My father in law passed away last week. The funeral is next week. Things have been pretty melancholy in the house of course, and it’s hard to not be able to do anything for my husband but just be there. I know he’s trying to be strong, but I hope he knows that it’s okay to be in pain right now, and nobody would fault him for it.

So after this post, I’ll be on another hiatus for a bit until the funeral is over, and we talk about what may need to get done. I couldn’t imagine losing a parent, and I just hurt so much for my husband.

Thanks to Dini @ Dini Panda Reads, I’m adding Goodreads Monday to my weekly meme schedule, and I’m excited to do this one. This weekly meme was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners and it invites you to pick a book from your TBR and explain why you want to read it.

An eloquent, restless, and enlightening memoir by one of the most thought-provoking journalists today about growing up Black and queer in America, reuniting with the past, and coming of age their own way.

One of nineteen children in a blended family, Hari Ziyad was raised by a Hindu Hare Kṛṣṇa mother and a Muslim father. Through reframing their own coming-of-age story, Ziyad takes readers on a powerful journey of growing up queer and Black in Cleveland, Ohio, and of navigating the equally complex path toward finding their true self in New York City. Exploring childhood, gender, race, and the trust that is built, broken, and repaired through generations, Ziyad investigates what it means to live beyond the limited narratives Black children are given and challenges the irreconcilable binaries that restrict them.

Heartwarming and heart-wrenching, radical and reflective, Hari Ziyad’s vital memoir is for the outcast, the unheard, the unborn, and the dead. It offers us a new way to think about survival and the necessary disruption of social norms. It looks back in tenderness as well as justified rage, forces us to address where we are now, and, born out of hope, illuminates the possibilities for the future.

I was able to get a copy of this book through the Amazon First Reads program. It’s interesting because I was looking at the selections and honestly this was the one that spoke to me the most. It made me think about my brother, actually, and how there are certain things that he now has to deal with that I would not have any way of experiencing. It makes me wish that I was able to help him all the time. I may not be there physically, but I know that he knows that I’ll be here for him as much as I can. He has been doing such a wonderful job staying true to himself and getting through life. I’m just so proud of him.

I want to read this book because I want to learn about Hari, and their experiences that they want to share with us in this novel. I know that it’s going to be an emotional read for me, and I’ll definitely need to set aside some time to read this on uninterrupted time to just feel and be there in the moment.

I may not be a huge memoir person, but I notice that I’ve had a better experience lately with them. I want to be able to read this one and experience it as well. I may not read them all the time, but when I do I know that it will be something of an emotional rollercoaster. Do you like to read memoirs? Which memoirs have you liked the most?