Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Author at BookDragon

The Human Zoo by Sabina Murray [in Shelf Awareness]

23 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

Sabina Murray (The Caprices) has built a lofty career on her ability to craft intricately layered, thought-provoking fiction: what she initially presents as straightforward storytelling is intensified with piercing cultural, sociopolitical and historical nuances that encourage greater interaction for deeper satisfaction. The Human Zoo is yet...

Edge Case by YZ Chin [in Booklist]

22 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Malaysian American, Repost

Eighteen days is all it takes for the (d)evolution of a marriage in YZ Chin’s debut novel. Edwina and Marlin are green-card-seeking Malaysian transplants to New York City. She’s a quality-assurance analyst (and only woman) at AInstein, where she works on joke-telling robots. He’s a...

Once Upon a Quinceañera by Monica Gomez-Hira [in Booklist]

21 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost

Not to be confused with bestselling Julia Alvarez’s book of the same title – hers, a nonfiction examination of Latina coming-of-age quinceañera traditions – Monica Gomez-Hira makes her YA debut with a rollicking fable of quinceañeras lost and found. Eighteen-year-old Carmen never got her party: her...

Child of the Flower-Song People: Luz Jiménez, Daughter of the Nahua by Gloria Amescua, illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh [in Shelf Awareness]

20 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Biography, Children/Picture Books, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Repost

Educator and poet Gloria Amescua makes her picture-book debut with the inspiring Child of the Flower-Song People, spectacularly illustrated by award-winning Mexican American author/artist Duncan Tonatiuh (Undocumented). Amescua poignantly uses her own experiences of "almost losing my Spanish language and culture" as a Latina in Texas...

Poultrygeist by Eric Geron, illustrated by Pete Oswald [in Shelf Awareness]

19 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Even before the title page, we've got a country road, an ambling rooster and a barreling semi – this can't end well ...

One Line by Ray Fawkes [in Shelf Awareness]

18 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Ray Fawkes's One Soul debuted in 2011, earning extensive adulation (including an Eisner nomination) for its never-before-done graphic presentation of 18 lives via 18-panel grids divided across two-page spreads. His 2014 follow-up, The People Inside, used a similar format to follow 24 individuals through various relationships. One...

Matrix by Lauren Groff [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, European, Fiction, French, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Lauren Groff has built a significant career crafting novels and stories featuring sharp observations by and about modern women. In a surprising feat of time travel, the two-time National Book Award finalist (for Fates and Furies and Florida) leaps back to 12th-century England in Matrix and fictionalizes the life...

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner [in Booklist]

16 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Michelle Zauner’s mother Chongmi died in 2014 – she was just 56, Zauner 25. Her grief inspired her first album as Japanese Breakfast in 2016. Her viral 2018 New Yorker essay, “Crying in H Mart,” morphed into the first chapter of this, her dual author/narrator...

The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation by Anna Malaika Tubbs [in Booklist]

15 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Nonfiction, Repost

Sociology scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs double debuts as author and narrator in her empowering examination of three mothers: Alberta King, Berdis Baldwin, and Louise Little, who “have been almost entirely ignored throughout history,” although their sons are renowned: Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, and...

Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell [in Booklist]

14 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Argentinian, Audio, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Mariana Enriquez’s second collection, after 2017’s Things We Lost in the Fire, is insatiably addicting even as the dozen stories are gruesome, lurid, and utterly weird. As a Buenos Aires journalist, she witnessed true horror, the consequences of dictatorship, corruption, 30,000 disappeared; her literary...

So We Meet Again by Suzanne Park [in Shelf Awareness]

13 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

Suzanne Park (Loathe at First Sight) crafts another engaging enemies-to-lovers romance in So We Meet Again. Back in junior high, Jessie Kim and Daniel Choi were pitted against each other by their competitive Korean American parents as beacons of near-perfection. Both eventually escaped: Jess landed on...

A Play for the End of the World by Jai Chakrabarti [in Shelf Awareness]

12 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Eastern European, European, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

Time, geographies, and backgrounds all seem to flow effortlessly through Jai Chakrabarti's exquisite debut novel, A Play for the End of the World. At its core is the provenance of a possible love story between two strangers in New York City. Interwoven into this uncertain...

Songs for the Flames by Juan Gabriel Vásquez, translated by Anne McLean [in Booklist]

11 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Colombian, Fiction, Short Stories, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Prodigious author, journalist, and translator Juan Gabriel Vásquez (Reputations, 2016), one of South America’s most important writers, is once again deftly translated by award-winning Canadian Anne McLean. Four stories provokingly manipulate time. In “Woman on the Riverbank,” a war photographer briefly encounters a politician’s assistant...

American Estrangement by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh [in Booklist]

10 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Iranian American, Persian American, Repost, Short Stories

The men, mostly young, in memoirist and playwright Saïd Sayrafiezadeh’s provoking second story collection lack fulfillment. “Workplace lassitude” is suffocating a 19-year-old wannabe actor stuck at his father’s construction company in “Audition,” while an art-gallery employee fights nine hours of daily tedium in “A, S,...

Skinship by Yoon Choi [in Booklist]

09 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW The characters in Yoon Choi’s stories are caught in-between cultures, families, generations, even life and death. Especially stupendous are her Korean immigrant women-in-flux. In “The Church of Abundant Life,” a childless woman recalls how she met her husband through her English tutor in Korea...

No One Is Talking about This by Patricia Lockwood [in Booklist]

08 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Patricia Lockwood, who shocked and/or delighted with her memoir, Priestdaddy (2017), continues to disquiet with her new sort-of-in-the-end tragic (but uplifting, too) family drama. Kristen Sieh might be her ideal accomplice, as she oh-so-comfortably ciphers zingers and wisecracks most readers probably never expected to hear,...

It’s Not What You Thought It Would Be by Lizzy Stewart [in Shelf Awareness]

07 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Award-winning British children's author/illustrator Lizzy Stewart makes an impressive adult graphic debut with interlinked short episodes observing, analyzing and celebrating women's friendships. The nine chapters in It's Not What You Thought It Would Be could each stand alone, but Stewart cleverly relies on shades of orange to...

Made in China: A Memoir of Love and Labor by Anna Qu [in Shelf Awareness]

06 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

For most of her first seven years, Anna Qu was "the girl without parents; a father dead, a mother who left to start a new life." And yet those years held the "love" Qu names in the subtitle of her bittersweet debut, Made in China:...

Better Place by Duane Murray, illustrated by Shawn Daley [in Booklist]

05 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Canadian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Duane Murray, an actor, writer, and producer in film, makes his on-the-page graphic debut, nimbly realized by Canadian artist Shawn Daley. In a rallying example of the axiom “It takes a village,” a half-dozen graphic greats – including Jeff Lemire and Nate Powell – contribute...

Two-Week Wait: An I.V.F. Story by Luke C. Jackson, Kelly Jackson, illustrated by Mara Wild

04 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

The intimate struggles of a husband and wife desperate to become parents might not be universal literary fare, but with millions of couples worldwide attempting conception via IVF, Two-Week Wait will surely, deservedly find sympathetic audiences. Luke C. Jackson and Kelly Jackson "began their own IVF...

BookDragon Author: Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center