MariNaomi is a terrific graphic memoirist, and Turning Japanese is probably her most well written to date. The story she tells spans her time working in Japanese hostess bars in San Jose and working and vacationing Japan, with the goal of getting in touch with her Japanese roots. Though this is a big story with a number of events as well as changes in the thoughts and feelings of a young adult about herself, her relationships, and her family and culture, MariNaomi deftly navigates the storytelling and gives the reader an immersive perspective into this period in her life. Though I have few similarities in my life to draw comparisons to this time in hers, I felt the certain universalities in her story and found myself reflecting on my own life, which to me is an exciting part of a thought provoking memoir.

A great comic about the complex dynamic of the friendship/love between two girls and how it evolves as they become women. Mari explores the memories that shape her relationship with Mirabai, and as the reader I felt her story, and its resonance with my own childhood, so strongly. She captures the way she loves and is proud of, and yet simultaneously is jealous of Mirabai, and the insecurities she goes through growing up, with her friends, with who she is. It's intensely personal and yet so relatable. Also, Mari's drawings of herself and friends as children just melt my heart.

I tend not to like essay collections (even though I always think it sounds like a good idea to read them) and the main reason for that I think is the choppy way the same point ends up being made in several places and grows redundant. Although some of the essays could have been collapsed to a more succinct single point, Bad Feminist explores a wide range of topics, and Gay spoke deeply to me at times with her vulnerable honesty and careful handling of topics not often discussed. I also really appreciated the literary essays which were a welcome return to discussions of novels at a level I haven't read in a while.

What an intense children's book! This book was an emotional dive into the life of a transgender girl in the fourth grade. It's not my experience, but I think Alex Gino has captured a human experience that we don't often get to see represented, and has done it well. My great hope is that our society becomes more accepting of transgender people of all ages, and that we end the destructive ways "male" traits are elevated over "female" ones. So many feelings and thoughts. I'm glad this book exists and I look forward to the day that stories about trans kids are more commonplace and reflect a reality that isn't so hard for them.

I really enjoy Gaby Dunn's work on Just Between us and with Buzzfeed and kind of vaguely knew she had done a lot of writing as well, but it wasn't until I read her recent-ish articles about the challenges facing stars making money on YouTube (very insightful, still think about that article) and then about bisexuality that I sought out more of her writing. With that in mind, I don't really agree that this collection is "the best of Gaby Dunn." She's grown a lot as a writer since this, and only the best pieces contained in this selection really compete with what I'd expected from those more extensive and compelling works I'd first read from her. That being said, there is a place for fluffy articles making fun of Tumblr and Florida, and if you're interested in that then maybe you'll enjoy a larger portion of this book than I did. She certainly brings her voice and humor strongly throughout. And there are some really good thoughts and much more serious subjects addressed among the fluff. Still, short essays aren't really my style so even the best parts were a bit lackluster for probably that reason.

A devastating indictment of the American criminal justice system, this book was difficult to read despite being very well written and researched. Alexander lays out the compelling evidence to argue that the war on drugs has been used to create a racial caste system that never needs to use racial language, and as a result is immune to criticisms of racism. And yet, the media fueled perception of what a drug criminal looks like leads to biased enforcing of laws and the incarceration of staggering numbers of young men of color. An important read that broadens social consciousness of an insidious system of control along racial lines many would argue had been dismantled years ago.

Out of Orange surprised me with how difficult it was to put down. Unlike Kerman's memoir, which was written in a world that had never heard of her through the wildly popular netflix spin off about her life, Wolters' memoir is very much a response to the Orange is the New Black series. As a result, she focuses a large portion of the novel on the drug smuggling operation that landed her and Kerman in prison years later. This portion of the novel was exciting and terrifying, Wolters finding herself and her friends suddenly in way over their heads in a very high stakes game. She describes her eventual escape from the drug smuggling world, followed by her arrest, then skips ahead to the time spent with Kerman flying to Chicago to testify against a co-conspirator. She details some amount of her time spent in prison after that, coming to the same conclusions about the failings of the prison system Kerman did in her memoir but somewhat less poignantly given the shorter period of time she spent discussing that time in her life. It's hard to fault her for not going into the same depth however, given the longer duration of her stay. One of the most interesting things for me was reading about her experience being confronted unexpectedly with a fictionalized portrayal of her life, a fairly unique experience I would have loved to read more about. Overall a fascinating book.

Simultaneously a brutal look at the awful experience of the prison system, and a beautiful tale of the friendships that blossom between women even in these trying circumstances. Kerman writes with honesty, compassion and a wonderfully nuanced range of emotions and reactions, bringing her story, and the faintest glimpse into the stories of her fellow prisoners, to life on the page.

This book was an interesting read, a qualitative study of the experiences of individuals who have lost faith in God while in pastoral roles in their faith tradition. The writing was rarely dry, although I felt the intrusion of the beliefs of the authors judging their study participants in a manner which left a bad taste at times in what they seemed to try to frame as an unbiased exploration of others' experiences.

I'm starting to feel like I just don't like the celebrity-memoir-style, probably because I care too much about the order a person's life story is told and I'm finding I tend to be dissatisfied with the ordering chosen. However, I really liked this book. It was the most laugh-out-loud-funny book I've read in a while, and it was also full of true nuggets of wisdom.