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Jaquira Díaz, author of Ordinary Girls: A Memoir

While growing up in housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, Jaquira Díaz found herself caught between extremes. As her family split apart and her mother battled schizophrenia, she was supported by the love of her friends. As she longed for a family and home, her life was upended by violence. As she celebrated her Puerto Rican culture, she couldn’t find support for her burgeoning sexual identity. From her own struggles with depression and sexual assault to Puerto Rico’s history of colonialism, every page of ORDINARY GIRLS vibrates with music and lyricism. Díaz writes with raw and refreshing honesty, triumphantly mapping a way out of despair toward love and hope, to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be.

Week of June 15, 2020

Paperback releases for the week of June 15th include THE GUARDIANS, a legal thriller from John Grisham but with a twist --- as a man who was convicted of murdering his lawyer but maintains his innocence turns to Guardian Ministries, a small nonprofit run by Cullen Post, a lawyer who travels the country fighting wrongful convictions and taking on clients forgotten by the system; ORDINARY GIRLS, a searing memoir from Jaquira Díaz, who writes fiercely and eloquently of her challenging girlhood and triumphant coming of age; THE LAST TRAIN TO LONDON by Meg Waite Clayton, a pre-World War II-era story centering on the Kindertransports that carried thousands of children out of Nazi-occupied Europe --- and one brave woman who helped them escape to safety; and Clay Risen's THE CROWDED HOUR, the dramatic story of the most famous regiment in American history --- the Rough Riders, a motley group of soldiers led by Theodore Roosevelt, whose daring exploits marked the beginning of American imperialism in the 20th century.