for their authors. Small independent presses and university presses by design tend to publish innovative works, so the award’s committee members really wanted to make sure that we read as many of their offerings as we could. That so many indie and university presses ended up on our short list is an indication of the quality of the writing!"

"Zito Madu’s The Minotaur at Calle Lanza is truly unlike any other autobiography I’d read before. It’s the story of the author’s residency in Venice during the pandemic, which already seemed like a surreal experience, but then the author introduces the mythic Minotaur in an unexpected and surprising plot twist. Madu weaves in family stories, of growing up as the son of Nigerian immigrants in Detroit, with his experience as a Black man moving and living in spaces where there are very few Black people. The book really transports the reader to Venice, and then uses a surreal twist to bring to the foreground Madu’s experiences with being Othered. I don’t want to give away too much. People should just read it! It’s a smart, deeply engrossing book."

"Most of the gorgeous and haunting black-and-white photographs were taken by the author! Erika Morillo is an accomplished photographer, and the memoir in many ways is the story of a young woman coming into her own as an artist. It’s also the story of surviving political and gendered violence. Her father was murdered in a politically motivated act in 1988 in the Dominican Republic, which sets off a chain of traumatic events in the family that reverberate over generations. This is a riveting and aesthetically beautiful memoir."

"Alexei Navalny’s Patriot is the whole package: it tells a compelling story of a man whose life was important and impactful and it’s a very literary book. The writing is beautiful! It’s not just a journalistic account of Navalny’s struggles under Putin’s authoritarianism, but it also showcases Navalny’s talent as a writer. Bravo to the translators because the writing flows very well in English. Yes, I agree. Navalny often writes with surprising humor despite his extreme hardships. He has a sharp eye for irony and characterization, and even when he is imprisoned, he can write about his captors and his experiences with great wit. If publishers continue to embrace the aesthetic and creative diversity of the storytelling that we read last year, then 2025 is going to be a great year!"

"Susan Ito’s memoir tackles an important subject—how to know oneself when information key to one’s identity is deliberately withheld by law from a class of people. Ito is an adoptee who does not have the legal right to the files of her birth mother and by extension biological father. Ito is exploring this fundamental question of identity, who she is, who is her family, over the course of the decades that she spends tracking down her birth mother. Ito was raised by a Japanese American mother and father, but because she is herself mixed race, she stands out from her parents physically, in ways that other people remark upon as she is growing up. This lens allows Ito to examine many notions of family, how the construction of race in the U.S. informs who gets to be considered belonging in a family and in a community, and the ramifications of denying adoptees the rights to their own paperwork. Why is this still allowed? What are the implications of these commodifying and dehumanizing government policies? Ito’s memoir is a profound work. In addition to having timely and important subject matter, Susan Ito has written a really compelling story. She moves through time so well! The book covers decades of her life as she searches for her birth mother, but the story never flags, each chapter moves the story forward, and the reader knows what’s at stake emotionally. I Would Meet You Anywhere is a memoir that feels novelistic in many ways, as Ito renders dialogue really well and her characters are distinct and complex. Despite what could have been an anguishing story, this book was a pleasure to read and a real page-turner."

"The author David Mas Masumoto discovers that he has a secret aunt, who had been made a ward of the state of California at age 12 in 1942 when the rest of her family was sent to incarceration camps. By the time he realizes she exists, the aunt is in hospice care and has been hidden away in a care facility for more than 70 years. Her disability is tied to the racist policies of the era—she was denied proper medical care as a Japanese American child after contracting meningitis, and as a result is mentally disabled and can no longer speak or communicate verbally. This story reveals the racism of the state, its consequences on a family and a little girl, but it also reveals the shame that the family felt about disability. Masumoto wrestles with this complex history on the page, as he works to reunite the lost aunt with surviving family members and to track down information about what her life was like for all these years. This book also raises important questions about who is erased from historical texts in general and about the erasure of disabled people in particular. The author stated in the book why he asked Patricia Wakida to create original woodblock prints: it’s a traditional Japanese art form, and he wanted an artist who understood the story that he was telling and who could create culturally appropriate images. The art adds another layer of storytelling. We saw many autobiographies this year that combine text and image in some way. The nuanced way that the Wakida’s woodblock prints are in conversation with Masumoto’s narrative was very interesting. They’re like a visual soundtrack, something that enhances the reader’s experience of the world that Masumoto is describing, and another way of engaging the reader’s senses. And they are in and of themselves aesthetically and artistically sophisticated and interesting as works of art. I’d love to see more books like this."

"Just from the subtitle and description, we expected a harrowing story of the author’s imprisonment, and perhaps an indictment of censorship, but this memoir is also an erudite exploration of the power of literature, an appreciation of Arabic novels and texts, and a rumination on language. It’s a very literary memoir. Rotten Evidence is also laugh-out-loud funny. Ahmed Naji’s distinctive voice is so strong in this book, thanks to Katharine Halls’ brilliant translation. Naji has an amazing ability to crack wise even in the face of oppression, pointing out the ironies of his captors’ illogic, pettiness, and lack of intellectual rigor as well as the indignities of prison life. That doesn’t sound at all funny, but Naji’s observations are witty and bold and sometimes just hilarious. Ultimately, Rotten Evidence is about the power of literature as a form of self-liberation, a way to imagine freedom for the mind even when the body is imprisoned. Yes. The committee didn’t know that the NBCC’s Sandrof Award would be given to the American Library Association this year when we were discussing Naji’s memoir, but the themes of censorship clearly resonated with everyone. It is a book that speaks to the power of literature to transform minds and lives. The fascist forces in the U.S. who are trying to ban books from public libraries and schools across the country share a lot in common with the fundamentalist censors in Egypt. They are all petty and small-minded people, fearful of anything they do not understand, and whose anti-humanistic abuses of power are not only oppressive to the communities they seek to erase from literature, but they are also a danger to the ability of any given society to flourish. Rotten Evidence is a memoir that speaks truth to power across many kinds of borders."

"This memoir is another story of literary self-liberation in many ways, as Safiya Sinclair finds poetry as a pathway out of her abusive, extremely restricted, patriarchal upbringing. Growing up in Jamaica, Sinclair must live by her increasingly paranoid father’s rules. Her physical appearance is controlled: she can’t wear pants, only skirts or dresses. She’s told she’s too outspoken, that she’ll never be a perfect Rasta girl. Her father beats her and her siblings in fits of rage at imagined transgressions. But Sinclair’s love of reading and poetry enable her to do well in school and she eventually frees herself from her father’s control. Sinclair is herself an accomplished poet, and she uses the literary skills of poetry in the telling of this story. Despite the harsh subject matter, her sentences are just gorgeous! For example, she writes, “The hiss of crickets prickled the night,” and, “My father’s silence spread like a fog over everything,” and, “The pale owl of my past still chases me down…” This is a book that deserves to be savored sentence by sentence. Sinclair opens her book with the 1966 visit to Jamaica of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, whom the Rastafari believed was a living god. She explains how this came to be. The Rastafari movement began in 1930 as a way to resist colonization and white supremacy and the Rastafari believed that a Black Messiah would come from Africa to save them from western society, that is, Babylon. Since Ethiopia had never been colonized, when Haile Selassie was crowned as Emperor, the Rastas came to believe he must be the Black Messiah that they’d been waiting for. So there was a huge turnout of Rastas at the airport for Haile Selassie’s first ever visit in 1966. Sinclair uses this moment to show how many historical forces were coming together, both personal and global. For example, Bob Marley’s wife, Rita, was present at the airport, and she later persuades Bob to join the movement. Meanwhile, Sinclair’s father was just a toddler at the time but he was inspired by Marley’s music to join the Rastafari. Sinclair is particularly adept at bringing a personal lens to these larger historical forces and vice versa. It’s a really fascinating memoir."

"Matthew Zapruder writes poignantly of finding joy in the precision of poetry amidst the messiness of grief, parenting, and general stresses of modern life. On the one hand, Zapruder is taking the reader on an interior journey as he describes the process of completing a poem through multiple drafts, describing his own creative process. On the other, he describes more mundane, daily struggles that any one of us might be experiencing. There’s a chapter about his experiences as a parent of a child on the autism spectrum, and his angst as a father. He’s posing existential questions about what it means to be responsible for another life. Then in a later chapter he’s struggling with smoke from the massive fires in Northern California during the early days of the pandemic. Climate change is another kind of existential threat that can seem overwhelming at the individual level. Throughout, Zapruder demonstrates not only that reading and writing poetry are a salve for the anxiety of life’s problems, but also that poetry is an essential way of making sense of the world. Story of a Poem is a memoir whose themes dovetail very powerfully with the other titles on the shortlist. I think autobiographies are fascinating because they provide so many kinds of insights! They can show us by example how other people have dealt with problems we might ourselves be facing. They can also show us the path not taken in our own lives. Or we get to live vicariously by reading about other people who may seem completely different on the surface. And when memoirs are in and of themselves artistic explorations, they can be inspiring at another level: as a way to reflect upon our daily lives as a source for artistic expression. This year’s crop of autobiographies is so diverse in terms of aesthetic sensibilities and themes, they really pushed the boundaries of the genre. I’d love to see more publishers support writers like those on our shortlist who are taking creative risks, mixing genres, mixing artistic forms—prose and imagery, prose and poetry, et cetera—while exploring the self and the world with such thoughtfulness."