100 Books Like Homesick

A really great short story collection can sweep you off your feet and take you to a lot of different places, in a way that novels can't quite manage. And Swamy's debut collection is haunting in the best possible way. These dreamlike stories feature characters who are lost and dislocated, carried along by other people's desires, and the best of them have something to say about art as well as relationships. In one story, an artist who is descending into alcoholism gets into a relationship with the god Krishna, and in another, a "laughter artist" has perfected her laughter to the point where all laughter seems artificial. Swamy conveys the feeling of being lost but seen, in a really beautiful, arresting way.

I love reading novels and stories that make me wish I’d written them, and this collection by Kelly Link made me wish that time and time again. This book also introduced me to the concept of fabulism, a form of magical realism where elements of the fantastic occur in everyday settings, which is something I find compelling both as a reader and as a writer. Link combines humor, fantasy, magical realism, and more than a touch of horror to create a collection of stories that is unique, weird, and wonderful. 

This story collection is mind-blowing in the best way. As its name suggests, a lot of the stories in this book deal with immigrants, including Chinese people who've immigrated to the United States, but also rural people who've migrated to cities. Chai's characters are struggling to balance traditional Confucian values with postmodern urban existence, and a lot of these stories feature tensions between different generations in a single-family. The best story is probably the award-winning "Fish Boy," in which a boy moves from the Chinese countryside to the big city and ends up working at a seafood restaurant whose offerings sound pretty unappetizing. Chai is brilliant at picking up on the subtle nuances of damaged families, and every one of these stories hits home.

Yap's debut collection is full of brilliant moments and haunting images. She wraps together Filipino folklore with characters who are endlessly rich and fascinating, and the result is sometimes terrifying, sometimes weird and unsettling, and always gorgeous. This book will leave you feeling as if uncanny worlds are waiting for you to discover them, just out of view. Many of these stories go to dark places, but then you stumble on a sweet tale like "A Spell For Foolish Hearts," involving a gay magician, a love potion, and a complicated relationship. You'll wish you could read this book for the first time more than once.

Jordy Rosenberg does something clever and innovative with the historical fiction genre and reimagines the historical figure of Jack Sheppard as a transgender man. This is a bit of a two-for-one as there’s also the metatextual story, told through footnotes, of a contemporary trans academic who comes across the ‘confessions’ of Jack. It’s playful, knowing, and slippery. It made me think a lot about the nature of history and what we project onto the people of the past. It pairs beautifully with the Bad Gays podcast. 

I’ve never been to the marsh and fenlands of East England, but the descriptions of them in this book have made me really want to visit them!

This beautiful and immersive novella is a winter-solstice-themed story about a woman and a genderqueer character who have nothing in common except for their mysterious, chaotic, magical, missing boyfriend. His magical experiment goes wrong and finding him requires them to cooperate. They make their way through a strange and wonderful set of clues that bring them closer together. Layla and Nat were both so richly drawn, and the contrast between their ordinary lives and the eerie, ineffable nature of the magic made the book so memorable for me. The whole cast is marvelously queer, and I laughed out loud a couple of times. A gem.

Written by one of my favorite historians, this novel explores the rooms and homes that shaped Jane Austen and her timeless literary career. Home indeed shapes us, defines us, and even imbues our work as Lucy Worsley shows. A unique look into the life of a beloved novelist that adds rich layers to the fictional world of Austen and fleshes out her settings of Longbourn, Netherfield, Barton Cottage, etc. 

Family is not just a metaphor- it resides in a physical place, and that place is home. I found this book extremely valuable because it takes an anthropological approach to the meaning of home, exploring the sociological, historical, and even scientific reasons why home is so fundamental to the human condition. The image of a hearth stands out most from this book: that the most fundamental way for humans to make food - fire - created the foundation for viewing home as a place that is crucial to our nourishment and flourishing. This basic aspect of human survival led to a space of protection, peace, comfort, and security- a home. And where there is home, there is family.

I have lived in modest quarters all my life. I believe it would scramble my sense of self if I moved to an opulent, showy house. Home is identity; identity is home.

This is a collection of short memoir pieces by women about the concept of home. In these essays, women bring spouses, children, parents, pets, languages, plants, neighbors, and nature into their home worlds, seeking and sometimes finding comfort and peace. Or, feeling the lack of a home, they travel the world to look for one.

In a sense, this book is about all the searching women do just to feel right with ourselves. Just to find a place where our interior worlds can flourish.

As a child, I sometimes sensed the problems of the world and felt an anger at my helplessness to solve them.

The first time I read Kincaid’s writing, I was struck by the way in which she captured those feelings of frustration. She channels a well-worded rage at the ruling class, in this case focused on the treatment—socially, culturally, and environmentally—of Antigua.