Memorial by Bryan Washington

A 2020 debut novel from the up-and-coming Washington (his short story collection, Lot, won the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for gay fiction), Memorial introduces us to Benson, a Black day care teacher, and Mike, a Japanese-American chef who live together in Houston. The couple’s domestic life is upended when Mike leaves for Japan to spend time with his dying father in Osaka — just as his mother, Mitsuko, arrives in Houston for a visit and becomes an unlikely roommate with Benson. Told alternately from Mike and Benson’s perspectives as each man undergoes a personal reckoning during their time apart, the novel takes up perennial themes — love, family and the meaning of home — with keen insight into matters of race and identity.