Here are 100 books that Something Unbelievable fans have personally recommended if you like
Something Unbelievable.
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I was born in Odessa, USSR, a Southern Ukrainian city that many more people know now than when my family and I immigrated in 1977. Growing up in the US, everything I read about Soviet immigrants was either cliched, stereotyped, or plain wrong. A 1985 short film, Molly’s Pilgrim, about a (presumably Jewish) Soviet immigrant girl showed her wearing a native peasant costume and a scarf on her head which, for some reason, Americans insisted on calling a “babushka.” “Babushka” means “grandmother” in Russian. Why would you wear one of those on your head? I was desperate for more realistic portrayals. So I wrote my own. And the five books I picked definitely offer them.
Math reigned supreme in the USSR. I was never particularly good at it. I had to immigrate to the United States to marry an American nuclear engineer turned math and physics teacher. In Divide Me By Zero the heroine’s widowed mother describes love in mathematical terms. The passage reminded me of my husband. I forced him to listen to me read it out loud to him. “Wow,” he said. "That’s hot." Read this book for the heart-wrenching story—and the hot math.
As a young girl, Katya Geller learned from her mother that math was the answer to everything. Now, approaching forty, she finds this wisdom tested: she has lost the love of her life, she is in the middle of a divorce, and has just found out that her mother is dying. Nothing is adding up.
With humor, intelligence, and unfailing honesty, Katya traces back her life’s journey: her childhood in Soviet Russia, her parents’ great love, the death of her father, her mother’s career as a renowned mathematician, and their immigration to the United…
I was born in Odessa, USSR, a Southern Ukrainian city that many more people know now than when my family and I immigrated in 1977. Growing up in the US, everything I read about Soviet immigrants was either cliched, stereotyped, or plain wrong. A 1985 short film, Molly’s Pilgrim, about a (presumably Jewish) Soviet immigrant girl showed her wearing a native peasant costume and a scarf on her head which, for some reason, Americans insisted on calling a “babushka.” “Babushka” means “grandmother” in Russian. Why would you wear one of those on your head? I was desperate for more realistic portrayals. So I wrote my own. And the five books I picked definitely offer them.
While Americans imagined all Soviet refusniks as political prisoners fighting tirelessly for the cause of freedom, Mother Country reminds that the majority of those who apply to immigrate aren’t firebrand orators or wanted criminals. They are regular people, worried about providing for their families and betting that there has to be a better life on the other side of the world. Sharansky and Sakharov may have made international headlines about being prevented from immigrating, but most people were simply waiting, going about their lives, tolerating causal Antisemitism along with periodic bursts of violence, while also managing to find joy in simple things, and just getting through life one day at a time. The same as anyone else anywhere else in the world.
The war back home is always at the forefront of her reality. On television, Vladimir Putin speaks of the 'reunification' of Crimea and Russia, the Ukrainian president makes unconvincing promises about a united Ukraine, while American politicians are divided over the fear of immigration. Nadia internalises notions of 'union' all around her, but the one reunion she has been waiting six years for - with her beloved daughter - is being eternally delayed by the Department of Homeland Security. When Nadia finds out that her daughter has lost access to the medicine she needs to survive, she takes matters into…
I was born in Odessa, USSR, a Southern Ukrainian city that many more people know now than when my family and I immigrated in 1977. Growing up in the US, everything I read about Soviet immigrants was either cliched, stereotyped, or plain wrong. A 1985 short film, Molly’s Pilgrim, about a (presumably Jewish) Soviet immigrant girl showed her wearing a native peasant costume and a scarf on her head which, for some reason, Americans insisted on calling a “babushka.” “Babushka” means “grandmother” in Russian. Why would you wear one of those on your head? I was desperate for more realistic portrayals. So I wrote my own. And the five books I picked definitely offer them.
Mariza Kuznetsova (Something Unbelievable), Irina Reyn (Mother Country), and I all left the Soviet Union as children, before Putin and before all the changes he brought. Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry came of age in the new Russia. The Orchard is a tale of what our own lives might have been if our families had stayed. This loose retelling of Chekov zeroes in on how a childhood begun in the USSR and a young adulthood lived in Russia affected everyone who went through it, how it shaped worldviews, and how it continues to resonate even after decades of immigrant life in America.
Four teenagers grow inseparable in the last days of the Soviet Union—but not all of them will live to see the new world arrive in this powerful debut novel, loosely based on Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.
“Spectacular . . . intensely evocative and gorgeously written . . . will fill readers’ eyes with tears and wonder.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
Coming of age in the USSR in the 1980s, best friends Anya and Milka try to envision a free and joyful future for themselves. They spend their summers at Anya’s dacha just outside of Moscow, lazing in the apple orchard, listening…
I was born in Odessa, USSR, a Southern Ukrainian city that many more people know now than when my family and I immigrated in 1977. Growing up in the US, everything I read about Soviet immigrants was either cliched, stereotyped, or plain wrong. A 1985 short film, Molly’s Pilgrim, about a (presumably Jewish) Soviet immigrant girl showed her wearing a native peasant costume and a scarf on her head which, for some reason, Americans insisted on calling a “babushka.” “Babushka” means “grandmother” in Russian. Why would you wear one of those on your head? I was desperate for more realistic portrayals. So I wrote my own. And the five books I picked definitely offer them.
Part poetry, part flash fiction; part memoir, part imagination; part history, part fantasy. The Naked World is like a dream, images, and snatches of phrases wrestle with fact and trauma. It’s a story of survival, it’s a story of suffering. It’s a story of immigration, it’s a story of remaining stuck. It’s ephemeral and it stays with you. Did it happen to you? To someone else? To all of us?
The Naked World begins with Mashinski’s birth:“Stalin had been dead for 5 years 1 month and 4 days.” The concluding notes tell us that currently “38% of Russians consider Stalin the greatest man in history.” The eerily exact figures underline the survivor’s dilemma: do I live in the past and allow my identity to be determined by atrocities, or do I cling to the present and sanitize my own experience?
Mashinki’s response is a brilliant poet’s: “each time when you raise your eyes to the stars, you see the past, and each time when you raise your eyes to the…
I have been a voracious reader since I was a kid, and I am always in the process of reading several books simultaneously. Books, whether I’m writing or reading them, are a huge part of my world.
A Friend is a Gift You Give Yourself sounds like a self-help book but is actually a comic thriller/touching character study set in the world of the New York mob. Rena, the widow of a wise guy, lives a quiet life in the Bronx until the day she cracks a would-be suitor over the head with an ashtray and steals his vintage Impala. It’s a mob caper, an elderly gals wild road trip, and a Grandmother and granddaughter reunion story all in one. Big fun.
Thelma and Louise meets Goodfellas when an unlikely trio of women in New York find themselves banding together to escape the clutches of violent figures from their pasts.
THELMA AND LOUISE MEETS GOODFELLAS when an unlikely trio of women in New York find themselves banding together to escape the clutches of violent figures from their pasts.
After Brooklyn mob widow Rena Ruggiero hits her eighty-year-old neighbour Enzio on the head with an ashtray when he makes an unwanted move on her, she steals his vintage Chevy Impala and retreats to the Bronx home of her estranged daughter, Adrienne, and her…
Growing up in an Iraqi Jewish immigrant family in Sydney, Australia, meant that I was always different, without the words or emotional tools to navigate the world around me. Luckily, I was a reader, and so I learned through books Social Emotional Learning (SEL) tools to deal with anxiety and loneliness and develop qualities of empathy, bravery, and the understanding that we don’t have to be the same but can celebrate our cultural and personal differences. Reading with children is a wonderful opportunity to enter their worlds whilst building their social and emotional skills, such as managing emotions, problem-solving, and creating positive relationships.
I love friendships in picture books, and this one is especially precious as it’s between a Muslim boy and a Jewish boy in Flatbush, New York. A friendship across cultures represented by special foods for each child’s cultural festivals is a wonderful gift to introduce children to.
I especially love how the children lead the way for their families to become friends. With my Iraqi Jewish background, I grew up knowing my grandparents had very close relations with their Muslim neighbors. And, of course, the recipes for rugelach and date cookies, which are included in the back matter, are an extra special bonus for me.
An interfaith friendship develops when Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, overlaps with the Muslim holiday of Ramadan--an occurence that happens only once every thirty years or so.
Moses Feldman, a Jewish boy, lives at one end of Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, while Mohammed Hassan, a Muslim boy, lives at the other. One day they meet at Sahadi's market while out shopping with their mothers and are mistaken for brothers. A friendship is born, and the boys bring their families together to share rugelach and date cookies in the park as they make a wish for peace.
The blue-collar everyman lives on the periphery, coming and going with little fanfare. But what does he think and feel? How does he view the world? I became interested in these questions while working for my father’s rug business. I started as a part-timer in the early 90s, straddling the line between academe and the homes of the rich. He employed me for the next twenty years, supplementing my income as I found my way as a university professor. The books listed led me to a deeper appreciation of my father’s vocation, but only in writing Rug Man did I come to understand the true meaning of work.
Published the same year as John Steinbeck’sThe Grapes of Wrath, di Donato’sChrist in Concrete is another closely drawn portrait of working-class immigrants, this time the Italian-American bricklayers of New York City’s Lower East Side.
On top of its lyricism and spirited narrative pace, what I find most refreshing about di Donato’s tale is its choice of subject matter. So much of what we read and hear about the Italian-American experience tends to focus on the Mafia, perpetuating negative stereotypes that have dogged paisans since the late 19th century.
While I’ll never be the one to turn off Goodfellas, I long for more stories like that of Geremio and his irrepressible son, Paul, “born artists of brick and mortar.”
Giving voice to the hardworking Italian immigrants who worked, lived, and died in New York City shortly before the Great Depression, this American classic ranks with Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as one of the 20th century’s great works of social protest.
Largely autobiographical, Christ in Concrete opens with the dramatic Good Friday collapse of a building under construction, crucifying in concrete an Italian construction worker, whose death leaves his pregnant wife and eight children impoverished. His oldest son, Paul, at just twelve years old, must take over his father’s role—and his job.
Other than the fact that I grew up in the United States, the son of a Jewish-American mother, an Iranian-born father, a thirteen-letter unpronounceable letter last name, the 444-day Iranian hostage crisis, and parents who were both members of the Socialist Workers Party, which advocated for a working-class revolution along the lines of the Russian Revolution—I am a typical American. I like hamburgers, Martha Stewart, and the New York Yankees. Trace elements of my upbringing can still be found in my memoir, When Skateboards Will Be Free, my two short story collections, and my worldview, which I’m still working on in therapy.
Before David Adjmi became an acclaimed playwright, he was contending with his complicated upbringing in Brooklyn, New York, the child of Syrian Jewish parents, being schooled in a Yeshiva, and trying to come to terms with being gay. Adjmi writes with incredible candor about feeling like a perpetual outsider, including—or especially—within his own family. The title borrows its name from a pejorative term for gays that his family would often use to their great amusement and Adjmi’s mortification. Bonus viewing: Marie Antoinette, The Evildoers, Stunning, Stereophonic, or any number of his plays, where you will be able see how and where nonfiction is transmuted into theatre.
“David Adjmi has written one of the great American memoirs, a heartbreaking, hilarious story of what it means to make things up, including yourself. A wild tale of lack and lies, galling humiliations and majestic reinventions, this touching, coruscating joy of a book is an answer to that perennial question: how should a person be?”
— Olivia Laing, author of Crudo and The Lonely City
In a world where everyone is inventing a self, curating a feed and performing a fantasy of life, what does it mean to be a person? In his grandly entertaining debut memoir, playwright David Adjmi…
My novel choices were part of the Afterschool Literacy & Building Modules for an organization called LitShop. It encourages growth in literacy, making, building, and leadership in girls ages 10-15 in St. Louis, Missouri. I’m honored to lead the writing classes. All of the LitShop books feature strong girls who believe they can make and build their way to a better world, and I aim to include similar characters in my stories. Stories can provide us with motivation, inspiration, and companionship, and all of these books have done just that… for the girls of LitShop as well as myself.
Before reading this book, I had no idea city-based fantasy novels could draw me in as powerfully as stories with more “traditional” fantasy settings. But Mr. Older’s depiction of Brooklyn as a living, breathing landscape made me a new believer in urban magic. And the main character Sierra’s shadowshaping feels like its own form of beautiful, youthful rebellion. Art can save us, if only we breathe our power into it. I stop and stare at most graffiti murals now, waiting for them to move a little.
Sierra Santiago planned an easy summer of making art and hanging with her friends. But then a corpse crashes the first party of the season. Her stroke-ridden grandfather starts apologizing over and over. And when the murals in her neighborhood begin to weep real tears . . . Well, something more sinister than the usual Brooklyn ruckus is going on.
Where the powers converge and become one
With the help of a fellow artist named Robbie, Sierra discovers shadowshaping, a thrilling magic that infuses ancestral spirits into paintings, music, and stories. But…
I'm an activist/scholar and I taught in the Feminist Studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz for 40 years. My most popular class was Introduction to Feminism. Then I taught another large, undergraduate course Feminism & Social Justice. By the time I retired I had taught over 16,000 students, and worked with scores of graduate students. My online class, Feminism & Social Justice, on the Coursera Platform has been taken by over 107,000 people located on literally every continent. My teaching and writings are always anti-racist, and explicitly queer. They've drawn on my life experiences. They come out of my passion to lessen suffering, and embrace compassion.
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York in the 1940s and 1950s. As one of New York City’s 5 boroughs it has character and even a mystique about it, and we Brooklynites are often very proud of our heritage.
Until I was about 13 the Brooklyn Dodgers were the zany, irreverent, baseball upstarts who sometimes even won the World Series. And they hired Jackie Robinson, desegregating professional baseball. All of this is to say that when High Ryan published his book, I devoured it as it fused my Brooklyn heritage and my queer identity.
Starting with poet Walt Whitman, he takes us through the writers, the dock workers, the socialists, the communists, the college professors and artists, who were lesbian or gay and both shaped and were shaped by the city, Ryan’s archival research is amazing, and his writing style breezy, and accessible. Even if you’re not from Brooklyn (!)…
The never-before-told story of Brooklyn’s vibrant and forgotten queer history, from the mid-1850s up to the present day.
***An ALA GLBT Round Table Over the Rainbow 2019 Top Ten Selection*** ***NAMED ONE OF THE BEST LGBTQ BOOKS OF 2019 by Harper's Bazaar***
"A romantic, exquisite history of gay culture." ―Kirkus Reviews, starred
“[A] boisterous, motley new history...entertaining and insightful.” ―The New York Times Book Review
Hugh Ryan’s When Brooklyn Was Queer is a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the queer women who worked at the…
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