Keystone Poetry

This Is Not About Us

When their beloved sister passes away, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein are unmoored. A misunderstanding about apple cake turns into a decade of stubborn silence. Busy with their own lives—divorces, dating, career setbacks, college applications, bat mitzvahs and ballet recitals—their children do not want to get involved. As for their grandchildren? Impossible.

With This Is Not About Us, master storyteller Allegra Goodman—whose prior collection was heralded as “one of the most astute and engaging books about American family life” (The Boston Globe)—returns to the form and subject that endeared her to legions of readers. Sharply observed and laced with humor, This Is Not About Us is a story of growing up and growing old, the weight of parental expectations, and the complex connection between sisters—a big-hearted book about the love that binds a family across generations.

More Adult Books

  • In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor.

  • A stunning visual homage to Black bookstores, featuring a selection of shops around the country alongside essays that celebrate the history, community, activism, and culture these spaces embody, with an original foreword by Nikki Giovanni. Black literature is perhaps the most powerful, polarizing force in the modern American zeitgeist. Today—as Black novels draw authoritarian ire, as Black memoirs shape public debates, as Black polemics inspire protest petitions—it’s more important than ever to highlight the places that center these stories: Black bookstores. Traversing teeming metropolises and tiny towns, Prose to the People explores a these spaces, chronicling these Black bookstore’s past and [...]

  • Velma Wallis shares the love, loss, and struggle that mark her coming of age in a two-room cabin at Fort Yukon, Alaska, where she is born in 1960.