Nami Mun’s debut is the disturbing but ultimately hopeful story of runaway Joon, a Korean American teenager whose father abandons the family, whose mother loses her sanity, who must somehow navigate homelessness, drug addiction, and sexual abuse to survive the unprotected streets of 1980s New...
Four days after 9/11, a man wearing a turban shows up on Samar’s doorstep – and turns out to be her uncle. After years of estrangement, he’s determined to reunite the fractured family – and in the process teach Sam about her Sikh American heritage....
The SI boys gather some of the top names in Asian American pop culture to present a unique anthology of the Asian American experience – complete with masked crusaders, caped champions, and even everyday heroes. Together, they’re making our ever-morphing, multi-culti American future a safer,...
This 850-plus page autobiographical epic is truly a portrait of an artist as a young man, done manga style. A child of 10 in 1945 post-war Japan, Hiroshi – Tatsumi’s pseudonymous stand-in – makes manga obsessively. His regularly winning contest submissions soon bring him acclaim,...
Full disclosure: this is one of the most heartbreaking books you’ll probably ever read. But read it you should. A young woman – a political victim of post-Mao China – is about to die. While her voice remains missing throughout the novel, the many residents of...
An informative look – underscored with lively photographs – at the history and future of Mount Everest, a sacred place for the locals, overtaken by adventurous tourism, and currently suffering the high price of so-called modern progress. Review: "In Celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month:...
The planting and harvesting of the core food product of Bali – rice – is an exercise in careful natural balance by the local farmers. But when the government gets involved and introduces genetically modified hybrid rice and chemical fertilizers, the perfect cycle breaks and...
The first two books in a trilogy by manhwa (Korean graphic novel) master Kim introduce English readers to two generations of strong women – a beautiful widowed mother and her blossoming teenage daughter – intimately sharing their lives in early-20th century Korea. While the mother, who runs...
Loosely woven together from revealing vignettes about the interconnected characters that share 12-year-old protagonist Dae Joon Kim's world, Sung Woo's debut novel is a well-measured, carefully laid out storycloth filled with tenderness and great warmth. After five years of separation, Dae Joon (soon to be David), his sister...
At 12, Love Liu lives with his architect parents in the village of Ürümchi in the Xinjiang region of northeast China. Growing up during the Cultural Revolution means he is surrounded by discontent and fear – his parents, his friends, their parents must always be diligently...
Far too many immigration stories begin with an escape from tragedy – everything from economic hardship to devastating wars. The Armenian American experience is tragically rooted in the Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1918, the systematic massacre of an estimated 1 to 2 million Armenians. A...
Spunky and independent Minli can't bear to see her parents leading such harsh lives, especially her mother who is so discontented with the family's poverty that she can't even enjoy the glorious stories Minli's father regularly tells her. Minli is determined to change her family's...
Samir, a young Palestinian boy, must go to the "Jews' hospital" for a serious operation to save his injured knee. Having just lost his younger brother to Palestinian/Israeli crossfire, Samir is understandably anxious about entering what he sees as enemy territory. Waiting for the American doctor,...
While Grandmom has had only two houses in her 65 years – and 40 years to make her current house "homegrown" – a little 8-year-old girl already has lived in three. Now that she's made five best friends and finally put her bookshelf in alphabetical order,...
The inaugural post for a historic inaugural year! While finding out so much more about our first African American president, you can also discover his Asian Pacific American cultural heritage, as well. He was born in Hawai’i, his father-figure ages 4-6 was an Indonesian man, Lolo...
Since the 2002 best-seller The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices, Beijing-born London journalist Xinran has emerged as an international dynamo reclaiming the voices of neglected citizens throughout her homeland. Her subsequent titles – Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet, What the Chinese Don't Eat, Miss Chopsticks, and even her...
Frank and Ellie Benton have had the unthinkable happen to them: their precious 7-year-old son has died of a sudden illness. Even while Ellie is wracked with guilt, Frank blames her for what he believes was her negligence in not taking him to the hospital quickly...
Clearly, this is one of those books that will change the way you think about the world. Forget the 'rags to riches' stories out there, the lone 'self-made man' who rises to the top from nowhere. Gladwell, in his third intriguing book, argues that outliers...
From two of the most successful names in contemporary graphic novels – Gene Luen Yang, whose multi-award-winning American Born Chinese was the first-ever graphic novel to be a finalist for the National Book Award, and Derek Kirk Kim, the equally multi-award-winning author of groundbreaking Same Difference and...
Pinky Mittal, a 13-year-old schoolgirl in 1960s Bombay, lives with her extended family in a sprawling family bungalow in one of the city's more fashionable neighborhoods. Her grandmother, who rescued her after her mother's death as an toddler, dotes on her. Her aunt-by-marriage barely puts...
