79 Books Like Tomorrow's Memories

I recommend this book because it is a no-holds-barred narrative of what it is like to be a male agricultural laborer in 1920s racially segregated America.

It is a gritty tale of how a mostly male migrant population survived racial discrimination and economic hardship, living in the labor camps and working for a dollar a day. It shows how these men found ways to cope and acquire dignity even while experiencing loneliness since it was difficult to find brides (due to anti-miscegenation laws). From dressing up in $100 tailor-made suits and smoking cigars to paying ten cents a dance at taxi dance halls to gambling, prostitution, and labor activism, it tells the story of the first generation of migrant laborers in the United States.

The author died of tuberculosis in 1956.

The standing men are the Filipino undocumented migrants to Japan who work as construction workers on a day-to-day basis. They stand on the Kotobuki sidewalk hoping to get selected by a sacho to get a job for the day. 

The book is an in-depth look at their lives—how the men who are considered the underclass in the host country struggle, find love (some of them have second families in Japan), experience leisure, and fulfill masculine ideals of breadwinner in a foreign country.

It is a rare glimpse at the life of an undocumented migrant. This book can be read with Rey Ventura’s Underground in Japan (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1992).

This book is a collection of many life stories of Filipino migrant domestic workers, mostly in Singapore. Since the authors of the accounts use pseudonyms, they are all insightful revelations of how these women cope with the issues of loneliness and separation from families.

The most interesting revelation is that some of these women have affairs (which they call ‘one day stands’ since they only have a day off and not the whole 24 hours) with South Asian men. I was surprised by this radical act—radical because Filipino constructions of the feminine idealise the ‘chaste wife’, and while men’s infidelity is tolerated in the homeland, women’s infidelity is not.

Finally, the book also testifies to these migrants’ strength, hard work, courage, and survival skills. 

This is an autobiography of Peter Jamero, who is a second generation Filipino American capturing what life was like growing up in a Filipino American farmworkers camp in California in the 1940s.

I was particularly struck by his comment “before I went to school my world consisted of Filipinos. Everyone else was a foreigner “ (p. 19) since he did not speak English until he went to grade school. I was moved when he said: “I looked at my image in the mirror and tried to wash my brown color away. But no matter how hard I scrubbed, the color was still there.” (p. 91).

He joins the US Navy and the Civil Rights Movement. I interviewed him in 2012, and he passed away in 2024 at the age of 94.

Being a Dracula fan, I was intrigued when I heard that Bloodline was its unofficial sequel. Bloodline is written in the form of journal entries and letters. While that isn’t my preferred writing style, it worked for this one. The story begins during World War I. The main character, John, sees some disturbing things concerning his regiment commander, Quincey. He doesn’t know why Quincey is so cruel but will understand in time. The mood was similar to the mood in Dracula. The vampire was the typical, evil vampire while the main character had to figure out what was going on and try to save the day. While not everything was resolved the way I wanted it to, I definitely enjoyed this novel and read the sequel also. I recommend it to people who like Dracula.

Elizabeth’s journey explores her early teen years with her tumultuous family, touching on her mother’s faint but tainted memory and her ailing father’s neglect, framed within the royal trappings.

This is a great book to share if you love British history and culture, and it gives a very interesting though somewhat tamed perspective of growing up in England during the reign of Henry VIII, all while placing the universal experiences of wanting to fit in, finding yourself the family outcast, and discovering the pains of politics.

Along with this series, Dear America and My Name is America series are all recommended as well. I have read many, if not all of them, and I’d like to read them with my kids, too.

This book captured me from start to finish. Like my book, this story is told in a gripping journal format. A meteor knocks the moon off its orbit and this causes catastrophic consequences on earth. Summer turns to a bitterly cold winter and Miranda and her two brothers and mother must figure out how they will survive in such harsh conditions. Having enough food to survive is a constant concern. This book helps us realize that when things get really awful, all that matters is food, water, staying warm, and remaining together as a family. All other concerns fall away. 

I recommend Lost Memoirs for finally giving us a love story from an author we all have enjoyed since 5th grade. A true artist in “putting us in her life,” Syrie James accomplishes this while giving us readers the feeling of friendship with Jane Austen within these pages of her lost memoirs...

This book is of the recently found letters and diaries of Jane Austen of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility fame in not only books, but movies made over the years. It begins with the Austen Family Tree, which revealed that Jane had not only her sister, Cassandra, but six brothers, all either clergymen or military men with titles and at least a modicum of wealth. This was quite enlightening to me, who has read her forever, but somehow I’d missed this important aspect of her life, which gives her insights into the minds of men, better… show more.

There are loads of great picture books that feature Australian animals but one of my favorites is Diary of a Wombat. It’s a very simple story told from the perspective of a wombat and it highlights their adorable, but also irascible and fairly destructive personalities. It’s incredibly difficult to pull off an ‘animal voice’ without it sounding like a person or a bit patronising, but Jackie French really nails it in this book, probably because of her extensive experience with looking after wombats. And the illustrations by Bruce Whatley are full of fun and joy. It makes me laugh every time I read it.

If wombats read books, I think this is the one they would love best, and what book about animals needs a better endorsement than that? 

After worshiping Leo Tolstoy and his writing for long decades, the much later discovery of Sophia’s diaries came to me as a huge revelation: I learnt that no writer or artist is an island, but always part of a human ecosystem that nurtures and feeds their art. In the case of Tolstoy, it was his family and most particularly his wife. In her personal writings we meet the woman behind the great writer, married to him for 48 years, and who bore him 13 children. She was pivotal to his work, encouraging and supporting his literary career. Through her pages, we find out about her love for Tolstoy and their tormented marriage, in which she often felt neglected and provoked. We see the hidden, dark side of the great man of letters, a vastly gifted but troubled individual, and we also learn about Sophia’s undying vital energy that allowed her… show more.