On lighthouses - Jazmina Barrera

Far from home, in the confines of a dim New York apartment, Jazmina Barrera offers a tour of her lighthouses - those structures whose message is "first and foremost, that human beings are here."

In trying to "collect" lighthouses by obsessively describing them, Barrera begins to question the nature of writing, collecting, and how, by staring so intently at one thing, we are only avoiding others. Equal parts personal memoir and literary history, On Lighthouses takes the reader on a desperate flight from raging sea to cold stone - from a hopeless isolation to a meaningful one - concluding at last in a place of peace: the home of a selfless, guiding light.