From the bookshelf last month...

Victory City, Salmon Rushdie :: A fascinating story about a fictional city in India called Bisnaga (which is the transliteration a foreigner's pronunciation of some words that mean Victory City). The story begins with a young girl named Pampa Kampana who sees the destruction and death of her village and afterward receives divine powers from a goddess. She uses her powers to magically create a whole city, its people, and its history from the ground. The novel is all about the rise and fall of that empire. I loved how it makes the reader think deeply about impact of stories on the reality we believe in and create.

City Limits, Megan Kimble :: An incredible look at how centering the design of cities on the automobile and interstates negatively impacts us. The author focuses mostly on major cities in Texas, but this is a book about all of us in all of our cities. Kimble's book is not just about decisions made in the past to build the highways we now have; it is about the forces, influences, policies, and decisions actively happening now. Until we dethrone the automobile as the one sacred, unquestionable object around which we orient our lives, we will keep designing cities of profound inequity that harm the environment, the economy, community cohesion, our mental health, and more.

Let Us Descend, Jesmyn Ward :: A powerful story about Annis, a young enslaved girl who gets separated from her mother and sold to another evil master. She endures unimaginable suffering while experiencing a deep, very tangible connection with her ancestors. The ancestors guide her as she deals with slavery and her escape from it.

The Last Interview, James Baldwin :: This is a compilation of a handful of the most compelling interviews of Baldwin's career, including his last while he was in the final stages of his battle with cancer. His words are still so painfully and powerfully relevant.