Contacting My Name, by debut article author Liara Tamani, can be a striking, luminous, and literary exploration of family members, spirituality, and self-ideal for readers of Jacqueline Woodson, Jandy Nelson, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Sandra Cisneros.

This unforgettable novel tells a universal coming-of-age story about Taja Dark brown, a young African American girl growing up in Houston, Texas, and it deftly and beautifully explores the universal struggles of growing up, battling family expectations, discovering a feeling of self, and finding a distinctive voice and purpose.

Informed in fifty-three brief, episodic, moving, and iridescent chapters, Calling My Name follows Taja on her journey from middle college to high school. Literary and noteworthy, this is a beauty of a book that deftly captures the multifaceted struggle of obtaining where you belong and just why you matter.