During a term I spent as a grad student in Yokohama, Japan, I wandered every free afternoon through nearby Tokyo with camera in hand. Knowing my time was limited, I even planned out a detailed schedule for which neighborhood (Tokyo is sprawling!) I would go...
"In Khardji [Yemen], the village where I was born, women are not taught how to make choices," Nujood Ali explains. Her mother married her father at age 16 without protest, and said nothing when her husband brought home another wife four years later. "It was...
In September 1978, three months before her fifth birthday, Nelofer Pazira went to visit her father on the third day of what would become a five-month unjust imprisonment; his alleged crime, like thousands of other Afghans at the time, was not supporting the Communist government....
"'I hope other people – particularly women – listen to these stories and become kinder to their own sex,'" a woman laments, her life made unbearable by her female in-laws who condemn her because she literally flushed away the evidence of her virginal blood. "'I don't understand...
As her children grow, author Melissa Fay Greene decides to extend parenthood by adopting five more You just know that a book’s going to be good if you’ve already guffawed and the type has started to blur (even though you’re trying not to get overly emotional)...
The year is 1997 when Guy Delisle journeyed to Shenzhen, an industrial city in southern China, to oversee a production project for his French animation employer. His China gig would follow with another outsourced animation project that would lead to his Pyongyang: A Journey in North...
In case you had any doubt, let me tell you immediately that this devastating story of wartime death and destruction "is 90% fact," as its venerable creator Shigeru Mizuki reveals in the "Afterword." At almost 90 years old, he remains one of Japan's most revered manga...
'Collateral damage' is such a detached, sanitized phrase for the innocent people who pay the highest price for the tragic folly of war; and surely the youngest and the eldest suffer the greatest. "I want people to know the truth about what happened," Nawuth Keat told...
I picked up Gayle Tzemach Lemmon's already-bestselling debut title with a mission: after reading too many death-and-destruction books one after another, I needed some inspiration to reverse me out of a downward spiral. Our mutual involvement in a fabulous project which puts us on the same web...
Since we had SNOW yesterday in DC, I guess we still have some leftover winter. Brrrr ...
In another century, travelers wrote a few postcards. Today's modern wanderer might send group emails or abbreviated texts; the more techno-savvy might start a blog and instantly upload the pictures from those tiny devices. The really ambitious write essays and even books. Guy Delisle (thank goodness!)...
For someone who has experienced hell, Loung Ung is a bright, welcoming voice filled with inviting laughter. She’s warm: “I just had dinner with my writing group last night. They’re my PenGals. I just love them! I don’t know what I would do without them.” She’s practical:...
A toothsome distraction from the recent Tiger Mother hunt, journalist Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan offers A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family, which takes readers from Carnegie Hall into fragrant kitchens, trading threatened stuffed animals for pineapple tarts, Prokofiev for pandan. Tan's strong-willed...
This third and final installment of Luis Alberto Urrea's Border Trilogy is unmistakably his most personal. His "good Republican" mother from Staten Island never accepted his Mexican identity. His "devil on the dance floor"-father was once on Mexico's presidential staff, becoming a bowling alley janitor...
Shockingly enough, Valentine's Day wasn't actually created by Hallmark! In fact, the heartfelt holiday has two versions as to its origins. The Christians say the date commemorates three martyrs all named 'Valentine'; St. Valentine's Day was established at the end of the 5th century, only...
At the end of a six-year stint in Beijing as the China correspondent for NPR, Rob Gifford sent his wife and children ahead to London to start their new lives. Gifford, who first arrived in China as a language student in his early 20s, embarks on...
Two warnings: 1. Don’t read Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal in public unless you enjoy making a spectacle of yourself, wiping your eyes and blowing your nose every few pages; 2. Skip the middle photo insert until...
Once I opened this second volume in Luis Alberto Urrea's Border Trilogy, I simply couldn't stop. So here's the best thing I can say about Lake after reading his first border title, Across the Wire: Lake is more of the same ...
Thanks to a sudden snowstorm and ensuing power outage, I had every excuse to strap on my headband flashlight and read the first of Luis Alberto Urrea's Border Trilogy without pause. Given the sheer gawk-factor of these pages, any excuses were negligible: This is definitely...
Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother did more than speak to me. It screamed, shouted and lectured me. It made me simultaneously laugh with empathy and cringe with embarrassment and exasperation. "This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs," the...
