SIBookDragon, Author at BookDragon

Diverse Novels in Verse for National Poetry Month [in School Library Journal]

25 Apr, by SIBookDragon in African, Biography, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Chinese American, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Hong Kongese, Japanese American, Latina/o/x, Lists, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Poetry, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

Organized by the Academy of American Poets, National Poetry Month, in April, has been celebrated annually since 1996. While reading, writing, even performing poetry should be a year-round activity, National Poetry Month is a welcome catalyst to get verse newbies and doubters interested and involved. In...

Where Are You From? by Yamile Saied Méndez, illustrated by Jaime Kim [in Shelf Awareness]

24 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Korean American, Latina/o/x, Repost, South American

The emphatic "Where are you from?," often aggressively repeated with "Where are you really from?" is an all-too-familiar scenario for many people of color who call the United States "home." On the playground, at ballet class, at a playdate, one little girl attempts to answer simply: "I'm...

The Souls of Yellow Folk: Essays by Wesley Yang [in Booklist]

22 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Korean American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

His voice isn’t quite growling, but David Shih has perfected the notable ability to suggest deep, underlying anger without crossing into full-blown fury. That control makes him Wesley Yang’s ideal conduit in this debut collection of 13 essays that lay bare Yang’s exasperation, indignation, doubt,...

Evening in Paradise: More Stories by Lucia Berlin [in Booklist]

19 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW In 2015, A Manual for Cleaning Women collected 43 stories Lucia Berlin left before her 2004 death, making her an overnight – albeit posthumous – literary sensation. Here are 22 more, presented in some semblance of chronological order, mirroring Berlin’s own peripatetic exploits (Texas,...

Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal [in Booklist]

17 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Pakistani, Pakistani American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

Since Jane Austen published Pride and Prejudice in 1813, hundreds of adaptations have followed, but Soniah Kamal is the first to set the affair in Pakistan, her birth country. Meet feisty girls’-school English-literature teacher Alys Binat and arrogant Valentine Darsee. The rest is ...

Five More to Go: Margaret Atwood and Reneé Nault’s The Handmaid’s Tale [in The Booklist Reader]

16 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Canadian, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Lists, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Reneé Nault In the decades since its 1985 publication, Margaret Atwood’s dystopic classic has spawned audio, film, radio, theater, opera, ballet incarnations, and, most recently, the wildly popular television series (which veers significantly from the original, ahem). Given the evergreen...

The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel by Margaret Atwood and Reneé Nault, illustrated by Reneé Nault [in Booklist]

15 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Given the evergreen veneration of Margaret Atwood’s dystopic classic that, since its 1985 publication, has spawned audio, film, radio, theater, opera, and ballet incarnations and, most recently, the wildly popular television series, this graphic novel was certainly inevitable. Canadian artist Reneé Nault is credited...

The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton [Booklist]

12 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Repost

Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt certainly seems to be an ideal choice to narrate a labyrinthine, multigenerational mystery tied to a posh British countryside home, Birchwood Manor. “And I? I had no choice; I stayed behind,” Froggatt crisply assures Birchwood’s only permanent ghostly resident, who ends...

Five More to Go: Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise [in The Booklist Reader]

10 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, British Asian, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Korean, Korean American, Lists, Pakistani, Repost, South Asian, Translation

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi “That whole thing about fiction not being the truth is a lie,” one character admonishes another in Susan Choi’s fifth (and finest) novel. Returning to the multilayered teacher-student power struggles that were seared into My Education (2013), Trust Exercise immediately puts...

Star by Yukio Mishima, translated by Sam Bett [in Booklist]

09 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Revered writer of dozens of novels, plays, short stories, and essays, Yukio Mishima was an iconic master of the performative existence. A literary sensation by 24 for Confessions of a Mask (1949), a semi-autobiographical bildungsroman about a young homosexual’s hidden identity, fame would be Mishima’s...

The Parisian by Isabella Hammad [in Booklist]

08 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Palestinian, Palestinian American, Repost

Born to a Cairo-based merchant father, raised by his paternal grandmother in Nablus, educated in a Constantinople boarding school, Midhat Kamal is already a peripatetic polyglot when he arrives in France. While he studies medicine at the University of Montpellier, he lives with a doctor...

Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates [in Booklist]

05 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Prodigious Joyce Carol Oates’ latest novel reads rather like a mash-up of The Hunger Games, The Handmaid’s Tale, even A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. In 2039, in the Reconstituted North American States, 17-year-old Adriane Strohl is “the spiky-haired girl with the big glistening...

When Aidan Became a Brother by Kyle Lukoff, illustrated by Kaylani Juanita [in Shelf Awareness]

03 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Black/African American, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, South Asian American

"When Aidan was born, everyone thought he was a girl." But his name, his room, his clothes just didn't fit. Aidan realized "he was really another kind of boy. It was hard to tell his parents what he knew about himself, it was even harder...

Letter to Survivors by Gébé, translated by Edward Gauvin [in Booklist]

02 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Once upon a time, they were “that happy family”: two parents, two children, one dog, living in “the house of [their] dreams.” And then they added a coastal apartment and a mountain escape – traversed via luxury car, then adventure mobile – and then...

Have Audiobook, Will Travel [in School Library Journal]

01 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Black/African American, Chinese American, European, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian American, Iranian American, Jewish, Korean American, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Lists, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Persian American, Repost, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

The luggage is loaded, and the gas tank is full. Destination’s mapped. Ready to go? Press play! MIDDLE GRADE Flying Lessons and Other Stories edited by Ellen Oh, read by full cast Some of the most beloved, lauded, and awarded children’s authors – including Matt de la Peña,...

I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir by Malaka Gharib [in Booklist]

29 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Egyptian American, Filipina/o American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Malaka Gharib’s Catholic mother regretted leaving her upper-middle-class Manila life, but unrest fueled by the 1970s Marcos regime sent her stateside. Meanwhile, her Egyptian Muslim father “had been scheming to get to America since high school” and finally enrolled at UCLA’s School of Management. They...

The Body Papers by Grace Talusan [in Booklist]

28 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Every day she didn’t tell, Grace Talusan thought she was saving her grandfather’s life. “There was a daytime grandfather and a nighttime grandfather, two different people in the same body.” Talusan was 7 when that nocturnal monster began the sexual assaults, which spanned seven years....

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo [in Shelf Awareness]

27 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Black/African American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Latina/o/x, Repost, Young Adult Readers

It's the first day of school again, and Emoni Santiago tells her young daughter Emma, more commonly called Babygirl, "make sure you're nice to the other kids and ...

The House of the Pain of Others: Chronicle of a Small Genocide by Julián Herbert, translated by Christina MacSweeney [in Booklist]

26 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Memoir, Mexican, Mexican American, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

The “largest mass slaughter of Asians on the American continent” claimed the lives of over 300 Chinese immigrants in May 1911 in Torreón, in the Mexican state of Coahuila. Despite its magnitude, the massacre remains a “buried episode,” obscured by substantial erroneous coverage, that writer,...

Flowers of Mold by Ha Seong-nan, translated by Janet Hong [in Booklist]

25 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Joining a growing cohort of notable Korean imports, Ha Seong-nan’s dazzling, vaguely intertwined collection of 10 stories is poised for Western acclaim. In “Flowers of Doom,” a loner painstakingly studies his neighbors by sifting through their trash – “Garbage never lies” – eventually deciphering...

BookDragon Author: SIBookDragon