Memoir Archives - Page 6 of 26

A Walking Life: Reclaiming Our Health and Our Freedom One Step at a Time by Antonia Malchik [in Booklist]

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

C’mon: grab that headset, hit play, get out, and let Antonia Malchik and Eliza Foss convince you why you should be walking. Foss is an ideally persuasive companion to journalist Malchik, whose debut title proves how “walking is essential to our physical health and creativity,...

I Will Never See the World Again: The Memoir of an Imprisoned Writer by Ahmet Altan, translated by Yasemin Çongar [in Booklist]

11 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation, Turkish, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW For “speaking a few innocuous words on a television program in the aftermath of the failed 2016 “coup” against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Ahmet Altan was sentenced to life imprisonment, recounts his friend and lawyer Philippe Sands in his foreword to this book....

The Last Word: Audios of Posthumously Published Books – Part 2 [in Booklist]

04 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab American, Audio, Australian, Black/African American, European, Lebanese American, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American, Translation, Vietnamese American

The one thing in life that’s guaranteed is, well, death. But books are certainly a lasting legacy. And sometimes, when we get the books after their creator has passed on, an audiobook can breathe new life into the text, animating from beyond. A bittersweet legacy, indeed, but...

Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary: Selected Works of Kathleen Collins by Kathleen Collins [in Booklist]

03 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Drama/Theater, Fiction, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW In 2014, a quarter-century after the 1988 death of filmmaker/playwright/writer/activist Kathleen Collins at 46 of breast cancer, indie distributor Milestone Films reintroduced her groundbreaking 1982 movie, Losing Ground, one of the first films written and directed by an African American woman, inspiring new interest in the...

House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid [in Booklist]

02 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Lebanese, Lebanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW When Anthony Shadid’s own nuclear family falls apart – his marriage ends, he’s separated from his only child – he returns to Marjayoun, Lebanon in August, 2007 with “foolish and rash ...

Dying by Cory Taylor [in Booklist]

31 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Australian, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

“I am making dying bearable for myself,” Cory Taylor reveals in her final book, originally published in her native Australia just months after she passed away in 2016 from melanoma-related brain cancer at 61. A euthanasia drug she bought online allowed Taylor some semblance of...

My Grandma and Me by Mina Javaherbin, illustrated by Lindsey Yankey [in Shelf Awareness]

21 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, Memoir, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW For a little girl growing up in Iran, her grandmother is her beloved conduit to the rest of the world. "I followed her everywhere," she explains. "When she swept, I swept. When she cooked, I cooked. When she prayed, I prayed like her, too."...

The Grave on the Wall by Brandon Shimoda [in Shelf Awareness]

20 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Japanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

By the time Brandon Shimoda’s grandfather died in 1996, he had been living with Alzheimer's for almost 20 years. Shimoda was then a college freshman, which meant he had had little opportunity to know the man without the disease. Reacting to "the loss – the...

The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After by Julie Yip-Williams [in Booklist]

12 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American, Vietnamese American

The miracles were many: “born poor and blind in Vietnam on the losing side of a bloody civil war,” Julie Yip-Williams survived her grandmother’s demand to have her killed, escaped on a leaky boat with her family to Hong Kong, arrived as a refugee in...

Five More to Go: Shing Yin Khor’s The American Dream? [in The Booklist Reader]

22 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Egyptian American, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Jewish, Latina/o/x, Lists, Malaysian American, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Young Adult Readers

The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66 Discovering Dinosaur Statues, Muffler Men, and the Perfect Breakfast Burrito by Shing Yin Khor Malaysia-born, LA-dwelling Shing Yin Khor introduces the “two Americas” that were their obsessions growing up: a Los Angeles “full of beautiful people and sunlight and...

The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66 Discovering Dinosaur Statues, Muffler Men, and the Perfect Breakfast Burrito by Shing Yin Khor [in Booklist]

15 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Malaysian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Malaysia-born, LA-dwelling Shing Yin Khor introduces the “two Americas” that were their obsessions growing up: a Los Angeles “full of beautiful people and sunlight and open roads” where 10 years of living has also added “lots and lots and lots of traffic,” and a...

13 Fall Faves, Speed-Dating Style [in The Booklist Reader]

03 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Indian American, Iranian, Iranian American, Japanese, Korean, Latina/o/x, Lists, Memoir, Nonfiction, Persian American, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian, South Asian American, Translation, Turkish, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

Oh, good gracious! I can’t stand it: soooo many amazing books and my aging eyeballs just can’t keep up! Last week at ALA Annual, I got to “Read ‘n’ Rave,” but I had such an embarrassingly overflowing list, the buzzer went off (uh-oh!), and I couldn’t...

Transgender Pride, Literally: 11 Titles by #OwnVoices Authors and More [in The Booklist Reader]

28 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, British, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Children/Picture Books, European, Fiction, Lists, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Happy final Friday of Pride Month. Wow . . . that went by quickly! I have 25 (no lie!) more books on, under, next to, and all around my desk that I will not be covering here, which is actually a good thing, because that’s proof that...

Southern Lady Code by Helen Ellis [in Booklist]

25 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW When the material is already so funny, adding another layer of guffaw-inducements hardly seems possible, until you’ve heard Helen Ellis narrate her own 23-essay collection. Alabama-born-and-raised, Manhattan-domiciled for decades, Ellis is not wrong when she insists, “Southern accents are disarming.” Here, as in the teaser-podcast that debuted...

Immigrant Heritage Month by the Book(s)! [in The Booklist Reader]

13 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Arab American, Black/African American, Chinese American, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Indian, Indian American, Korean American, Latina/o/x, Lists, Memoir, Moroccan American, Nonfiction, Repost, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

June is #ImmigrantHeritageMonth, which began in 2014 and has been recognized and celebrated by the (Obama) White House as “a time to celebrate diversity and immigrants’ shared American heritage” since 2015. “Immigration,” the White House declares, “is part of the DNA of this great nation.” Perhaps now more than ever...

Penguin Classics Adds Four Books by Asian Americans to the Canon [in Christian Science Monitor]

06 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Japanese American, Korean American, Lists, Memoir, Repost, Young Adult Readers

With four books by Asian American authors, Penguin Classics finally recognizes a long-overlooked genre of American literary and cultural tradition. During the first week that the film adaptation of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club hit screens across the United States in 1993, I sat in...

The Last Word: Audios of Posthumously Published Books [in Booklist]

01 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, British, European, Fiction, Indian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American

The one thing in life that’s guaranteed is, well, death. But books are certainly a lasting legacy. And sometimes, when we get the books after their creator has passed on, an audiobook can breathe life into the text, animating from beyond. Here, we have a handful...

Diverse Novels in Verse for National Poetry Month [in School Library Journal]

25 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in African, Biography, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Chinese American, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Hong Kongese, Japanese American, Latina/o/x, Lists, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Poetry, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

Organized by the Academy of American Poets, National Poetry Month, in April, has been celebrated annually since 1996. While reading, writing, even performing poetry should be a year-round activity, National Poetry Month is a welcome catalyst to get verse newbies and doubters interested and involved. In...

The Souls of Yellow Folk: Essays by Wesley Yang [in Booklist]

22 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Korean American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

His voice isn’t quite growling, but David Shih has perfected the notable ability to suggest deep, underlying anger without crossing into full-blown fury. That control makes him Wesley Yang’s ideal conduit in this debut collection of 13 essays that lay bare Yang’s exasperation, indignation, doubt,...

I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir by Malaka Gharib [in Booklist]

29 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Egyptian American, Filipina/o American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Malaka Gharib’s Catholic mother regretted leaving her upper-middle-class Manila life, but unrest fueled by the 1970s Marcos regime sent her stateside. Meanwhile, her Egyptian Muslim father “had been scheming to get to America since high school” and finally enrolled at UCLA’s School of Management. They...

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