Shelf Life: Jaquira Díaz

Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you’re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.

Six years after her 2019 memoir Ordinary Girls hit shelves, Jaquira Díaz is out with her debut novel, This Is the Only Kingdom, about a mother and daughter in the aftermath of a murder. The book, the author says, is a “tribute to the real people who inspired it”: her father, a man named Rey (whose life and death were immortalized in the 1984 Pedro Conga song “Rey el Chino”), and “the salseros who came from my hometown” of Humacao, Puerto Rico. “This Is the Only Kingdom started as a story that was passed down by my father—I heard other versions from family members and people in our community over the years,” Díaz continues. “It’s the story I’ve been writing my whole life...After many iterations, the [book] became the story of a fictional family, set in a fictional place that exists only in my imagination.”

The Puerto Rico-born, New York-based, Whiting Award-winning author studied music as a kid; has bilingual dreams; attended the University of Central Florida; teaches writing at Columbia University; was in the military and worked as a pharmacy technician; wrote about her home country in the wake of 2017’s Hurricane Maria; contributed to the 2018 New York Times project “A Florida Fairy Tale, in 10 Parts” alongside fellow writers including Karen Russell and Lauren Groff; would be a librarian if she weren’t a writer/professor; and will serve as co-executive producer for the TV adaptation of Ordinary Girls. She is currently at work on another novel, a second memoir (a sequel to Ordinary Girls), and an essay collection.

“Before I was a writer, I was a reader,” Díaz says. “But I grew up reading about people who were not like me at all. Growing up in Miami Beach in the late ’80s and ’90s, I spent so much time at the library, and I read everything the librarians put in my hands, which ended up being books written mostly by cisgender, heterosexual white men. I didn’t read a book (written in English) by a Latine writer until I was in college. Esmeralda Santiago’s When I Was Puerto Rican changed my life—it was the first time I realized that we Puerto Rican people existed in American literature written in English, and that I could write about people like us. Later, I discovered amazing queer Black Puerto Rican writers like Mayra Santos-Febre and Yolanda Arroyo Pizzaro. If my work can inspire even a fraction of what these brilliant, talented women have inspired—generations of readers and writers—then I would consider myself lucky.”

Peruse her book recommendations below.

The book that...:…helped me through a loss:

Aracelis Girmay’s Kingdom Animalia. After losing my mother in 2024, I’ve kept this book close, as I think about grief and connectedness and return to the natural world in search of something meaningful.

...made me weep uncontrollably:

Cristina Rivera Garza’s Liliana’s Invincible Summer. There’s so much wisdom and pain in this book, and Rivera Garza’s excavation and recreation is meticulous.

...I recommend over and over again:

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal’s Magical / Realism. This is one of my favorite books of all time. Villarreal is an absolute genius of a writer, cultural critic, and thinker.

…I read in one sitting; it was that good:

Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season. This book. This book! There is something irreverent and unapologetic about this novel. Melchor’s characters are so flawed and complex and human.

…currently sits on my nightstand:

Jennifer Hope Choi’s The Wanderer’s Curse and Quiara Alegría Hudes’s The White Hot. These are both books I read relatively fast, so I’m enjoying returning to them in short spurts. Choi is an amazing essayist and journalist, and The Wanderer’s Curse is inquisitive and beautifully written. It made me want to get on a plane and travel the world alone, look at art, and talk to fortune tellers. Hudes’s The White Hot is a blazing-hot scream of a novel: music and desire and motherhood and white-hot rage. Absolutely stunning.

...I’d like turned into a TV show:

Lilliam Rivera’s Tiny Threads. A feminist horror story written by a Puerto Rican fashion icon? This needs to be on screen right now. I’d also love a Toni Morrison anthology series that covers every single one of her novels: a Beloved remake, Song of Solomon, Sula, The Bluest Eye, all of them. And Phillip B. Williams’s Ours, which is one of the most beautifully written novels I’ve ever read—definitely in conversation with Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and most of her work, I think.

...changed my life:

Toni Morrison’s Beloved definitely made me rethink what was possible in fiction. It altered how I thought of hauntings, and how they’re not just supernatural occurrences but cultural inheritance. And Esmeralda Santiago’s When I Was Puerto Rican was the first book that made me believe it was possible to be a writer. It shook my world. It was the first time I paused to think, We exist. People like us exist in American literature.

…has a sex scene that will make you blush:

Caro De Robertis’s The Palace of Eros. This book was so sexy and so much fun. A sapphic and genderqueer romance and Greek myth retelling. We definitely need a sequel. And a movie. Somebody please make a Palace of Eros movie!

….helped me become a better writer:

Hanif Abdurraqib’s They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. The way Abdurraqib writes about music and culture, always looking back toward home, definitely made me think about why I write about music, and who I’m writing for.

...is a master class on dialogue:

Angie Cruz’s How Not To Drown in a Glass of Water. Not just dialogue, but voice and style as well. Angie Cruz’s talent for styling sentences is rare. This is an understated gem of a book.

…describes a place I’d want to visit:

Cleyvis Natera’s The Grand Paloma Resort. The setting for Natera’s novel is alluring and evocative: a pristine beach, set against the backdrop of a Dominican community. But there’s much more than place—there’s history, family secrets, and a moving literary thriller.

…should be on every college syllabus:

Caro De Robertis’s So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color. Much more than an oral history, this book beautifully weaves together many necessary voices. Your heart will grow after reading this powerful book.

…I consider literary comfort food:

Durga Chew-Bose’s Too Much and Not the Mood is the book I turn to after moving homes, ending a relationship, and (recently) falling in love. A collection of lyrical and incisive essays and cultural criticism, this book is a treasure. And finally, Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s The Man Who Could Move Clouds is one of my favorite memoirs of all time. I have read it at least three times since it came out, and I think I will return to it at least once a year.

Bonus question: If I could live in any library or bookstore in the world, it would be...

The Bodleian Library in Oxford.