As usual, this is a family affair. If you know, you know.

This book is that cool person across the room that catches your eye. You know you could, if you were at your best, hang, but you are rarely at your best and you know it, so you stay away and admire.

This book is my older brother who was doing the work before I was and didn’t tell me, so learning about them is like connecting and shameful as if I wasn’t supposed to know.

This book is that trip around town with your transplant friend who drives you to the new neighborhoods they’ve found and want to celebrate all the while calling them by the wrong names and missing the boundaries that the locals know and the little parts that mean everything.

This book is that moment you realize that you have been using the same tools and knowledge sources to do the same job, but the product is both familiar and foreign. This book is also that inadequate feeling when you see someone do the job better than you.

This book is that cousin who is the same age as you but knows what cool is in that way that is so irritating because they don’t even have to try.

This book is that super smart coworker who went to an Ivy League school, got all the good grades, and ended up working at the same job as you, who did not.

This book is proof that whether or not only God can make a perfect thing, there are people out there who get close, often.

This book is a classmate who does the same things you do but gets a third of a grade higher on everything than you do, making you question yourself or the institutions you live under.

This book is the journal about me in the song “Killing Me Softly.” Somehow Christy Passion found my most private thoughts and put them on display, and I hurt because of it.

This book is a sibling whose experiences are so similar to yours as to feel, when reading them on the page, they were stole from you all the way to the end, when the family gets together and the joy doesn’t feel like theft amongst brothers or sisters is possible. Or is it that joy and celebration are too foreign to you?

This book is a house filled with hand-painted Live, Laugh, Love signs that are finely crafted and well-thought out. You can tell the artist “dances like no one is watching” but at the announcement, you can see it. There’s nothing wrong with any of it, but it’s the kind of place where I hope the party is held in the backyard.

This book is one of those cousins who you absent-mindedly call Uncle when your soul meets another that is older and wiser. Growing up, you want distance; older, you want whatever they will give.

This book is my half-sibling, mixed-race but not like me, who struggles and finds strength alone while I watch, powerless to do anything. But I love them and want to say: “I see you and your pain and your power.”

This book is my cousin, the one who I barely keep track of through awkward “so what have been up to?” questions at family gatherings that have even more awkward, but true answers. On the way home from the reunion, I think: “I should hang with them more,” but I won’t and will wait to be updated about their lives the next time we get together.

This book is my auntie, the one I love to sit next to at family gatherings because everyone must greet her with respect and listen to her biting wisdom. If you are sitting next to her after our relatives continue on to the party, you can listen to her stories and backstories, and her biting wisdom becomes hard truth. It's a scary form of magic.

Good, relatable poetry by a good guy (it's been a minute and dozens of books since reading this so it's not fresh, but I remember being impressed).

This book is my cousin. We were raised together, spent weeks sleeping at each other’s houses, got confused that the title cousin means something different for white people, and mirrored lives like a parallel universe where one thing diverged out paths. This book went on to describe grim reality in the only ways it knew: facts and fractures while I describe it in struggle and stumbles. Read it now or the path will diverge too far and only becomes more grim.

This book is your coworker that you invited to our family function. No one knows them, why they’re here, and the food they bring are foreign to our tongues.

This book is like a mechanic that lets you look over their shoulder as they work and tells you how the pieces fit. Sometimes you can follow along, and sometimes you get lost, but the whole time you feel like they know what they're doing. That feeling teeters on the point between faith and trust and always leans.

This book is that straight-”A” cousin your parents hold up as a model for all you should do. It’s that same cousin who, when you’re alone with them, shows you the holes in the shoulds. The great reveal doesn’t make you feel much better during the next lecture from your parents about how you should be.

This book is a family reunion where you are the youngest person there by 20 years. There is so much experience and wisdom and joy and pain but the cacophony is overwhelming. The best you can hope for is to catch bits of greatness and plan to spend more time with each of your elders individually later. Hopefully there is a later.

This book is that loved one who is serene, struggling, and distant. You want to reach out and comfort them, but every word you use will be misconstrued and hurtful. Every invitation will be unwanted and rebuffed all because mourning is a solitary act, a solitary act where knowing others are around is both soothing and painful.

This book is like that black sheep cousin you understand but your awkwardness, or is it theirs, makes it impossible to say “I see you.” Instead you struggle and imagine they are struggling the same way and if you just spoke you could bond or at least commiserate. But you don’t.

The emotional journey in Michelle Penaloza’s are unique but it has cousins.