The 2022 One Book, One San Diego selection, The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett.

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond the issues of race, it considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations.

Teen Selection: The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

Children Selection: We are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom and Michaela Goade

• Watch Brit Bennett discuss colorism and racial passing on The Daily Show
• Check out Trung Le Nguyen’s reading of The Magic Fish for the International Literacy Association
• Watch Michaela Goade speak about indigenous representation and illustration for TIME.

The 2021 One Book, One San Diego selection, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of A Disability Rights Activist by Judith Heumann.

Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist tells the personal story of Judith Heumann’s lifelong campaign to gain respect and acceptance in a world that didn’t initially recognize the rights of the disabled. Paralyzed from polio at a young age, she became one of the most influential disability rights activists in US history.

Teen Selection: When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed

Children Selection: All the Way to the Top: How One Girl's Fight for Americans With Disabilities Changed Everything by Annette Bay Pimentel

• Check out Judith Heumann’s amazing TED Talk
• Watch a short clip of Omar Mohamed reading from When Stars Are Scattered or watch the official trailer
• Watch Annette Bay Pimentel reading All the Way to the Top and also an amazing interview of Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins  (begins at 11:40)

The 2020 One Book, One San Diego selection, "They Called Us Enemy" by George Takei.

For adult readers, Spanish readers and young adult readers, 2020's selection was They Called Us Enemy (Nos Llamaron Enemigo) by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott and Harmony Becker. For children, the selection was Write to Me by Cynthia Grady and illustrated by Amiko Hirao.

The 2019 One Book, One San Diego selection, "The Great Believers" by Rebecca Makkai.

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico’s funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico’s little sister.

Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.

Guide to "The Great Believers"

The 2018 One Book, One San Diego selection, March: Book One, by Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell.

This graphic novel is Congressman John Lewis' first-hand account of his lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. Book One spans Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a climax on the steps of City Hall. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington D.C., and from receiving beatings from state troopers, to receiving the Medal of Freedom awarded to him by Barack Obama, the first African-American president.

Guide to "March: Book One"

In 2017 One Book, One San Diego was proud to present The Sandcastle Girls by New York Times bestselling novelist Chris Bohjalian.

The Sandcastle Girls is a multi-generational tale that spans nearly 100 years.  It is initially set in Syria during World War I and focuses on the Armenian Genocide. “These days it is very important for me to tell people that I am the grandson of two Middle Eastern immigrants,” Bohjalian said. “We are a nation of refugees and immigrants. The novel is set in Aleppo - yes, that Aleppo that has broken all of our hearts the last five years - and the city as it appears in the novel exists now only in romance and memory.”

Teen/Tween Selection: I Remember Beirut by Zeina Abirached 
Kids Selection: My Beautiful Birds by Suzanne Del Rizzo
One Book Sin Fronteras Selection: La Bastarda de Estambul by Elif Shafak

Guide to "The Sandcastle Girls"

In 2016 One Book, One San Diego was proud to present Waiting for Snow in Havana by National Book Award-winning author, Carlos Eire.

Waiting for Snow in Havana is Carlos Eire’s beautiful, nostalgia-laced memoir of his childhood in Cuba, the country he left in 1962 at age 11. Using humor, magical realism and lyrical language, Eire paints a portrait of a childhood shattered forever by the Cuban Revolution. He was one of 14,000 Cuban children brought to the U.S. without their parents as part of Operation Peter Pan. He is now a professor of religion and history at Yale University.

Guide to "Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy"

In 2015 One Book, One San Diego was proud to present The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Read the KPBS article to learn more about our 2015 author and book. The accompanying young adult (middle school) title is The Dumbest Idea Ever! by Jimmy Gownley and the children's companion title is The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce.

In 2014 One Book, One San Diego was proud to present Monstress: Stories by Lysley Tenorio. The accompanying young adult (middle school) title was American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang and the children's companion title was Cora Cooks Pancit by Dorina K. Lazo Gilmore.

In 2013 One Book, One San Diego was proud to present Geraldine Brooks' novel Caleb's Crossing. The accompanying young adult (middle school) and children's companion titles were Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Leitich Smith and Sees Behind Trees by Michael Dorris.