"When Michelle Zauner was in her mid-twenties, working as waitress and struggling to launch her music career in Philadelphia, she got a call that her mother was ill. She put her life on hold and flew home to Eugene, Oregon, to be with her mother through the final, excruciating months of her battle with cancer. This is Zauner's searingly candid coming-of-age story: of growing apart from, and then back together with, her Korean identity and of forging...

"Throughout his adult life, whether he was opening a Seattle record store in the ’90s or touring the world as the only non-white band member in alternative rock bands, Nabil Ayers felt the shadow and legacy of his father’s musical genius, and his race, everywhere. In 1971, a white, Jewish, former ballerina, chose to have a child with the famous Black jazz musician Roy Ayers, fully expecting and agreeing that he would not be involved in the child’s...

In this thought-provoking, humorous collection of essays, the author of Weird But Normal and morning blogger at The Cut explores kindness, agreeability, goodness, and the assumptions and expectations that come with being female, Asian, and Midwestern. Everyone knows Midwesterners are salt-of-the-earth folk defined by their goodness, niceness, and politeness... right? In this funny, wide-ranging collection, Mia Mercado ponders her identity as an Asian...