Noor Alramadan:

“My favorite book is ‘I am Malala’ by Malala Yousafzai. I really recommend it because it shares the perspective of a girl who endured the mistreatment from terrorist groups, while relating to current events.” 

Alramadan tells of how she relates to the book’s protagonist, sharing a similar love for learning.

“The main message that always resonates with this book is her love for school. Every time I read and think about her story, it makes me feel more appreciative of having the chance to go to school and being able to learn by myself. I also enjoy reading about her culture and finding commonalities with it!”

Anahi Marquez-Silva:

“‘The Giver’ by Lois Lowry is a good book and I feel like it has a good theme. It makes you look at life differently in terms of what’s really important and what you’ve been choosing to focus on.” 

Marquez-Silva’s favorite quote is introspective, prompting her to think about how “we as people always think about the past and sometimes that can be a burden.” 

‘The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.’  

Lowry writes how ‘Memories are forever’, and according to Marquez-Silva, it helped her to realize that “memories really are forever, despite the constant changing, new friends, new relationships [and] new surroundings. You will always have memories—they keep people alive.”

Ariana Torres:

“‘The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo’ by Taylor Jenkins Reid is my favorite book because of how crazy the plot is, while simultaneously being very raw and real. It’s the only book that has ever made me cry, and it’s beautifully written. I’d recommend it for that reason.”

Torres—excited—goes on to describe her love for the plot.  

“The book follows a newly hired writer for a publishing company. She’s asked to interview one of the most famous women in Hollywood, Evelyn Hugo, who ends up telling her life story. She [tells her how she] ended up with seven husbands, and how her one true love was a woman!” 

Torres’s favorite quotes are equally as “raw and real.”    

‘Sometimes reality comes crashing down to you. Other times reality simply waits, patiently, for you to run out of energy it takes you to deny it.’ and ‘Please never forget that the sun rises and sets with your smile.’ 

Sophia Ramirez:

“My favorite book is ‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy and I would recommend it because the book is so controversial that it’s banned in some places. It’s also told from the perspective of a child for most of [the novel], which makes it interesting. It’s about a dysfunctional middle-class family in India told from the perspective of the daughter, switching back and forth between the present-day and past events.” 

Ramirez describes one of her favorite quotes.  

‘Rahel searched her brother’s nakedness for signs of herself.’

Olivia Martinez:

“Recently I’ve been getting back into the habit of reading books for fun and one of my favorites from this recent book-reading journey has been ‘Minor Feelings’ by Cathy Park Hong. This was the first time I had ever read an autobiographical essay and to my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed it.” 

Martinez goes on to explain her interest in Hong’s depiction of life as an Asian-American, in addition to her quick humor.  

“Hong, a Korean American who specializes in art and poetry, shares her real-life experiences and how they relate to the Asian-American experience. This essay highlights the joys and struggles of what it has meant to be an Asian American since the early 1980s and expands past the thin crust of Asian stereotypes and prejudices that the media usually shines [a] light on. Hong expresses her stories both with urgency to keep her readers attentive to the main focus and humor to keep them entertained.”

Martinez urges others to pick up Hong’s work for themselves, selling the essay as an encounter that leaves its readers with a “new perspective.”

Her writing style along with the content she shares is exactly why I believe more people should read her book. As an Asian American myself, each chapter opened my eyes to entire revelations about my own identity. I believe that other POC’s [people of color] are able to relate to Hong’s experience. 

“With this, I shall leave you with my arguably favorite quote in the book”, Martinez writes. 

‘Moreover, I had to contend with this we. I wished I had the confidence to bludgeon the public with we like a thousand trumpets against them. But I feared the weight of my experiences – as East Asian, professional class, cis female, atheist, contrarian – tipped the scales of a racial group that remains nonspecific that I wondered of there was any shared language between us. And so, like a snail’s antenna that’s been touched, I retracted the first person plural.’