The symbolism of the pure white labyrinthine hotel corridors in Percival Everett’s Dr.No is so potent. Dr. Wala Kitu realizes that “none of the corridors led to anything that might have taken [him] out of the building” and he never saw “a person or color.”

Roxane Gay’s piece in American Like Me (2018) edited by America Ferrera about Gay’s Haitian parents’ boundless and boundary-less love for her and her brothers deeply resonates with me.

Ephemera by Briana Loewinsohn (2023) is a graphic novel about a woman reliving her lonely and silent childhood days when her mother would be lost in deep melancholia. The book, nevertheless, exudes a sort of ethereal lightness that leaves one feeling deeply at peace with the way things are

In the Dark Places of Wisdom (1999) is a fascinating book. Its author Peter Kingsley describes it as “neither fact nor fiction.” The book transports us to the subterranean world of dreams, meditation, and incubation—the world which, Kingsley claims, brought the Western civilization into existence.

The Small Room (1961) is told from the point of view of Lucy Winter, a brand new professor at Appleton College in New England. Almost escapist in tone and texture, the novel doesn’t touch upon difficult subjects like race and class and treads very cautiously on the topic of gender.

James was such a fast read! I was done in seven days. It felt like I was going on the journey myself on the raft with Jim and Huck on the Mississippi River. The language is crystal clear and lyrical like the dialects it is infused with.