Crying in H Mart is an exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance. Michelle Zauner, known as the indie rock sensation Japanese Breakfast, proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up as one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; and of a painful adolescence.

Zauner shares treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band—and meeting the man who would become her husband—her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.

It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage.

The Facts of Life is a poignant and beautifully drawn graphic memoir by Paula Knight. This visual exploration delves deep into the stigma-inducing health issues of miscarriage, childlessness, and chronic medical conditions.

Set in the 1970s, best friends Polly and April collect hazy knowledge about the “facts of life”—sex, reproduction, and gender norms—through the gossip of older girls, magazines, and books, along with the everyday behavior of their families and teachers. As the years pass, they each choose paths they believe will enable them to “have it all.”

April’s dreams of motherhood come true quickly, while Polly enthusiastically builds a career. However, her desire and hope to start a family become less firmly ingrained, influenced by her struggles with chronic illness. Polly's journey with her partner Jack is fraught with debates on parenthood, heartbreak of repeated miscarriages, and the effects of illness on their ability to have a child.

Throughout this journey, Polly is forced to reexamine what family can mean in a society that often associates family—and womanhood—with children. The Facts of Life is a funny, sometimes painful narrative that explores what it takes to be a woman, a partner, and a mother... or not.