Puerto Rico: A National History
Hidden Figures

Women Surrounded by Water: A Memoir

Longlisted, 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award, Autobiography Growing up in Puerto Rico, Patricia Coral was surrounded by women who fought for their needs amid the demands of domesticity and who were dismissed and judged when they rejected any predetermined paths on an island that itself has never been free. At age twenty-five, she married her first love, a green-eyed musician whose internal storms drove Coral to slowly realize that the marriage must end. Faced with disillusionment-with her husband, with the patriarchal expectations that surrounded her like the Caribbean Sea, and with the limited options available to her-she leaves, only for Hurricane Maria to wrench her heart homeward. Coral evokes the beauty, love, and language of her family and of Puerto Rico as well as the pain of yearning for more. Tastes, colors, and the dreamlike lushness of childhood memories infuse this mournful and propulsive memoir of personal and natural disasters-and the self-discovery made possible only when we choose what to leave behind.

Publisher: The Ohio State University Press

More Adult, Non-Juvenile Books

  • A stunning novel of hopes and dreams, guilt and love—a book that offers a resonant new definition of what it means to be American and "illuminates the lives behind the current debates about Latino immigration" (The New York Times Book Review).

  • The bestselling historical fiction novel from Kim Michele Richardson, this is a novel following Cussy Mary, a packhorse librarian and her quest to bring books to the Appalachian community she loves.
  • Burn Book by Kara Swisher

    From award-winning journalist Kara Swisher comes a witty, scathing, but fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead.

  • The relationship between Baley and his Spacer superiors, who distrusted all Earthmen, was strained from the start. Then he learned that they had assigned him a partner: R. Daneel Olivaw. Worst of all was that the “R” stood for robot.