We Grew Here thoughtfully engages questions of authenticity, identity, race, gentrification, and what it means to make a life. Through art, through work, through love and frienships and local community, these vivid characters are not only searching but also learning the art of being and belonging. There’s a tender masculinity here, both funny and poignant, and these lucid, linked stories explore the ways place, language, and landscape shape us, and the ways we shape them in return. Papafrangou crafts a loving, lively portrait of Oakland—its joys, its tensions, its complexities—and of those who call it home.