Is reading more books a part of your New Year’s Resolution? If so, here are five new book releases for January that you can add to your TBR list! Our list features women writers of color with stories about self-love, brown and Black girlhood, immigration, and female friendships.

30 Things I Love About Myself by Radhika Sanghani

When Nina Mistry hits rock bottom on her thirtieth birthday, she makes a decision that will change her life.

Nina spends her thirtieth birthday in jail. There’s no WiFi, no wine, and no delicious carbs. All she has are her thoughts – and boy isn’t that depressing! Reflecting on her fresh break up with her fiance and her return to her childhood home with her depressed older brother and overbearing Indian mother, Nina feels like she doesn’t have much to look forward to. On top of that, her career as a freelance journalist isn’t as thriving as she’d hoped. Plus, all of her friends are too busy living successful lives to make time for her.

So she does something radical: she decides it’s time to begin focusing on herself again. She decides to fall in love with herself. By her next birthday, she will find 30 things she loves about herself.

Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho

Best friends since second grade, Fiona and Jane roam the streets of Los Angeles as teenagers. They survive unfulfilling romantic encounters and carry the scars of their families’ tumultuous pasts.

Fiona, effortless beauty with fierce ambition, was always destined to leave. When she moves to New York to help a friend, Jane remains in California, mourning her father’s sudden death. Their friendship becomes strained by distance and unintended betrayals, and the women float in and out of each other’s lives. Their friendship becomes a reminder of home and everything they’ve lost.

 

 

Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades

Andreades’s debut novel Brown Girls is an ode to the daughters of immigrants coming-of-age in Queens. They are girls with names that teachers butcher. Mariah Carey, Selena, and Aaliyah are the soundtrack to some of their best days. They run down sidewalks, passing brown boys on stoops and hop on buses and trains, laughing and taking up space.

But as they grow up, these brown girls become hyper-aware of their place in American society and the effect their skin color has on outward perception. Some of the brown girls succumb to tragedy. Others leave the streets of Queens for life beyond their corner of the borough.

 

Joan is Okay by Weike Wang (January 18, 2022)

Joan is an ICU doctor at a busy New York City hospital. She’s the daughter of Chinese parents whose goal was to ensure their children achieved their American dream. Once Joan and her brother Fang were established in their careers, their parents returned to China to live out the remainder of their lives. But when Joan’s father suddenly dies, her mother returns to America to reconnect with her children.

Suddenly, a series of events sends Joan spiraling out of control just as her hospital, her city, and the world face a more devastating health crisis than anyone could have imagined.

 

Violeta by Isabel Allende (January 25, 2022)

Violeta Del Valle was born during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1920 in South America. Her life happens alongside the most intense and influential socio-political events of the twentieth century.

The Del Valles begin their story as a wealthy family led by an ambitious and greedy businessman. The entire family survives the 1920 pandemic only to feel the devastating effects of the Great Depression soon after. They’re soon forced to uproot their city life for a rural existence. This is where Violeta’s coming-of-age story begins.

Told through letters from Violeta to her grandson, Camilo, this is a story of passion and determination shared with a sense of humor.

 

Breath Better Spent: living black girlhood by DaMaris B. Hill (January 25, 2022)

Hill revisits her childhood in narrative-in-verse, paying homage to prominent Black female figures like Toni Morrison, Whitney Houston, and Zora Neale Hurston.

She revisits the days of jelly sandals, Double Dutch beats, and chipped nail polish as a young girl and the pomegranate lips, turntables, and love letters to other girls’ boyfriends of her adolescence. Moving forward, she carries her childhood self into the historical space of Black girls in America, grappling with self-expression amid stereotypes, hyper-sexuality, heartache, and violence.

Hill invites readers to contemplate the question: what do the love and active protection of Black girls look like in a country like America?