Reader’s Corner: Share Your Favorite Books and Reading Rituals
We've reached out to folks far and wide with a simple yet profound question: What's your all-time favorite book, and why? Their responses reveal the stories that have captured their hearts and shaped their lives.
Rochelle Martha
“Earth of Mankind" by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
A love story in colonized Indonesia. It was the first book I read where they explain the system of apartheid and the effects of it in Indonesian society during the Dutch occupation.
It was also the first Indonesian writer I have ever read.
Sønja A.
“Black Boy” by Richard Wright
I read it in middle school this is where I discovered the profound experience of being a Black man in America and the accompanying violence that is inexorably intertwined with it.
It portrays the author's experiences grappling with hatred, poverty, and the suffering that surrounded him, and I must say, it profoundly shook me to my core.
Ionuț Gîtan
"To Paradise" by Hanya Yanagihara
A multi-generational story about friendship and love in New York
City. To Paradise is arresting and complex. Its moods encompass pain and ecstasy, isolation and community, oppression and liberation. It gives space for the reader to process contemporary life — and maybe experience catharsis. Hanya Yanagihara is one of the greatest living American authors.
Kleidi
Jeen
“ Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization” by Anthony T. Browder
I say this because this, when I read it in high school, was my very first awakening from American propaganda about black folks and how insidious it is.
I grew up in an all back community and went to an all black school till 13 yrs old but we focused on watered down MLK and first African American doctors, inventors etc. This book gave me what I needed to begin to think more clearly and eventually study black history in college.
OMAR BEN NACEUR
Bayn Al-qasrayn by Naguib Mahfouz
A political revolution and a moral revolution.
We experience them from the quiet confines of a middle-class family in 19th century Cairo.
The changes in the city eventually shake the heart of the home. The role of the women in the novel grows as the pages turn, and it's super exciting. It's a classic of Arabic literature, but it's still a super modern read.
