Reading Around the World

by Adrian Mendoza ‘25

As the school year comes to an end, many Trojans are anticipating returning to their homes across the country and around the world. Others will be traveling to countries entirely new to them, and some will be staying put this summer, swiping through their peers' Instagrams sharing their travel adventures. If you won’t be venturing beyond the four walls of your bedroom this summer, one way you can get the same wealth of cultural knowledge as your traveling peers is by reading books set in various places around the world.

Bellies

Setting: England/Malaysia/United States

This novel takes place primarily in England centering two main characters who meet at a college party: a recently-out British gay man named Tom, and a Malaysian trans woman named Ming. The story follows the evolving relationship between these two characters and how their dynamics change when Ming comes out as trans. A portion of the novel also takes place in Malaysia as Ming returns home during breaks in the school year and also features travels to the United States.

Young Mungo

Setting: Scotland

Young Mungo is a coming of age story that follows a teenage boy named Mungo growing up in Glasgow with his two older siblings and a loving but unreliable mother who struggles with alcoholism. Despite being in an environment where everyone is trying to toughen Mungo, he is a sweet-natured and loveable character. The novel opens with Mungo at the start of a fishing trip he was sent on with friends of his mother, and the timeline shifts back and forth between this trip in the woods and the events leading up to him being sent away.

My Sister, the Serial Killer

Setting: Nigeria

My Sister, the Serial Killer is set in Nigeria and centers around two sisters who come from a wealthy family. The oldest sister, Korede, is a tidy perfectionist who works in a hospital while the younger sister, Ayoola, is free-spirited and self-assured with a bad habit of murdering her boyfriends. The novel explores the strength of familial bonds and how far a protective older sister will go to cover up the messes of her younger sister.

Tender is the Flesh

Setting: Argentina

Tender is the Flesh takes place in a dystopian Argentina that has legalized cannibalism in response to a virus that makes animal flesh deadly to humans. The story follows Marcos, who works at a human meat processing plant, when he is gifted a young woman who he is expected to slaughter and eat like cattle. Despite his job where Marcos was once numb to the atrocities that have become normalized, he feels a growing conviction that makes him question and resent the system he has become so immersed in.

Giovanni’s Room

Setting: France

 In Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin draws on his own life trajectory as a New Yorker who moved to Paris in his young adulthood and tells a story of a man named David who similarly moved from New York to 1950s Paris. During this period, David begins an intense affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender at a gay bar he occasionally visits. All the while, David waits for his fiancée to return to him from her trip to Spain. This novel was written at a time where James Baldwin grappled with his identity as a gay man as well as a Black writer who decidedly chose to write White characters for this story.

Mexican Gothic

Setting: Mexico

Like the name suggests, Mexican Gothic is a twist on Southern Gothic literature set in rural Mexico. It follows a headstrong heiress named Noemí who steps away from her lavish life in Mexico City to check in on her cousin in the Mexican countryside after receiving notes claiming her cousin’s husband has been poisoning her. Upon arrival, Noemí is repeatedly scolded for her outspokenness by her hosts, the family of her cousin’s husband, and grows suspicious of their starkly conservative and allusive behavior.

Open Water

Setting: England

Open Water is a gut wrenching love story between two unnamed protagonists who meet at a party and undergo a project together to highlight Black creators in London like themselves–a photographer and a dancer. The book explores Blackness in London and has a constant, palpable tension between the two protagonists. Written in striking lyrical prose, entirely in the second person, this short book packs a punch with its realistic relationship dynamics and social commentary.

Before The Coffee Gets Cold

Setting: Japan

Set in a little coffee shop, tucked away into a corner of Tokyo, Before The Coffee Gets Cold poses the question of what people would tell those from their pasts if they had just a few minutes to sit down with them for coffee. Throughout the book, people of various backgrounds come in for the opportunity to travel back in time but have only until their coffee gets cold to finish their business and return back to the present. Combining its fantastical premise with the mundane nature of a quiet coffee shop, this short novel gets at the heart of the human condition with an emphasis on loss and regret but not without the hopeful note of receiving closure.

Against the Loveless World

Setting: Kuwait/Jordan/Palestine

Against the Loveless World opens with our main character Nahr locked in an Israeli solitary confinement cell called “the Cube.” Nahr then narrates the sequence of events that led her to this imprisonment beginning with her beginnings as the child of Palestinian refugees in Kuwait. It then follows her journey through Jordan and Palestine as she struggles for Palestinian liberation. This book is powerful and ever-the-more necessary. Susan Abulhawa blesses readers with the level of insight she can reflect back into fiction.

Want more from Trojans 360?

Visit Trojans 360 on Facebook & Twitter to stay up to date with more student content! You can also Ask A Trojan an anonymous question, and we’ll try to answer it in a future post. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram!

Trojans 360 is USC’s official student-run blog. Content created by students, for students.