One of Barack Obama’s “Favorite Books of the Year” "Phenomenal" --Justin Torres, author of We the Animals "Brilliant" --Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun “A profound exploration of the true meaning of borders.” —The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2019 in the New York Times by Dwight Garner A New York Times Notable Book of 2019 In the city of Houston - a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America - the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He's working at his family's restaurant, weathering his brother's blows, resenting his older sister's absence. And discovering he likes boys. Around him, others live and thrive and die in Houston's myriad neighborhoods: a young woman whose affair detonates across an apartment complex, a ragtag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, hurricane survivors, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, a reluctant chupacabra. Bryan Washington's brilliant, viscerally drawn world vibrates with energy, wit, raw power, and the infinite longing of people searching for home. With soulful insight into what makes a community, a family, and a life, Lot explores trust and love in all its unsparing and unsteady forms.

Lot: Stories

Literature & Fiction

Washington, Bryan

United States

Riverhead Books

Penguin Publishing Group

A&nbsp;NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times,&nbsp;The Washington Post, TIME, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair,&nbsp;O, the Oprah Magazine, Esquire, Marie Claire,&nbsp;Harper's Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Refinery29, Real Simple, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, and Lit Hub "A masterpiece."&nbsp;--NPR "No other novel this year captures so gracefully the full palette of America." --The Washington Post "Wryly funny, gently devastating." --Entertainment Weekly A funny and profound story about family in all its strange forms, joyful and hard-won vulnerability, becoming who you're supposed to be, and the limits of love. &nbsp; Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson's a Black day care teacher, and they've been together for a few years--good years--but now they're not sure why they're still a couple. There's the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other. But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives in Texas for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye. In Japan he undergoes an extraordinary transformation, discovering the truth about his family and his past. Back home, Mitsuko and Benson are stuck living together as unconventional roommates, an absurd domestic situation that ends up meaning more to each of them than they ever could have predicted. Without Mike's immediate pull, Benson begins to push outwards, realizing he might just know what he wants out of life and have the goods to get it. Both men will change in ways that will either make them stronger together, or fracture everything they've ever known. And just maybe they'll all be okay in the end.

Memorial: A Novel

Product Description 
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEARA GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK\nNamed a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, O, the Oprah Magazine, Esquire, Marie Claire, Harper's Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Refinery29, Real Simple, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, and Lit Hub\n“A masterpiece.” —NPR\n“No other novel this year captures so gracefully the full palette of America.” —The Washington Post\n“Wryly funny, gently devastating.” —Entertainment Weekly\nA funny and profound story about family in all its strange forms, joyful and hard-won vulnerability, becoming who you're supposed to be, and the limits of love.\nBenson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson's a Black day care teacher, and they've been together for a few years—good years—but now they're not sure why they're still a couple. There's the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other.\nBut when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives in Texas for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye. In Japan he undergoes an extraordinary transformation, discovering the truth about his family and his past. Back home, Mitsuko and Benson are stuck living together as unconventional roommates, an absurd domestic situation that ends up meaning more to each of them than they ever could have predicted. Without Mike's immediate pull, Benson begins to push outwards, realizing he might just know what he wants out of life and have the goods to get it.\nBoth men will change in ways that will either make them stronger together, or fracture everything they've ever known. And just maybe they'll all be okay in the end. 
 Review 
Praise for Bryan Washington 
 National Book Award 5 Under 35 
 Winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence 
Winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize 
 LOT was one of Barack Obama’s “Favorite Books of the Year”\nPraise for Memorial\n“Wryly funny, gently devastating … Washington’s hand is effortless—smooth dialogue, a love for good food, and his vibrant, sprawling, gradually gentrifying hometown—in inviting you into a nuanced love story that sticks to you like the Texas heat.” — 
Entertainment Weekly 
“ 
Memorial is a wonderful unconventional rom-com [and]. . . a radiant exploration of love’s permutations.” 
–O, The Oprah Magazine\n“A fresh, vibrant love story that interweaves race, queerness, nationality, family, and intimacy with narrative ease.” — 
Vogue\n“Implicit in a book about changing relationships and titled “Memorial” is the question of what is being preserved. The book preserves Houston and Osaka. It preserves the feeling of being young and lost. It preserves the food that gives us comfort and nourishment and purpose.” — 
The New York Times“Profoundly sensitive. . . . [and] unspool[s] as spontaneously and clearly as late-night conversation. . . . 
Memorial is a testament to the permanence of filial connections, a clear-eyed acknowledgment that our relatives don’t always behave nicely, but they’re with us for life.” — 
The Washington Post \n" 
Memorial isn't just every bit as brilliant as its predecessor. It's somehow even better.... The dialogue in the novel is pitch-perfect, but it's in the spaces between the talking — the awkward silences, the questions left unanswered — that the characters reveal themselves. It's a difficult tactic to pull off, but Washington does it masterfully... Washington is an enormously gifted author, and his writing — spare, unadorned, but beautiful — reads like the work of a writer who's been working for decades, not one who has yet to turn 30. Just like 
Lot, 
Memorial is a quietly stunning book, a masterpiece that asks us to reflect on what we owe to the people who enter our lives." — 
NPR\n“Washingt

Memorial: A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)

Family Meal: A Novel

From the bestselling, award-winning author of Memorial and Lot, an irresistible, intimate novel about two young men, once best friends, whose lives collide again&nbsp;after a loss. Cam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died. Kai's ghost won't leave Cam alone; his spectral visits wild, tender, and unexpected. When Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, he crashes back into the orbit of his former best friend, TJ, and TJ's family bakery. TJ's not sure how to navigate this changed Cam, impenetrably cool and self-destructing, or their charged estrangement. Can they find a way past all that has been said - and left unsaid - to save each other? Could they find a way back to being okay again, or maybe for the first time? When secrets and wounds become so insurmountable that they devour us from within, hope and sustenance and friendship can come from the most unlikely source. Spanning Los Angeles, Houston, and Osaka, Family Meal is a story about how the people who know us the longest can hurt us the most, but how they also set the standard for love. With his signature generosity and eye for food, sex, love, and the moments that make us the most human, Bryan Washington returns with a brilliant new novel.

Dramas & Plays

Lot: Stories (Thorndike Press Large Print African American)

Thorndike Press Large Print

Memorial (Thorndike Press Large Print Basic)

Ian James Foster sets out from the doldrums of Naptown to find fame and fortune in the Big Apple, but found himself singing The Roomie Do Me Blues instead.

The Roomie Do Me Blues

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

All I Didn't Say

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Washington, Bryan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Washington, Bryan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Washington, Bryan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Lot: Stories

Lot: Stories

Memorial: A Novel

Memorial: A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)

Family Meal: A Novel

Family Meal: A Novel

Lot: Stories (Thorndike Press Large Print African American)

Memorial (Thorndike Press Large Print Basic)

The Roomie Do Me Blues

All I Didn't Say