Names for Light, Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint

Winner of the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, this “absolutely lovely, lyric memoir is about four generations of a family from Myanmar.” Soriano notes that, aside from being one of the few memoirs by a writer from Myanmar that she knows of, perhaps because of political pressure, Names for Light is remarkable for another reason: “I actually opened up the book thinking it was going to be a lot more about repression. And I was happy to see it wasn’t about that. It really beautifully spotlighted lots of daily details, tales of interaction, how her great grandparents met. You know, some difficult, some quite inspiring stories of relationships in her families. And also one of the features that I love the most about this memoir is the way that reincarnation plays out…It’s very much not defensive or for the Western gaze. It’s very much like, ‘this is how it is.’”

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