Memoir Archives - Page 2 of 26

Body Language: Writers on Identity, Physicality, and Making Space for Ourselves edited by Nicole Chung and Matt Ortile [in Booklist]

*STARRED REVIEW Editors Nicole Chung (All You Can Ever Know, 2018) and Matt Ortile (The Groom Will Keep His Name, 2020) present 30 essays that reveal how diverse bodies “move within (and against) expectations of race, gender, health, and ability.” Gabrielle Bellot, a Black trans woman,...

Hummingbird Heart by Travis Dandro [in Booklist]

27 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Travis Dandro made his graphic title debut with award-winning King of King Court (2019), about his complicated 1980s youth. In this follow-up, he’s a Camaro-driving teenager in 1991 in his final year at home before art school. His heroin-addicted birth father has committed suicide and his...

The Third Person by Emma Grove [in Shelf Awareness]

26 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Debut author Emma Grove's luminous graphic memoir opens with a declaration: "None of the following incidents are made up or invented ...

You’ve Changed: Fake Accents, Feminism, and Other Comedies from Myanmar by Pyae Moe Thet War [in Booklist]

18 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Memoir, Myanmarese (Burmese), Myanmarese (Burmese) American, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW She has two names, Moe Thet War and Pyae Pyae (pronounced “puh-yay, puh-yay”). Both were carefully chosen by her parents. As a Myanmar-born, U.S.- and British-educated, Myanmar-returned resident with a perfect American accent, Pyae Pyae unabashedly explores her “liminality ...

Where Butterflies Fill the Sky: A Story of Immigration, Family, and Finding Home by Zahra Marwan [in Shelf Awareness]

29 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Arab American, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Memoir, Middle Eastern, Repost

Debut author/illustrator Zahra Marwan's inviting, evocative picture book, Where Butterflies Fill the Sky, presents her family's relocation from one desert to another on the opposite side of the world. Her poignant opening dedication, "To my parents, who should have never had to leave," immediately foreshadows...

Border Crossings: A Journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway by Emma Fick [in Booklist]

25 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

Artist Emma Fick’s illustrated travelogue combines intricate art and intimate observations – vibrantly colored and distinctly hand-lettered – of a Beijing-to-Moscow expedition on the Trans-Siberian Railway. In May 2015, while in Finland with her then-boyfriend-now-husband, the pair found a used book, Trans-Siberian Handbook, that had...

Time Zone J by Julie Doucet [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Julie Doucet is a legendary alternative comics pioneer, especially in an arena dominated by men. Her fame was further elevated by her frustrated abandonment of the industry in 2006. Her semi-autobiographical Dirty Plotte (quite the double entendre: "plotte" is Québécois slang for the c-word) began as...

People Change by Vivek Shraya [in Booklist]

03 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Indian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American

Multi-disciplinary artist and writer Vivek Shraya (The Subtweet, 2020) continues her thoughtful, deliberate self-narrations. Her latest essay collection centers change: “If I were to have anything resembling a higher purpose, I’d now say that it’s to evolve and to model evolution. To demonstrate the beauty...

Booklist Backlist: Tales of Dementia [in Booklist]

02 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, European, Fiction, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Jewish, Lists, Malaysian American, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Palestinian American, Repost, Spanish, Translation

Gerda Saunders, who wrote Memory’s Last Breath (2017), an exquisitely bittersweet record chronicling her experiences with dementia, is one of my most beloved friends. We have books in common, in that we find great solace and escape in the (well-)written word. Inspired by our last visit...

Hakim’s Odyssey, Book 2: From Turkey to Greece by Fabien Toulmé, translated by Hannah Chute [in Booklist]

22 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW French graphic creator Fabien Toulmé opens the second of three volumes featuring Syrian refugee Hakim and his extended family with a clever recap of the first entry, facilitated by Toulmé’s young daughter, who asks to accompany him for the next interview: Toulmé lays out...

Iranian Love Stories by Jane Deuxard, illustrated by Deloupy, translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger [in Booklist]

14 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, French, Iranian, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

“I assure you, this country is a paradise for women,” a covered figure insists, her arms raised in a victorious V. But this is Iran, and her declaration doesn’t quite resonate with the local population. Two journalists – a couple publishing under the collective pseudonym...

Uncle Rico’s Encore: Mostly True Stories of Filipino Seattle by Peter Bacho [in Booklist]

20 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Filipina/o American, Memoir, Repost, Short Stories

“Each morning when I rise, I pause to remember the preciousness of what I have lost, and I cherish it.” Septuagenarian Peter Bacho, whose first novel, Cebu (1991), won the American Book Award, commits those memories to the page in poignant, affecting “mostly true stories.” Bacho’s...

Murakami T: The T-Shirts I Love by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Japanese, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

"Objects just seem to collect me, of their own volition," insists Haruki Murakami (First Person Singular): LPs, books, magazine clippings, pencil stubs, and, of course, T-shirts. Murakami T might detour from his global bestsellers, but it's a delightful glimpse into iconic Murakami through his casual...

Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow [in Booklist]

10 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Making her dual print and audio debut, journalist Kat Chow relies on words to resurrect her late mother – and lost family, by extension – who died of cancer in 2004. Not yet 50, her mother seemed to fulfill the superstition that the women in...

Passport by Sophia Glock [in Shelf Awareness]

09 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Few titles need official CIA permission to be published, but Sophia Glock's perceptive graphic novel memoir, Passport, had to go through the "daunting and complicated task" of obtaining the CIA's Publication Review Board approval. Glock's parents were "intelligence officers," an admission they disclosed when they...

Committed: Dispatches from a Psychiatrist in Training by Adam Stern [in Booklist]

26 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Jewish, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Adam Stern began his Harvard career feeling like an impostor when he was matched into a Harvard Medical School psychiatry residency impeded, he worried, by his upstate-New York medical degree: “I found myself soaring into one of the most prestigious residency programs in the country,...

Smile: The Story of a Face by Sarah Ruhl [in Booklist]

27 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Best known as a mega award-winning playwright, Sarah Ruhl (44 Poems for You, 2020) is also a MacArthur “Genius,” Yale professor, poet, and author. Her memoir is an utter gift – no superlatives are enough; no review can communicate its resonating efficacy. Just after Ruhl...

Hakim’s Odyssey, Book 1: From Syria to Turkey by Fabien Toulmé, translated by Hannah Chute [in Booklist]

26 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW French graphic creator Fabien Toulmé transforms “the words that were entrusted“ to him into this stupendous testimony of survival. The first of three volumes (the subsequent two have published in France and are scheduled to be published in the U.S. in 2022) begins with...

Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light: Essays by Helen Ellis [in Booklist]

22 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Rare is the audiobook that remains infectiously delightful through the ending credits, but Helen Ellis won’t disappoint with the 13 essays – her acknowledgements could almost qualify for a 14th, they’re that entertaining – of her second collection. Her beloved husband of 25 years...

Alien Nation: 36 True Tales of Immigration by Sofija Stefanovic [in Shelf Awareness]

19 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Eastern European, European, Latina/o/x, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Pan-Asian Pacific American, Repost, South Asian American, Southeast Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW The expectation of consistent quality among 36 global voices seems daunting, but editor Sofija Stefanovic admirably achieves this in a majority of these stories. Alien Nation: 36 True Tales of Immigration began on "one of the best-known stages of New York City" – the "plush...

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