Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor

This is a magical, eerie, frightening and sad masterpiece. I couldn’t stop visualizing some of the scenes, even in my sleep.

Before by Carmen Boullosa

Carmen and I went to the same school in Mexico City. I was in 7th grade when she was a high school senior. She wrote and directed plays and wrote great stories. I wanted to be like her; I admired her profoundly.

Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros

This is one of my favorite books of stories. Don’t miss the short piece titled “Salvador Late or Early.” I cry every time I read it.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

This Booker Prize novel made me fall in love with India, and the themes she addresses in it include forbidden love, betrayal, and the caste system. Since then, I’ve traveled twice to Kerala.

If You Lived Here You'd Be Famous by Now by Via Bleidner

These are stories about coming of age in Los Angeles. This book reminds me so much of my millennial kids when they were growing up in the previous decade. I can almost hear Via’s characters talking in the back of my minivan.