"A dazzling collection of stories based in part on his/her life... Readers will want to consume these bonbons slowly because they are so rich and delicious." - Gay City News &nbsp; "Chilean American writer Ojeda dazzles and devastates in this rich collection about a group of trans Latinx immigrants as they try to make it in New York City." - Publishers Weekly Drawing from his/her own experience as a trans performer, sex worker, and undocumented immigrant, Iván Monalisa Ojeda chronicles the lives of Latinx queer and trans immigrants in New York City. Whether she is struggling with addiction, clashing with law enforcement, or is being subjected to personal violence, each character choses her own path of defiance, often responding to her fate with with irreverent dark humor. What emerges is the portrait of a group of friends who express unquestioning solidarity and love for each other, and of an unfamiliar, glittering and violent, New York City that will draw readers in and swallow them whole. On every page, Iván Monalisa's unique narrative talent is on display as he/she artfully transforms the language of the streets, making it his/her own -- rich with rhythm and debauchery. This bold new collection positions Ojeda as a fresh and necessary voice within the canon of world literature.

Las Biuty Queens: Stories

Literature & Fiction

Ojeda, Iván Monalisa

United States

Astra House

"Li Juan spent minus-20-degree nights with nomadic herders in the Chinese steppes. You'll want to join her." --Laura Miller,&nbsp;Slate &nbsp; "Deeply moving...full of humor, introspection and glimpses into a vanishing lifestyle." --The New York Times Book Review Winner of the People's Literature Award, WINTER PASTURE has been a bestselling book in China for several years. Li Juan has been widely lauded in the international literary community for her unique contribution to the narrative non-fiction genre. WINTER PASTURE is her crowning achievement, shattering the boundaries between nature writing and personal memoir. Li Juan and her mother own a small convenience store in the Altai Mountains in Northwestern China, where she writes about her life among grasslands and snowy peaks. To her neighbors' surprise, Li decides to join a family of Kazakh herders as they take their 30 boisterous camels, 500 sheep and over 100 cattle and horses to pasture for the winter. The so-called "winter pasture" occurs in a remote region that stretches from the Ulungur River to the Heavenly Mountains. As she journeys across the vast, seemingly endless sand dunes, she helps herd sheep, rides horses, chases after camels, builds an underground home using manure, gathers snow for water, and more. With a keen eye for the understated elegance of the natural world, and a healthy dose of self-deprecating humor, Li vividly captures both the extraordinary hardships and the ordinary preoccupations of the day-to-day of the men and women struggling to get by in this desolate landscape. Her companions include Cuma, the often drunk but mostly responsible father; his teenage daughter, Kama, who feels the burden of the world on her shoulders and dreams of going to college; his reticent wife, a paragon of decorum against all odds, who is simply known as "sister-in-law." In bringing this faraway world to English language readers here for the first time, Li creates an intimate bond with the rugged people, the remote places and the nomadic lifestyle. In the signature style that made her an international sensation, Li Juan transcends the travel memoir genre to deliver an indelible and immersive reading experience on every page.

Winter Pasture: One Woman's Journey with China's Kazakh Herders

Biographies & Memoirs

Juan, Li

Community & Culture

This award-winning debut novel by Iranian journalist Nasim Marashi follows the lives of three young women in Tehran over the course of two seasons as they pursue their wildly different dreams even as they discover that it may mean breaking with the past and endangering their longstanding friendship. Three recent college graduates in Tehran struggle to find their footing in this award-winning debut by Iranian journalist Nasim Marashi. Roja, the most daring of the three, works in an architecture firm and is determined to leave Tehran for graduate school in Toulouse. Shabaneh, who is devoted to her disabled brother and works with Roja, is uncertain about marrying a colleague as it would mean leaving her family behind. Leyla, who was unable to follow her husband abroad because of her commitment to her career as a journalist, is wracked with regret. Over the course of two seasons, summer and fall, in bustling streets and cramped family apartments, the three women weather setbacks and compromises, finding hope in the most unlikely places. Even as their ambitions cause them to question the very fabric of their personalities and threaten to tear their friendship apart, time and again Roja, Shabaneh and Leyla return to the comfort of their longtime affection, deep knowledge and unquestioning support of each other. Vividly capturing three very distinct voices, Marashi's deeply wrought narrative lovingly brings these young women and their friendship to life in all their complexity.

I'll Be Strong for You: A Novel

Marashi, Nasim

Literary

Nasim Marashi

Product Description 
"This vigorous, inventive work will surely fire up readers' neurons." — Starred Review, Publisher's Weekly For fans of Etgar Keret, a debut collection that fuses the humor of everyday life in Israel with technology's challenges and the latest discoveries about the human brain.\nAt once compassionate, philosophical, and humorous, 
Jerusalem Beach is a foray into the human condition in all its contradictions. Through a series of snapshots of contemporary life in Israel, Gefen reveals a world that’s a step from the familiar.\nA man’s grandfather joins an army platoon of geriatrics looking for purpose in old age. A scheming tech start-up exposes the dire consequences of ambition in trying to share human memories. An elderly couple searches for a beach that doesn’t exist. And, a boy mourns his brother’s death in an attempt to catch time like flies in his fist.\nEntirely heartfelt and infused with pathos, 
Jerusalem Beach is an exploration of both technology and the brain. Whether ruminating on the stakes of familial love or pitching the reader headlong into the absurdity of success and failure, Gefen leaves the reader intrigued throughout. 
 Review 
"This vigorous, inventive work will surely fire up readers' neurons."\n— Starred Review, Publisher's Weekly 
“[Gefen's] philosophical concerns and ability to combine humor with grim resignation to the conditions of everyday life in Israel recall Etgar Keret.” 
— Kirkus Reviews"Gefen makes imagined destinations as tangible as Tel Aviv, the Negev desert or Hadera. His characters and backdrops demonstrate the breadth of a people and a country and will make readers eager to see what he does next." 
 — Shelf Awareness \n"The stories in Iddo Gefen's 
Jerusalem Beach are a series of original and, many times truly inspiring, attempts to seek and find humanity and tenderness at the least predictable places."\n— Etgar Keret, author of Fly Already\n“ 
Jerusalem Beach accomplishes the impossible—at once playful and wrenching, surprising and organic, these stories are instant classics, if classics could somehow come from the future. Gefen’s is a once-in-a-generation voice.”\n— Shelly Oria, author of 
New York 1, Tel Aviv 0 
“Ironic, stirring, funny and exhilarating, 
Jerusalem Beach is a brilliant debut, and Gefen may be the best Israeli short story writer since Etgar Keret.”\n— Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, author of Waking Lions\n"Sad and funny and full of wisdom and truth."\n— Amos Oz, author of A Tale of Love and Darkness\n“ 
Jerusalem Beach signals the confidence and the probing talent of a mature writer, confident in his craft, who knows how to control a complicated storyline with an unexpected, enjoyable twist, while creating distinct characters that speak in many unique voices.” \n— Arianne Melamed, Haaretz\n“Iddo Gefen is the voice of his generation. But he’s also a voice that’s somewhat wiser than his generation; one that observes from the sidelines, or rather, from the perspective of an eighty-year-old grandfather...[ 
Jerusalem Beach] is a fresh, imaginative and bold debut.” \n— Eshkol Nevo, author of Three Floors Up“A few of the pre­cise and often star­tling sto­ries in Iddo Gefen’s excel­lent debut col­lec­tion may remind some read­ers of Etgar Keret’s whim­si­cal approach to life’s absur­di­ties, but Gefen’s voice is assured­ly unique among younger Israeli writ­ers whose short sto­ries often seem to con­tain the deep emo­tion­al com­plex­i­ties of entire nov­els. [...] Gefen proves adept at tak­ing read­ers into very dark places while offer­ing qui­et notes of com­pas­sion and consolation.” 
— Ranen Omer-Sherman, Jewish Book Council 
 About the Author 
Iddo Gefen was born in 1992 in Israel and currently resides in Tel Aviv. He works in neurocognitive research at the The Immersive Media & Cognition Group in Sagol Brain Institute, Sourasky Medical Center and Tel Aviv University, exploring how storytelling can improve our understanding of the human mind. Iddo le

Jerusalem Beach: Stories

Gefen, Iddo

Humor & Satire

Product Description 
Starting with the viral poem “Crossing Half of China to Fuck You,” Yu Xiuhua’s raw collection in Fiona Sze-Lorrain's translation chronicles her life as a disabled, divorced, single mother in rural China.\nYu Xiuhua was born with cerebral palsy in Hengdian village in the Hubei Province, in central China. Unable to attend college, travel, or work the land with her parents, Yu remained home where she could help with housework. Eventually she was forced into an arranged marriage that became abusive. She divorced her husband and moved back in with her parents, taking her son with her.\nIn defiance of the stigma attached to her disability, her status as a divorced single mother, and as a peasant in rural China, Yu found her voice in poetry. Starting in the late 90’s, her writing became a vehicle with which to explore and share her reflections on homesickness, family and ancestry, the reality of disability in the context of a body’s urges and desires.\nThen, Yu's poem “Crossing Half of China to Fuck You” blew open the doors on the patriarchal and traditionalist world of contemporary Chinese poetry. She became an internet sensation, finding a devoted following among young readers who enthusiastically welcomed her fresh, bold, confessional voice into the literary canon.\nThematically organized, Yu’s essays and poems are in conversation with each other around subjects that include love, nostalgia, mortality, the natural world and writing itself. 
 Review 
​“...a lyrical translation by Fiona Sze-Lorrain...The ruminative essays, rendered in elegant but somewhat mannered prose, offer context and insight on her life and poetry, [...] The poems, which compress her thoughts into daring and disconcerting forms, are another matter. [...] The multiplicity, therefore, becomes essential, as the poems are rarely frozen in a single feeling. Yu renders her life in a way that is irreducible.” \n— Chris Littlewood, The Washington Post\n“Yu Xiuhua’s writing is steeped in the imagination [...] Many of the poems included in this work are moving precisely because of how they register the limits of the imagination, rather than its transformative capacities. [...] Rejecting the poetics of metaphor, lines like [Yu’s] call on us to look closely, listen carefully, and notice the world around us.”\n—Rebecca Ruth Gould, Harriet Books, the Poetry Foundation\n"Yu Xiuhua’s 
Moonlight Rests on My Left Palm, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain, grows out of highly personal terrain. This farmer-poet says in an essay ( 
Moonlight is sectioned by eight lyrical essays): 'We have man-handled so many words that I only dream of using them anew.' Yu says exactly what she means; and Sze-Lorrain honors the feeling and music in intimate translation. Thus, the poet’s language rises out of the natural, tinged by elemental soil and light."\n—Yusef Komunyakaa, author of 
Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth “‘Truth once spoken tends to be false,’ writes Yu Xiuhua in her incredible debut of essays and poems. I am smitten with Yu’s powerful writing, erotic poetry, and reflections on disability in daily life. One poem reads, ‘So risky, so heavy / O this love.’ I want nothing but risk in poetry and I feel proud to be a disabled poet in Yu’s company.”\n—The Cyborg Jillian Weise, author of Common Cyborg\n“I love reading these poems and essays by Yu Xiuhua. I feel befriended by them, by her. Courage, honesty, a love of words, and a wry sense of humor run through the pages of 
Moonlight Rests on My Left Palm, translated with grace and simplicity by Fiona Sze-Lorrain. When Yu writes in an essay, ‘There is no better ode to life than a weed that grows ruthlessly and arches out of the ground, despite its trauma,’ we know she is telling us her own story. And yet, in a poem called ‘Wheat Has Ripened,’ she says, ‘I am pleased to have landed here / like a sparrow skirting through the sky-blue.’ How can we be anything but grateful to a poet who ends a poem of love lost: ‘I s

Moonlight Rests on My Left Palm: Poems and Essays

Xiuhua, Yu

Essays & Correspondence

Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

Product Description 
**CONVERSATIONS YOU NEED TO BE HAVING WITH YOUR FAMILY THIS HOLIDAY SEASON** *Named a Kirkus Reviews "Best Book of 2021"* "Becoming Abolitionists is ultimately about the importance of asking questions and our ability to create answers. And in the end, Purnell makes it clear that abolition is a labor of love—one that we can accomplish together if only we decide to."—Nia Evans, Boston Review\nFor more than a century, activists in the United States have tried to reform the police. From community policing initiatives to increasing diversity, none of it has stopped the police from killing about three people a day. Millions of people continue to protest police violence because these "solutions" do not match the problem: the police cannot be reformed.\nIn 
Becoming Abolitionists, Purnell draws from her experiences as a lawyer, writer, and organizer initially skeptical about police abolition. She saw too much sexual violence and buried too many friends to consider getting rid of police in her hometown of St. Louis, let alone the nation. But the police were a placebo. Calling them felt like 
something, and something feels like everything when the other option seems like nothing.\nPurnell details how multi-racial social movements rooted in rebellion, risk-taking, and revolutionary love pushed her and a generation of activists toward abolition. The book travels across geography and time, and offers lessons that activists have learned from Ferguson to South Africa, from Reconstruction to contemporary protests against police shootings.\nHere, Purnell argues that police can not be reformed and invites readers to envision new systems that work to address the root causes of violence. 
Becoming Abolitionists shows that abolition is not solely about getting rid of police, but a commitment to create and support different answers to the problem of harm in society, and, most excitingly, an opportunity to reduce and eliminate harm in the first place. 
 Review 
"An informed, provocative, astute consideration of salvific alternatives to contemporary policing and imprisonment." \n—Starred Review, 
Kirkus\n"Part memoir, part essay, and part argument, 
Becoming Abolitionists is an organizing tool itself, inviting in skeptics and offering a bridge to committed activists in other movements."\n—Lyra Walsh Fuchs, Dissent 
"Far from avoiding the tough questions, Purnell dives in headfirst. Drawing from history, she deftly connects the roots of violence to the racial and economic hierarchies police are charged with maintaining, arguing that precarity cannot be eradicated by the people who are paid to protect it. 
Becoming Abolitionists is ultimately about the importance of asking questions and our ability to create answers. And in the end, Purnell makes it clear that abolition is a labor of love—one that we can accomplish together if only we decide to."\n—Nia Evans, Boston Review\n"Drawing upon a Black radical tradition of social movements, 
Becoming Abolitionists reveals the power of self-study, collective political education, and resistance to reform efforts to inspire a new generation of activists. Purnell offers a persuasive and warm invitation to us all to deliver on the promise 
and potential of abolition."\n—Aida Mariam Davis, 
Stanford Social Innovation Review\n"[Purnell] draws convincing parallels between the past and the present to demonstrate that today’s policing systems are vestiges of this oppressive framework ... She is in such command of her material [that] even if you disagree with her, you are compelled to listen."\n—The Guardian (UK)\n"Through deft historical research, political analysis, and gutting prose, the book uses a variety of approaches to map Purnell’s complex and fulfilling political evolution." 
— 
The Cut 
"Part memoir, part political and social commentary, the St. Louis native’s genre-bending book demonstrates her road to adopting abolitionist politics and makes the argument for why the new abolitioni

Politics & Social Sciences

Purnell, Derecka

Social Sciences

Farah Nayeri addresses the difficult questions plaguing the art world, from the bad habits of Old Masters, to the current grappling with identity politics.\nFor centuries, art censorship has been a top-down phenomenon--kings, popes, and one-party states decided what was considered obscene, blasphemous, or politically deviant in art.\nToday, censorship can also happen from the bottom-up, thanks to calls to action from organizers and social media campaigns. Artists and artworks are routinely taken to task for their insensitivity. In this new world order, artists, critics, philanthropists, galleries and museums alike are recalibrating their efforts to increase the visibility of marginalized voices and respond to the people’s demands for better ethics in art.\nBut what should we, the people, do with this newfound power?\nWith exclusive interviews with Nan Goldin, Sam Durant, Faith Ringgold, and others, Nayeri tackles wide-ranging issues including sex, religion, gender, ethics, animal rights, and race.\nBy asking and answering questions such as: Who gets to make art and who owns it? How do we correct the inequities of the past? What does authenticity, exploitation, and appropriation mean in art?, Takedown provides the necessary tools to navigate the art world.

Takedown: Art and Power in the Digital Age

Arts & Photography

Nayeri, Farah

History & Criticism

Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

Product Description 
"A feverish story of young adulthood, exploring how fandom and obsession shape how we relate to the world . . . Dreaming of You navigates the complexities of Latinx identity, self-loathing, love, and the loneliness of drifting into adulthood." —Miguel Salazar, Vulture"At the center of this exploration of insecurities, joys, and identity stands Melissa Lozada-Oliva—an unapologetic poet who isn’t afraid of the rawness of the mind and is resilient in her writing— so much so that it feels like we’re talking to our best friend." —Bianca Pérez, Porter House ReviewA macabre novel in verse of loss, longing, and identity crises following a poet who resurrects pop star Selena from the dead.\nMelissa Lozada-Oliva's 
Dreaming of You is an absurd yet heartfelt examination of celebrity worship.\nA young Latinx poet grappling with loneliness and heartache decides one day to bring Tejano pop star Selena Quintanilla back to life. The séance kicks off an uncanny trip narrated by a Greek chorus of gossiping spirits as she journeys through a dead celebrity prom, encounters her shadow self, and performs karaoke in hell.\nIn visceral poems embodying millennial angst, paragraph-long conversations overheard at her local coffeeshop, and unhinged Twitter rants, Lozada-Oliva reveals an eerie, sometimes gruesome, yet moving love story.\nPlayfully morbid and profoundly candid, an interrogation of Latinidad, womanhood, obsession, and disillusionment, 
Dreaming of You grapples with the cost of being seen for your truest self. 
 Review 
"Poet and writer Melissa Lozada-Oliva is an unstoppable force within the poetry world." \n—Laysha Macedo, HipLatina 
"The novel is narrated in verse, a device that could feel gimmicky in less capable hands than Lozada-Oliva’s, but instead melds with the macabre-yet-gossipy subject matter to create an unforgettable portrait of a public figure who to many seemed larger than life."\n—Emma Specter, Vogue"Crackly and energetic, with poignancy beneath; for Latinx and millennial readers, plus poetry lovers interested in new voices." 
 —Library Journal 
"One of the most original releases of the year Melissa Lozada-Oliva's surreal fusion of poetry and prose . . . [is] gruesome yet heartfelt, macabre yet intimate, brimming with life on every page."\n— 
Chicago Review of Books\n"Themes of celebrity, fandom, grief, queer identity, and loneliness feature in this novel in verse about a poet who resurrects Tejano pop star Selena. This story is as absurd and magical as it sounds."\n—Casey Stepaniuk, Autostraddle\n"Melissa Lozada-Oliva's surreal novel-in-verse is sure to delight and surprise readers . . . You may know and love Selena's voice, but Lozada-Oliva's is utterly new, original, and worth hearing, too."\n—Elena Nicolaou, Oprah Daily\n"Obsessive, inventive, and exceedingly funny, Lozada-Oliva’s debut sets a new platinum standard for a tricky genre."\n—Diego Báez, Booklist\n"An enjoyably madcap journey through the wasteland of fame, popular culture, and feminine identity in a post-colonial world."\n—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review 
"A feverish story of young adulthood, exploring how fandom and obsession shape how we relate to the world . . . 
Dreaming of You navigates the complexities of Latinx identity, self-loathing, love, and the loneliness of drifting into adulthood."\n—Miguel Salazar, Vulture"... a macabre love story that casts an inquisitive eye on Latinidad, womanhood, and celebrity worship."\n— Keely Weiss, Harper's Bazaar\n"At the center of this exploration of insecurities, joys, and identity stands Melissa Lozada-Oliva— an unapologetic poet who isn’t afraid of the rawness of the mind and is resilient in her writing— so much so that it feels like we’re talking to our best friend."\n—Bianca Pérez, Porter House Review\n"With the intensity and fluidity of a fever dream, Lozada-Oliva situates the figure of the assassinated superstar—'a star I can only see because it has died'—alongside the protagonist

Lozada-Oliva, Melissa

This Weightless World: A Novel

"It's precisely Soto's refusal to be 'weighted' down by decades of genre tradition, to instead turn the trope on its head and in doing so remind us that no-one but ourselves is coming to save us, that makesThis Weightless Worldsuch an exciting and radical novel."-Ian Monde, Locus "Set in Silicon Valley and Chicago, This Weightless World considers questions of morality in a world where people feel powerless in the face of formidable systemic forces." -Laura Adamczyk, A.V. Club A literary debut subverting classic sci-fi tropes set in gentrified Chicago, Silicon Valley, and across the vastness of the cosmos. From the streets of gentrified Chicago, to the tech boom corridors of Silicon Valley, This Weightless World follows a revolving cast of characters after alien contact upends their lives. We are introduced to Sevi, a burned-out music teacher desperate for connection; Ramona, his on-again, off-again computer programmer girlfriend; and Sevi's cello protege Eason, struggling with the closure of his high school; after a mysterious signal arrives from outer space. When the signal-at first seen as a sign of hope-stops as abruptly as it started, they are all forced to reckon with its aftermath. In San Francisco, Sevi fights to find meaning in rekindled love; and Ramona-determined to build an AI to prevent mankind's self-destruction-begins to feel the weight of past mistakes. And in Chicago, Eason measures his commitment to an estranged childhood friend against the chance of escaping neighborhood troubles. A dazzling deconstruction of science fiction tropes, This Weightless World looks to the past for a vision of the future.

Soto, Adam

Genre Fiction

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

Books by Astra House

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

Las Biuty Queens: Stories

Winter Pasture: One Woman's Journey with China's Kazakh Herders

I'll Be Strong for You: A Novel

I'll Be Strong for You: A Novel

Jerusalem Beach: Stories

Moonlight Rests on My Left Palm: Poems and Essays

Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

Takedown: Art and Power in the Digital Age

Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse

This Weightless World: A Novel