'I cannot say enough about How to Read Now... Check it out' Roxane Gay 'A red-hot grenade... One of my favourite books of the year' Jia Tolentino 'Energetically brilliant, warmly humane, incisively funny' Andrew Sean Greer 'I gasped, shouted, and holler-laughed . . . Phenomenal' R.O. Kwon 'A wake-up call. A broadside. A rich and brilliant war cry' Chris Power How many times have we heard that reading builds empathy? That we can travel through books? How often have we were heard about the importance of diversifying our bookshelves? Or claimed that books saved our lives? These familiar words - beautiful, aspirational - are sometimes even true. But award-winning novelist Elaine Castillo has more ambitious hopes for our reading culture, and in this collection of linked essays, she moves to wrest reading away from the aspirations of uniting people in empathetic harmony and reposition it as thornier, ultimately more rewarding work. How to Read Now explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories. Smart, funny, galvanizing, and sometimes profane, Castillo attacks the stale questions and less-than-critical proclamations that masquerade as vital discussion: reimagining the cartography of the classics, building a moral case against the settler colonialism of lauded writers like Joan Didion, taking aim at Nobel Prize winners and toppling indie filmmakers, and celebrating glorious moments in everything from popular TV like The Watchmen to the films of Wong Kar-wai and the work of contemporary poets like Tommy Pico. At once a deeply personal and searching history of one woman's reading life, and a wide-ranging and urgent intervention into our globalized conversations about why reading matters today, How to Read Now empowers us to embrace a more complicated, embodied form of reading, inviting us to acknowledge complicated truths, ignite surprising connections, imagine a more daring solidarity, and create space for a riskier intimacy - within ourselves, and with each other.

'I cannot say enough about How to Read Now... Check it out' Roxane Gay 'A red-hot grenade... One of my favourite books of the year' Jia Tolentino 'Energetically brilliant, warmly humane, incisively funny' Andrew Sean Greer 'I gasped, shouted, and holler-laughed . . . Phenomenal' R.O. Kwon 'A wake-up call. A broadside. A rich and brilliant war cry' Chris Power How many times have we heard that reading builds empathy? That we can travel through books? How often have we were heard about the importance of diversifying our bookshelves? Or claimed that books saved our lives? These familiar words - beautiful, aspirational - are sometimes even true. But award-winning novelist Elaine Castillo has more ambitious hopes for our reading culture, and in this collection of linked essays, she moves to wrest reading away from the aspirations of uniting people in empathetic harmony and reposition it as thornier, ultimately more rewarding work. How to Read Now explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories. Smart, funny, galvanizing, and sometimes profane, Castillo attacks the stale questions and less-than-critical proclamations that masquerade as vital discussion: reimagining the cartography of the classics, building a moral case against the settler colonialism of lauded writers like Joan Didion, taking aim at Nobel Prize winners and toppling indie filmmakers, and celebrating glorious moments in everything from popular TV like The Watchmen to the films of Wong Kar-wai and the work of contemporary poets like Tommy Pico. At once a deeply personal and searching history of one woman's reading life, and a wide-ranging and urgent intervention into our globalized conversations about why reading matters today, How to Read Now empowers us to embrace a more complicated, embodied form of reading, inviting us to acknowledge complicated truths, ignite surprising connections, imagine a more daring solidarity, and create space for a riskier intimacy - within ourselves, and with each other.

Longlisted for the Aspen Literary Prize, 2019 Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, 2018 Longlisted for Elle's Big Book Award, 2018 Evening Standard's Wander List Guide to 2019 Getaways How many lives can one person lead in a single lifetime? When Hero De Vera arrives in America, disowned by her parents in the Philippines, she's already on her third. Her uncle, Pol, who has offered her a fresh start and a place to stay in the Bay Area, knows not to ask about the first and second. And his younger wife, Paz, has learned enough about the might and secrecy of the De Vera family to keep her head down. Only their daughter Roni asks Hero why her hands seem to scream with hurt at the steering wheel of the car she drives to collect her from school, and only Rosalyn, the fierce but open-hearted beautician, has any hope of bringing Hero back from the dead.

America Is in the Heart is a semi-autobiographical novel from the celebrated author Carlos Bulosan. Beginning with the young Carlos' difficult childhood in the rural Philippines where he and his family face immense hardship, this gripping story follows the narrator's tumultuous journey in search of a better life in America. This is an eye-opening account of the injustices, abuse and discrimination faced by immigrants in post-Second World War America.