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This is a lovely and often moving story of a German-American mother and daughter. The former is trying to ignore her deeds good and not-so-good in Weimar, Germany before and during World War II, and the latter, a historian, trying to discover and understand her mother's generation's experiences and behaviors in the Nazi regime. The story goes back and forth between daughter Trudy's modern day interview project and mother Anna's youthful struggles with love and providing for her daughter.

I'm not sure whether to class this book as memoir or essays. It's a series of essays about the author's family and about herself. It's person-focused, rather than linear. Normally I'm wary of that sort of thing, but I didn't mind it here. Njeri is a journalist, so each piece could appear by itself in a magazine. With the context of all of the other pieces, though, you get a more complete picture of the author than you would otherwise. Her family is huge, and she has a lot of facets to her own personality to explore. Still, there are some commonalities. Njeri is full of heart, also moxie. She is not uncritical of her family and herself, but she also shows a lot of love and understanding, even for the broken parts of her family and herself.

Zinester turned school librarian turned novelist Julie Halpern tells what seems like a very accurate depiction of life inside a teen mental health facility, complete with check out date determined by your insurance coverage. When I say "turned" that's misleading. Halpern manages to be all three at once, not giving up her ziney roots or her librarianship while publishing her books. Her protagonist Anna Bloom is likable and believable, but not too perfect; same goes for the rest of the characters. While she doesn't portray the hospital as a beacon of healing, she doesn't slam it too hard, and in fact at the end you feel that Anna's mental health has improved. However, you don't know for sure if that's because or in spite of the therapy. The main thing that Anna learns is how to be mad and be bad--two things that are vitally important for a young lady.

This is one of those not-a-novel novels: connected short stories told in multiple voices. The central character is Irene Wilson, a contemplative African-American coming of age in a negro area in Kansas City, Kansas around the same time someone named Brown was fixing to sue the Board of Education. I was dazzled by the first story, told in the first person by Irene, which takes place when she is in elementary school. The language is stylish and layered, and the characters deep and nuanced. I wish all of the stories had been by and about Irene, but the multiple voices are tolerable because it's not strictly a novel.