All Books - - Items tagged as "Coming-of-age"

As a boutique press, Two Dollar Radio publishes bold works of literary merit, each book, individually and collectively, providing a sonic progression that we believe to be too loud to ignore.
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For a preview of each book, click on the "Sneak Peek" tab on each book's page, or check out our Issuu page here to view them all: Two Dollar Radio on Issuu
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QUICK VIEW Pages of Mourning (FORTHCOMING)
a novel by
Diego Gerard Morrison
2024!
"Very funny and very sad and very, very smart. Unafraid to make his fiction work on and around questions of unambiguous gravity, Morrison never forgets the importance, indeed the power, in the endeavor of play."
—Laird Hunt, author of Zorrie
Pages of Mourning is a stunning achievement, a pioneering and inventive novel that confronts family history, creativity, Magical Realism, and the impact of violence from Mexico’s drug war, by a magnificent new talent in Diego Gerard Morrison.
Pages of Mourning (FORTHCOMING)
a novel by
Diego Gerard Morrison
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99A daring, captivating, darkly funny novel that grapples with uncertainty and loss in a land of violence and superstition, while questioning whether Magical Realism as a genre is capable of confronting the brutal dissonance of a country that awaits the return of the missing while not wholly acknowledging their death.
Pages of Mourning is a stunning achievement, a pioneering and inventive novel that confronts family history, creativity, Magical Realism, and the impact of violence from Mexico’s drug war, by a magnificent new talent in Diego Gerard Morrison.
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QUICK VIEW I Sing to Use the Waiting (FORTHCOMING)
a collection of essays by
Zachary Pace
January 2024!
"[A] miraculous and fun and deeply cool book that’s really about sound and our relationship to it, gendered, historic, mortal and true."
—Eileen Myles
With remarkable grace, candor, and a poet’s ear for prose, Zachary Pace recounts the women singers — from Cat Power to Madonna, Kim Gordon to Rihanna — who shaped them as a young person coming-of-age in rural New York, first discovering their own queer voice.
I Sing to Use the Waiting (FORTHCOMING)
a collection of essays by
Zachary Pace
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99With remarkable grace, candor, and a poet’s ear for prose, Zachary Pace recounts the women singers — from Cat Power to Madonna, Kim Gordon to Rihanna — who shaped them as a young person coming-of-age in rural New York, first discovering their own queer voice.
With remarkable grace, candor, and a poet’s ear for prose, Zachary Pace recounts the women singers — from Cat Power to Madonna, Kim Gordon to Rihanna — who shaped them as a young person coming-of-age in rural New York, first discovering their own queer voice.
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QUICK VIEW The Holy Days of Gregorio Pasos
a novel by
Rodrigo Restrepo Montoya
"There’s a warmth and solemnity to Gregorio’s voice, as he reflects on death and strain, and the almost inarticulable woe of being an immigrant in the States post-2016. Restrepo Montoya, with poignancy, precision, and subtle force, explores the choices that lead us to the places we end up, and what we carry with us in memory and in action."
—Nina MacLaughlin, Boston Globe
Entrancing and sentimental, told with wit and sharp insight, The Holy Days of Gregorio Pasos examines the joys and traumas of the Latinx American experience through the lens of a young man awakening to the nuances of identity, love, colonization, and home.
The Holy Days of Gregorio Pasos
a novel by
Rodrigo Restrepo Montoya
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99"Prescient and timeless, dealing with the inseparability of life and decay, this story, through it all, allowed me to sit deeply with love, family, and forgiveness. Pay attention, a refreshingly honest and singular voice has arrived."
—Dantiel W. Moniz, author of Milk Blood HeatEntrancing and sentimental, told with wit and sharp insight, The Holy Days of Gregorio Pasos examines the joys and traumas of the Latinx American experience through the lens of a young man awakening to the nuances of identity, love, colonization, and home.
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QUICK VIEW Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere
a memoir by
Robert Lopez
"Original and fearless... This is a sharply written, incisive, and extremely engaging meditation on assimilation that will strike a painful chord with many who have suffered from the same erasure of their culture in this country."
—Daniel A. Olivas, Latino Book Review
Through family recollection, the constant banter volleyed across nets within Brooklyn’s diverse tennis community, as well as an imagined fabulist history drawn from his grandfather’s remembered traits, Robert Lopez paints a compassionate portrait of family that attempts to bridge the past to the present, and re-claim a heritage threatened by assimilation and erasure.
Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere
a memoir by
Robert Lopez
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 9.99"A masterpiece clear and honest and alive to the world and its contradictions. Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere will hit you where you live."
—Justin Torres, author of We the AnimalsRobert Lopez’s grandfather Sixto was born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, in 1904, immigrating to the United States in the 1920s, where he lived in a racially proportioned apartment complex in East New York, Brooklyn, until his death in 1987. The family’s efforts to assimilate within their new homeland led to the near complete erasure of their heritage, culture, and language within two generations.
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QUICK VIEW The Red-Headed Pilgrim
a novel by
Kevin Maloney
"The Red-Headed Pilgrim is a revelation that achieves starry dynamo-level energy from the jump. Maloney's prose is sharp and vivid, full of trippy precision, and his story is funny, wild, painful and wise."
—Sam Lipsyte, author of Hark and The Ask
Provocative, poignant, and resoundingly hilarious, The Red-Headed Pilgrim is the tragicomic tale of an anxious red-head and his sordid pursuit of enlightenment and pleasure (not necessarily in that order).
The Red-Headed Pilgrim
a novel by
Kevin Maloney
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 9.99"The Red-Headed Pilgrim is a revelation that achieves starry dynamo-level energy from the jump. Maloney's prose is sharp and vivid, full of trippy precision, and his story is funny, wild, painful and wise."
—Sam Lipsyte, author of Hark and The AskThe Red-Headed Pilgrim is an irresistible novel of misadventure and new beginnings, of wanderlust and maybe bad decisions, of parenthood and divorce, and of the heartfelt truths we unearth when we least expect it.
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QUICK VIEW They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
a collection of essays by
Hanif Abdurraqib
Hardcover: Nov 2022!
A Best Book of 2017
"Funny, painful, precise, desperate, and loving throughout. Not a day has sounded the same since I read him."
—Greil Marcus, Village Voice
In this collection of essays, Hanif Abdurraqib, acclaimed poet and cultural critic, grapples with a storm cloud of confounding emotions with prose that is immediate, personal, poetic, sometimes funny and always deeply touching. They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
a collection of essays by
Hanif Abdurraqib
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 9.99*Best Books of 2017 —NPR, Buzzfeed, Paste Magazine, Esquire, Chicago Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, CBC, Stereogum, National Post, Entropy, Heavy, Book Riot, Chicago Review of Books, The Los Angeles Review, Michigan Daily
*American Booksellers Association (ABA) 'December 2017 Indie Next List Great Reads'
*Midwest Indie BestsellerIn an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly. In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now. While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of black Americans, Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers: for attempting to enter his own car. In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—along with original, previously unreleased essays—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.
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QUICK VIEW She Is Haunted
a collection of stories by
Paige Clark
Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, Shortlist
2022 Stella Prize, Longlist"In turns devastating and hilarious, Clark’s exceptional debut collection cuts right to the emotional core of its characters and their conflicts in stories that examine Asian identity, familial relationships, climate anxiety, and gender with an astonishing sense of nuance and clarity."
—Publishers Weekly, starred
With an unforgettable voice and exuberant wit, She Is Haunted is a masterful debut exploring issues of identity, connection, and loss, told with remarkable grace and assurance by Chinese/American/Australian author, Paige Clark.
She Is Haunted
a collection of stories by
Paige Clark
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 9.99"She Is Haunted is electrically original in both prose style and energy. Fans of inventive fiction such as Elizabeth Tan’s recent Readings Prize-winning Smart Ovens for Lonely People or Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties will find much to admire about She Is Haunted, but this collection will also resonate with anyone drawn to stories of identity and connection, especially female friendships and mother-daughter relationships. An absolute pleasure to read."
—Stella Charls, bookseller at Readings CarltonA ballerina nurses an injured leg and struggles to learn Cantonese while her husband dances on an international tour of Don Quixote with a new female lead; a mother cuts her daughter’s hair because her own hair begins falling out; a woman undergoes brain surgery in order to live more comfortably in extreme temperatures; a woman attempts to physically transform into her dead husband so that she does not have to grieve.
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QUICK VIEW New Animal
a novel by
Ella Baxter
Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, Shortlist
"For fans of Sally Rooney’s brand of millennial malaise and Six Feet Under’s tragicomic take on the mortuary business, New Animal is at turns graphic, raw and tender—a wholly human exploration of the Venn diagram of emotion."
—Sarah Stiefvater, PureWow
New Animal is a poignant, darkly comedic look at human connection from a biting and original new voice in Ella Baxter.
New Animal
a novel by
Ella Baxter
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99"A story about sex, connection and, comically, the Tasmanian BDSM scene, that is by turns profound and funny."
—Kylie Northover, The AgeNew Animal is a poignant, darkly comedic look at human connection from a biting and original new voice in Ella Baxter.
Amelia Aurelia is approaching thirty and her closest relationships — other than her mother — are through her dating apps. She works at the family mortuary business as a cosmetic mortician with her eccentric step-father and older brother, whose throuple’s current preoccupation is with what type of snake to adopt. When Amelia’s affectionate mother passes away without warning, she is left without anchor. Fleeing the funeral, she seeks solace with her birth-father in Tasmania and stumbles into the local BDSM community, where her riotous attempts to belong are met with confusion, shock, and empathy.
Hilarious and heartfelt, New Animal reveals hard-won truths as Amelia struggles to find her place in the world without her mother, with the help of her two well-intentioned fathers and adventures at the kink club. -
QUICK VIEW 808s & Otherworlds
a collection of essays and poetry by
Sean Avery Medlin
"Most Anticipated"
—Lambda Literary, Paperback Paris"Don’t sleep on the unpredictable 808s & Otherworlds… an elegant mash of memoir, poetry, tales of appropriation, thoughts on Black masculinity, Hulk, Kanye.
—Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune
From the gut-wrenchingly real stories of young lovers unmythed by segregation or former classmates appropriating Black culture, to the fantastic settings of Hip-Hop songs and comic characters, Medlin weaves a tapestry of worlds and otherworlds while composing a love letter to family and self, told to an undeniably energetic beat. 808s & Otherworlds
a collection of essays and poetry by
Sean Avery Medlin
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99* "September’s Most Anticipated LGBTQIA+ Literature" —Lambda Literary
* "Most-Anticipated New LGBTQIA+ Books of 2021" —Paperback Paris“Like the light of an event horizon, this work races toward and struggles against the gravity of Blackness. Lovechild of Sun Ra and Sailor Moon, Sean Avery Medlin sings into the narrow space between hope and rage, bridging political and pop culture galaxies. If our suburbs have become burnt-out satellites circling a world long lost to racism, this book is our S.O.S., transmitting radio waves for searchers and survivors. What an expansive and timely poetic voice!”
—Amaud Jamaul Johnson, author of Imperial Liquor, Red Summer, and Darktown Follies808s & Otherworlds: Memories, Remixes, & Mythologies announces a bold and incendiary new voice in Sean Avery Medlin. Against the backdrop of the Phoenix suburbs where they were raised, Medlin interrogates the effects of media misrepresentation on the performance of Black masculinity. Through storytelling rhymes and vulnerable narratives in conversation with both contemporary Hip-Hop culture and systemic anti-Blackness, 808s & Otherworlds pieces together a speculative reality where Blackfolk are simultaneously superhuman and dehumanized.
From the gut-wrenchingly real stories of young lovers unmythed by segregation or former classmates appropriating Black culture, to the fantastic settings of Hip-Hop songs and comic characters, Medlin weaves a tapestry of worlds and otherworlds while composing a love letter to family and self, told to an undeniably energetic beat.
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QUICK VIEW Born Into This
a collection of stories by
Adam Thompson
A Best Book of 2021
Winner: The Story Prize Spotlight Award
Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, Shortlist
Age Book of the Year award, Finalist“With its wit, intelligence and restless exploration of the parameters of race and place, Thompson’s debut collection is a welcome addition to the canon of Indigenous Australian writers.”
—Thuy On, The Guardian
With humor, pathos, and the occasional sly twist, Thompson’s characters confront discrimination, untimely funerals, classroom politics, the ongoing legacy of cultural destruction, and — overhanging all like a discomforting, burgeoning awareness for both black and white Australia — the inexorable disappearance of the remnant natural world. Born Into This
a collection of stories by
Adam Thompson
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 15.99"The Tasmanian landscape and a whole host of engaging, charming and well drawn characters populate the stories that make up Born Into This… a wonderful reminder that there is no monolithic Aboriginal Australian."
—Simon Clark, The AU ReviewFrom an Aboriginal ranger trying to instill some pride in wayward urban teens on the harsh islands off the coast of Tasmania, to those scraping by on the margins of white society railroaded into complex and compromised decisions, Adam Thompson presents a powerful indictment of colonialism and racism.