Published in 2023
320 pages
Shannon C.F. Rogers is a multiracial American writer of Filipinx and European descent. Her debut novel, I’d Rather Burn Than Bloom, was released in 2023. A former editor on Lunch Ticket, her work has appeared in Bodega Magazine and Newfound Journal as well as on stage with Tricklock Company, Lady Luck Productions, and the UNM Words Afire Festival of New Plays. Shannon earned her B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico and her MFA in Writing For Young People at Antioch University Los Angeles. She has served as an educator, after-school program director, and lost mitten finder at schools in Albuquerque, Chicago, and New York City. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
What is this book about?
Packed with voice, this is a powerful coming-of-age YA novel about a Filipina-American teen who tries to figure out who she really is in the wake of her mother’s death.
Some girls call their mother their best friend. Marisol? She could never relate. She and her mom were forever locked in an argument with no beginning and no end.
But when her mother dies suddenly, Marisol is left with no one to fight against, haunted by all the things that she both said and didn’t say. And when Marisol sleeps with her best friend’s boyfriend—and then punches said best friend in the face—she’s left alone, with nothing but a burning anger.
And Marisol is determined to stay angry. After all, there’s a lot to be angry about. But as a new friendship begins to develop, Marisol reluctantly starts to open up to her, and to the possibility there’s something else on the other side of that anger—something more to who she is, and who she could be.
