Adult Readers Archives - Page 25 of 154

Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda, translated by Polly Barton [in Booklist]

24 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Preface any storytelling format with “traditional,” and audiences will have no expectations of feminist agency. Thankfully, prizewinning Japanese writer Aoko Matsuda imagines reclamation and brilliantly transforms fairy tales and folk legends into empowering exposés, adventures, manifestos. The 17 stories – adroitly translated by UK-based Polly Barton...

Welcome to the New World by Jake Halpern, illustrated by Michael Sloan [in Shelf Awareness]

23 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Syrian American, Young Adult Readers

Welcome to the New World made its debut as a biweekly comic strip in the New York Times that "chronicle[d] the arrival and experience of a single [Syrian] family." The author/illustrator team, Jake Halpern and Michael Sloan, went on to win the 2018 Pulitzer Prize...

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori [in Booklist]

22 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Akutagawa Prize-winning Sayaka Murata (Convenience Store Woman, 2018), with her lauded, chosen translator Ginny Tapley Takemori – two short stories and now two novels thus far – returns for more societally defiant, shockingly disconnected, disturbingly satisfying fiction. At 11, Natsuki is already aware she doesn’t fit...

Somewhere in the Unknown World: A Collective Refugee Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang [in Shelf Awareness]

21 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Black/African American, European, Hmong American, Memoir, Myanmarese (Burmese) American, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian American, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

"The people in this book are people from your lives," Kao Kalia Yang writes to her three sleeping children in the final chapter of her affecting hybrid nonfiction collection, Somewhere in the Unknown World: A Collective Refugee Memoir. Minnesota – where Yang has lived for...

Dead Girls by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW "As a girl, I sensed that there wasn't really anywhere I was safe," Selva Almada (The Wind That Lays Waste) reveals in the chilling author's note about growing up in a provincial Argentinian town. By 8, Almada had already experienced verbal sexual abuse, accosted...

A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor [The Carls, Book 2] by Hank Green [in Booklist]

15 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Chinese American, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Yes, indubitably, you’ll need to first read/listen to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (2018) to fully appreciate April’s resurrection, why/how we’re not alone, the need to save humanity despite, well, humans. While Kristen Sieh helmed Hank Green’s bestselling debut almost solo – Green himself did a...

Night Theater by Vikram Paralkar [in Library Journal]

14 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Banished from a large private city hospital, the doctor has run a remote village clinic for three years. His “pharmacist” is an untrained young woman, her husband on call for urgent labor. Despite the doctor’s acerbic demeanor, his care is unreproachable, even self-funding necessary...

Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby [in Booklist]

11 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW S.A. Cosby and Blacktop Wasteland were featured in Booklist’s 2020 Spotlight on Crime Fiction, and his editorial proved to be thought-provoking and memorable. For readers seeking further Cosby-talk, choose the audiobook, because, while actor Adam Lazarre-White is absolutely convincing, the recording’s highlight just might be Cosby’s 10-minute...

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang [in Booklist]

07 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

At almost 19, Ama already has a dead soldier husband and three daughters. She marries two-decades-older Agong, another soldier with whom she has two more daughters. The youngest becomes Mother, who moves with Ama, Agong, and Jie (older sister), from Taiwan to Arkansas, only to be displaced...

Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner [in Booklist]

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

If the narrator sounds immediately familiar, here’s why: Danielle Macdonald played Willowdean Dickson in the popular Netflix adaptation of Julie Murphy’s bestselling Dumplin'. Making her narrator debut in Jennifer Weiner’s plus-size empowering latest, Macdonald is so convincing that once listeners have begun the story, stopping...

Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan [in Booklist]

02 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, European, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Singaporean, Singaporean American

Following the über-success of his three-part Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin Kwan returns with another over-the-top bestseller, this time contemporizing and diversifying E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View. Lydia Look, narrator for previous Kwan titles, ushers the characters through a (practically) royal East/West wedding in Capri, then a...

A Room Called Earth by Madeleine Ryan [in Booklist]

01 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Australian, Fiction, Repost

Madeleine Ryan’s novel covers less than 24 hours, but by book’s end, readers are left feeling remarkably bonded with this fiercely independent young woman who thinks, acts, and lives differently from the so-called norm. What actually happens over 300-plus pages is relatively minimal: she prepares...

Likes by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum [in Booklist]

31 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Short Stories

Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum’s (Ms. Hempel Chronicles, 2008) prowess here lies in her ingenious ability to elevate seemingly minor moments into the pivotal crux of a narrative. Take, for example, in “Julia and Sunny,” perhaps the most affecting of Bynum’s nine stories, “a small square of silky, pale blue material” that...

Igifu by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated by Jordan Stump [in Shelf Awareness]

28 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, European, Fiction, French, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW A Rwandan exile living in France, Scholastique Mukasonga pulled from her extraordinary life to write two notable memoirs, Cockroaches and The Barefoot Woman (a 2019 National Book Award Translated Literature finalist). Autobiographical elements continue to haunt her exquisite collection, Igifu, through five wrenching stories. Born in 1956, Mukasonga had a...

The Marriage Game by Sara Desai [in Booklist]

27 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

Soneela Nankani continues to grow her resume as the South Asian American rom-com narrator-of-choice, once again convincingly transforming truculently mismatched sparks into eternally burning flames. In Canadian Sara Desai’s debut, Nankani introduces sparring partners, Layla and Sam, suddenly forced to share a San Francisco office...

Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh [in Library Journal]

26 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

Arya Sagar, who has dozens of Indian/South Asian audio credits, enhances Amitav Ghosh’s ("Ibis" trilogy) already penetrating around-the-world mythic quest with his mellifluous narration, especially heightened with (mostly) agile adjustments for regional accents. Ghosh’s peripatetic hero, Deen Dutta, is an earnest Brooklyn-based rare books dealer,...

A World Between by Emily Hashimoto [in Booklist]

25 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian American, Japanese American, Repost

Eleanor and Leena meet in 2004 in a Boston college-dorm elevator. Eleanor is a hapa Californian – her mother is white, her father Japanese American. Leena’s traditionally immigrant Indian American family is a few towns over in Lowell. That fall semester is spent intensely falling,...

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist by Adrian Tomine [in Booklist]

24 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW As early as age 8, Adrian Tomine (Killing and Dying) publicly announced exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up: “A famous cartoonist,” he told his Fresno class in 1982. He confused his teacher, who thought perhaps he aspired to be Walt...

Happiness Will Follow by Mike Hawthorne [in Booklist]

23 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Latina/o/x, Memoir, Nonfiction, Puerto Rican, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Born Michael Anthony Hawthorne, his last name was “swiftly pilfered from [his] father” by his Puerto Rican mother “to keep [him] safe in ways she never was.” Yet surviving into adulthood was a near-superhuman feat: his single mother’s fierce love came with horrific stipulations...

Sweet Time by Weng Pixin [in Shelf Awareness]

20 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, Singaporean, Singaporean American, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American

In Singaporean artist Weng Pixin’s striking debut graphic collection, Sweet Time, the connecting theme throughout is clarified in the fourth story, "Ballad," using the commonly repeated "he loves me, he loves me not" refrain. As anonymous fingers peel a bloom's petals, the panels flip between...

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