Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan. (from minjinlee.com).

NPR Review of Pachinko.

Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat

This memoir starts off momentously in 2004 when the author discovers she’s pregnant on the same day she learns that her father has end-stage pulmonary fibrosis. Danticat angles backward in time, sketching a family history marked by long absences and a backdrop of political unrest. While her parents tried to make a better life in Brooklyn, the author was raised in Haiti by her uncle Joseph. She depicts Joseph, a pastor in Port-au-Prince, as a quiet, dignified man who suffered as only good men do. Danticat alternates between her uncle’s and her father’s stories (from Kirkus reviews).

eBook available from NYPL.

A Haitian Tragedy: Brothers Yearn in Vain. From the New York Times. 

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever (from Penguin Random House Publishers).

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption’ from the Washington Post