Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat [in San Francisco Chronicle]
10 Oct, by in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Caribbean, Caribbean American, Haitian, Haitian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost
Something magical happens when prize-winning novelist Edwidge Danticat strings words together. From the most trivial details to breathtaking moments of enormous gravity, Danticat uses words as charms that gently beckon readers into her world and make...
Alas, summer's over, but that doesn't mean the fun reads have to be thrown aside for more serious fare. If anything, some depth mixed with light fun might make for the ideal transitional book.
A Concise Chinese-English...
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Already a runaway bestseller in Vietnam, this diary will break your heart – but offer you hope that in the worst of times, we human beings can be miraculously humane.
As a young doctor working for communist...
From the artist who brought you the inventively creepy 
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This is a heavy tome, but it’s one of those impressive, erudite, must-have titles for anyone interested in Asian literature or literature in general. The Japanese were writing novels centuries before Don Quixote even chased his...
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Su Qi, a sensitive Chinese Malaysian youth, comes of age in the magical jungles of Borneo, shaped by the cruelty he witnesses at the hands of his abusive father and his loving but withdrawn mother. He...
If I were to make my mother the happiest mother in the world, I’d finish at least one of my PhDs by writing that elusive dissertation on Yoko Tawada and her fantastical, enigmatic, revisionist, ambiguous short...
The latest from one of Japan’s leading novelists is another signature piece in which the unexpected should be anticipated. It’s just before midnight and teenaged Mari reads a thick, unnamed book in a well-lit Denny’s in...
“Beat” Takeshi Kitano, most widely known as an acclaimed filmmaker, is indeed a Renaissance man. Besides making films, he’s an actor, comedian, major TV personality, poet, painter, and novelist – and most likely more. While he...
Making the playground rounds in hopes of finding a community among stay-at-home moms and their children has left Sayoko lonelier than ever. When she gets a job offer from single, brash, energetic Aoi, she immediately signs...
Four short stories and a longer novella are linked together to create a mosaic of disparate voices that share a visceral longing for a time – and place – forever past. Chu adroitly leads readers through...
Considered to be one of the great writers of 20th-century China since she hit the literary scene in the 1940s with a mighty bang, Chang died in obscurity in Los Angeles in 1995. Recently rediscovered thanks...
This single-story novella, to be released simultaneously with the eponymous film by Ang Lee, was undoubtedly inspired by Chang’s own relationship with a Japanese collaborator during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai and Hong Kong. As part...
Volume 1: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945
Volume 2: From 1945 to the Present
The two volumes together offer the most comprehensive overview of modern Japanese literature available in translation. Capturing the most turbulent period of Japan –...