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When Putsata Reang was eleven months old, her family fled war-torn Cambodia, spending twenty-three days on an overcrowded navy vessel before finding sanctuary at an American naval base in the Philippines. Holding what appeared to be a lifeless baby in her arms, Ma resisted the captain’s orders to throw her bundle overboard. Instead, on landing, Ma rushed her baby into the arms of American military nurses and doctors, who saved the child's life. “I had hope, just a little, you were still alive,” Ma would tell Put in an oft-repeated story that became family legend.
Over the years, Put lived to please Ma and make her proud, hustling to repay her life debt by becoming the consummate good Cambodian daughter, working steadfastly by Ma’s side in the berry fields each summer and eventually building a successful career as an award-winning journalist. But Put's adoration and efforts are no match for Ma's expectations. When she comes out to Ma in her twenties, it's just a phase. When she fails to bring home a Khmer boyfriend, it's because she's not trying hard enough. When, at the age of forty, Put tells Ma she is finally getting married—to a woman—it breaks their bond in two.
In her startling memoir, Reang explores the long legacy of inherited trauma and the crushing weight of cultural and filial duty. With rare clarity and lyric wisdom, Ma and Me is a stunning, deeply moving memoir about love, debt, and duty.
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Samuel has been the reclusive lighthouse keeper for over two decades on a remote island off the coast of an unnamed African country (one ravaged by years of colonial and civil war), only to have his solitude and routine interrupted when a body of a refugee, barely still alive, washes up on shore. What follows is a brooding allegorical tale, told over the course of four days with intermittent flashbacks, that is unsettling and foreboding, as Samuel, burdened by his age and haunted by his memories, slowly unravels. I in turn was haunted by Samuel and his story, a man consumed by the wars that wracked his country, with their endless cycles of suffering and death, weariness and disillusionment. Author Karen Jennings maintains the tension through to the book’s powerful, gripping ending. Longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, Ed loved An Island and highly recommends!
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Thoroughly researched and insightful, author and activist Sarah Schulman’s exploration of ACT UP is based on hundreds of interviews with members, and examines how and why so many came together to fight corporations, news media, and the government for the right to live. Epic, complex, and deeply moving, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987 – 1993 is not only a record of the unlikely coalition that formed to change the world, but a guidebook and required reading for all involved in the continuing fight for medical justice. Matty recommends!
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Steve Toltz will leave you laughing out loud In his new comic novel about the afterlife, Here Goes Nothing, where you’ll meet literature’s newest anti-heroes Angus and Gracie—Angus on a wild ride thru the afterlife, where he recounts his own murder, and his wife Gracie, back on earth, dealing with her pregnancy, a mysterious boarder, and her job officiating at weddings as a ceremonial minister (her hilarious, irreverent disquisitions on love and marriage are priceless!), all while a mysterious epidemic threatens earth (sound familiar?) Exhilaratingly original, comically dark, mordantly funny (I now know what the word “mordant” means!), Here Goes Nothing is a genuinely, remarkably, profoundly funny black comedy about death and the afterlife, about grief and mourning, but ultimately a celebration of the wondrous, near-impossibility of our being alive. Toltz is an incomparable wordsmith who trashes taboos as he goes, along the way taking potshots at patriotism, consumerism, unchecked capitalism, weddings, our concepts of an afterlife, and the biggest human foible of all, love! I loved the novel’s frenetic energy, its wisdom couched in humor, its wry social commentary, its smart, witty banter. I agree with author Peter Carey: “What a joy to surrender oneself to a writer of such prodigious talent.” Ed loved, loved, loved, and highly recommends!
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The Pulitzer Prizes were announced on May 9th, 2022, Congratulations to the winners!
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Recommended Reading about Ukraine & Russia
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Thanks to all who joined us for Our Year with Toni Morrison in 2021! In 2022, we're continuing the annual reading initiative with George Orwell, so read along with us each month! Orwell’s fiercely moral writing has consistently struck a chord with each passing generation. The intense honesty and insight of his essays and non-fiction made Orwell one of the foremost social commentators of his age. Added to this, his ability to construct elaborately imaginative fictional worlds, which he imbued with this acute sense of morality, has assured his contemporary and future relevance. A fierce opponent of authoritarianism, George Orwell is especially relevant in our own Orwellian times, where we have to look no further than Ukraine to witness what a totalitarian dictator is capable of destroying. Each month we will feature, and discount 10%, one of the author's books, alternating between fiction and nonfiction.
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The Road to Wigan Pier shows Orwell as reformer, as political theorist, as agitator, as an advocate for Socialism, as a man worried about Fascism’s rise, and as a keen writer and shrewd observer of the human condition. Published in 1937, it is George Orwell’s 2nd full-length work of nonfiction and is divided into two distinct sections. PART 1 is a straightforward documentary account of the bleak living conditions of the working classes (especially coal miners) in the industrial north of England, in towns like Wigan (where Orwell fully immersed himself)—the deplorable housing, the debilitating effects of unemployment, the poverty, the intolerable living conditions, and what everyday life in a coal mine was really like, the descriptions of which Orwell hoped would rouse the middle classes from their ignorant complacency. PART 2 I found to be brilliant--a long, personal essay about Socialism (which he advocated) and the development of his own political consciousness, and, in the role of devil’s advocate, why he thought Socialism was having a hard time taking hold in England. A mix of autobiography, politics, wry polemic and righteous indignation to provoke thought and discussion, The Road to Wigan Pier still stands today as a testament to Orwell’s commitment to liberty and justice. Ed loved and highly recommends!
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It has been over a year since the murder of George Floyd, and over a year since Unabridged Bookstore made an ongoing commitment to each month support and contribute to organizations that work towards achieving racial justice in America, as well as promoting social, environmental and economic justice. From June 2020 thru May 2021, Unabridged Bookstore has contributed over $22,000 to 21 different organizations, and we are now re-dedicating our ongoing commitment to support these kinds of organizations each month. Thank you for joining us in this commitment.
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To honor the Black Lives Matter movement, and as part of our commitment to promoting the work of activists & organizations engaged in the fight for environmental justice and against systemic racism, social injustice, hunger, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, we are contributing to Young, Black & Lit and Rainbow Railroad this month. Click above to read more about each organization and how they work to achieve meaningful and lasting change in our community, then make your own contribution! For more info about previous months' partnerships, and to read our full statement, click here!
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Gift Cards are available for purchase on our website, by phone, and in-store, and can be used to shop the same ways! We can mail a gift card to you, to your friends and family, or we can hold it here in the shop where it will be ready on your next visit. Click here to send a Gift Card!
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Another great way to support indie bookstores, sign up at Libro.fm!
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