I became enamored of the vibrant subcultures and political movements flourishing then. The '70s and '80s were unusually frothy, dynamic, turbulent periods in San Francisco. My greatest challenge in writing Home Baked was figuring out how to unite my fascinations into one compelling narrative. As a bookseller, I can imagine it being shelved in different sections-San Francisco history, memoir, sociology.
Part of the brilliance of Home Baked is its depth. Eventually Meridy Volz provided medical marijuana to AIDS patients, leading California to groundbreaking cannabis legalization laws. Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27) is Alia Volz 's often hilarious memoir about growing up with her famous mother, who ran "Sticky Fingers Brownies," bringing joy to San Franciscans in the mid-1970s with her pot edibles. The plan for now is to continue exploring virtually, with the hope that one day I'll actually leave the house and resume travel, whatever that may look like in the future. The landscape is utterly transformed by turmoil but nothing can extinguish the lush, resilient beauty and powerful ancient roots of the country. Arudpragasam captures a single day in his life as war wages on. In Aruk Arudpragasam's A Story of a Brief Marriage (Flatiron, $15.99) a young Tamil refugee works at a makeshift hospital in a camp for displaced persons. Theo is enthralled by his homeland, "this beautiful place, with its idyllic landscape of sea and sky and glorious weather." Yet he is fatalistic about Sri Lanka's future, lamenting to his servant, "Has there ever been a country that, once colonized, avoided civil war?" Mosquito (Europa Editions, $16.95) by Roma Tearne features a writer named Theo who returns to his birthplace after years in England and falls in love with a young artist. Her soulful epic On Sal Mal Lane (Graywolf Press, $16) filters life at the cusp of war through the eyes of four spirited children living on a multiethnic street, a gorgeous rendering of how ordinary people summon extraordinary strength when it is required of them. It's been an intriguing journey, exploring Sri Lanka's tumultuous post-independence years through the stories of writers from the South Asian diaspora, beginning with the phenomenally talented Ru Freeman, who lives in the U.S. Formerly known as Ceylon, the island nation's difficult history of colonization was followed by a 25-year-long civil war that ended in 2009.
Some call it the pearl earring of India, dangling as it does off India's southeastern tip. On a recent armchair travel adventure, I visited Sri Lanka, a teardrop-shaped island in the Indian Ocean.
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