Title: Memorial
Description: Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson's a Black day care teacher, and they've been together for a few years—good years—but now they're not sure why they're still a couple. There's the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other.

But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives in Texas for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye. In Japan he undergoes an extraordinary transformation, discovering the truth about his family and his past. Back home, Mitsuko and Benson are stuck living together as unconventional roommates, an absurd domestic situation that ends up meaning more to each of them than they ever could have predicted. Without Mike's immediate pull, Benson begins to push outwards, realizing he might just know what he wants out of life and have the goods to get it.

Both men will change in ways that will either make them stronger together, or fracture everything they've ever known. And just maybe they'll all be okay in the end.
Subjects: American literature, LGBTQ novels, Stonewall Book Awards, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, lgbtq+, general, Fiction, coming of age, Gay couples, Fiction, Sexual minorities, Japanese Americans, Fathers and sons, Mothers-in-law, Minorités sexuelles, Romans, nouvelles, Américains d'origine japonaise, Pères et fils, Belles-mères, FICTION / Coming of Age, FICTION / LGBT / General, FICTION / Literary, Gay relationships, Gay men, African Americans, Father-son relationship, Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction Finalist