Favorite Books of 2022
Everything I loved the most reading-wise in 2022.
In 2022, I read over 260 books. How, you may ask? I think a lot people fail to account when they stare at me in wonder is that at least thirty of those books were poetry and cookbooks. That being said, there’s nothing wrong with reading a lot of those books, either. A thought I’ve been having as a writer and author myself is that people often pigeonhole themselves into an aesthetic or genre, which isn’t something that might not help you in your journey as a creative. Some people weren’t meant to write the same thing over and over again, and genre often is a construct with a lot of hidden rules you may not agree with.
I used to love reading a child. I don’t see this as much with my sister’s children, since they have screens, but my mother used to take us all the time to the library and my other sister and I were children. I used to get this huge stack of books every single week, read all of them, and then do it again the following week. I also wrote a lot of stories as a child, which is probably where I cultivated my love for the written word. In 2022, I wanted to reclaim that love I had as a kid, and I think I did that pretty well.
These were the favorite books I ended up reading throughout the year.
Poetry
Selected Poems, Ai Qing
The Warhol Pillows by Diane Wald
The Past by Wendy Xu
Girls That Never Die by Safia Elhillo
Di Serambi edited by I. Brown
What Noise Against the Cane by Desiree C. Bailey
Voyage of the Sable Venus by Robin Coste Lewis
Floaters by Martin Espada
How to Not Be Afraid of Everything by Jane Wong
The Age of Phillis by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
American Faith by Maya C. Popa
Fiction
When You Call My Name by Tucker Shaw
The Red Palace by June Hur
Tell Me I”m An Artist by Chelsea Martin
When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar
Gods of Want by K-Ming Chang
What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam Chancy
Violets by Shin Kyung-sook
Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung
Beasts of a Little Land by Juhea Kim
Nonfiction
The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez
Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Old Poets by Donald Hall
Ten Restaurants That Changed America by Paul Freedman
Red Comet: The Blazing Art and Life of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark
To Write As If Already Dead by Kate Zambreno
Dear Memory by Victoria Chang
The Lost Art of Dying by Lydia S. Dugdale
Metropolis by Ben Wilson
The Migrant’s Table: Meals and Memories in Bengali-American Households by Krishnendu Ray
Surviving Genocide by Jeffrey Ostler
What Artists Wear by Charlie Porter
Cookbooks
My Korea by Hooni Kim
Kolkata: Recipes from the Heart of Bengal by Rinku Dutt
On the Himalayan Trail: Recipes and Stories from Kashmir to Ladakh by Romy Gil
All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China by Carolyn Phillips
My Shanghai by Betty Liu
Istanbul and Beyond: Exploring the Diverse Cuisines of Turkey by Robyn Eckhardt
Ammu: Home Indian Cooking by Asma Khan
