Books About Resilience and Rebirth from Perpich Library

January 22, 2026

This month, new library teaching assistant students created a wonderful display with books about resilience and rebirth. In stressful times, it is important to be resilient and willing to change in order to adapt in an ever-shifting world. These books reflect how others have learned how to do just that.

All items on this list are available at the Perpich library. Click on titles for more information.

1. The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir (Graphic Memoir) by Thi Bui
This beautifully illustrated and emotional story is an evocative memoir exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family. Bui documents the story of her family’s daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves.

2. Boys Run the Riot (Manga series, 4 volumes) by Keito Gaku
A transgender teen named Ryo finds an escape from the expectations and anxieties of his daily life in the world of street fashion. This personal, heartfelt, fictional story from a transgender manga creator made waves in Japan and will inspire readers all over the world. Library has all four volumes.

3. Displacement (Graphic Novel) by Kiku Hughes
Kiku is on vacation in San Francisco when suddenly she finds herself displaced to the 1940s Japanese-American internment camp that her late grandmother, Ernestina, was forcibly relocated to during World War II. These displacements keep occurring until Kiku finds herself “stuck” back in time. Living alongside her young grandmother and other Japanese-American citizens in internment camps, Kiku gets the education she never received in history class. She witnesses the lives of Japanese-Americans who were denied their civil liberties and suffered greatly, but managed to cultivate community and commit acts of resistance in order to survive.

4. Escaping Wars and Waves: Encounters with Syrian Refugees (Graphic Nonfiction) by Olivier Kugler
Based on many interviews, and hundreds of reference photos, Kugler’s beautifully observed drawings of his interviewees bring to life their location – a room, a camp, on the road: the stretch of tents on Kos, opposite the stalls selling trinkets to tourists. His reporting of their stories is peppered with snatches of conversation and images of the objects that have become such a significant part of their lives: a toilet roll, the rolling tobacco pouch, the mobile phone. Through Kugler’s complicated, intense graphic reportage, we empathize with those whose experiences he records.

5. A Gentleman in Moscow (Novel) by Amor Towles
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery. Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

6. The Good Lord Bird (Novel) by James McBride
Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1856–a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces–when legendary abolitionist John Brown arrives. When an argument between Brown and Henry’s master turns violent, Henry is forced to leave town–along with Brown, who believes Henry to be a girl and his good luck charm. Over the ensuing months, Henry, whom Brown nicknames Little Onion, conceals his true identity to stay alive. Eventually Brown sweeps him into the historic raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859–one of the great catalysts for the Civil War. An absorbing mixture of history and imagination, and told with McBride’s meticulous eye for detail and character, The Good Lord Bird is both a rousing adventure and a moving exploration of identity and survival.

7. Hungry Ghost (Graphic Novel) by Victoria Ying
Valerie Chu is quiet, studious, and above all, thin. No one, not even her best friend, Jordan, knows that she has been bingeing and purging for years. But when tragedy strikes, Val finds herself reassessing her priorities, her choices, and her body. The path to happiness may lead her away from her hometown and her mother’s toxic projections―but first she will have to find the strength to seek help.

8. Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More (Memoir) by Janet Mock
With unflinching honesty and moving prose, Janet Mock relays her experiences of growing up young, multiracial, poor, and trans in America, offering readers accessible language while imparting vital insight about the unique challenges and vulnerabilities of a marginalized and misunderstood population. Though undoubtedly an account of one woman’s quest for self at all costs, Redefining Realness is a powerful vision of possibility and self-realization, pushing us all toward greater acceptance of one another—and of ourselves—showing as never before how to be unapologetic and real.

9. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Novel) by Zora Neale Hurston
Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person–no mean feat for a Black woman in the ’30s. Janie’s quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.

10. With the Fire on High (Young Adult Novel) by Elizabeth Acevedo
Ever since she got pregnant freshman year, Emoni Santiago’s life has been about making the tough decisions—doing what has to be done for her daughter and her abuela. The one place she can let all that go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness. Even though she dreams of working as a chef after she graduates, Emoni knows that it’s not worth her time to pursue the impossible. Yet despite the rules she thinks she has to play by, once Emoni starts cooking, her only choice is to let her talent break free.

All items on this list are available at the Perpich Library.

Title descriptions are provided by Amazon and/or the publisher.