Nonfiction Archives - Page 11 of 56

The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees by Don Brown [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Young Adult Readers

The Unwanted’s first two images couldn't be more jarring: on the title page, a hijab-wearing woman raises her hand to her face in overwhelming distress; a turn of the page reveals a girl holding flowers, smiling back over her shoulder as she walks across a...

A Tokyo Romance: A Romance by Ian Buruma [in Library Journal]

14 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, European, Japanese, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

“Japan shaped me when the plaster was still wet,” writes New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma. In his mid-20s in 1975, the Dutch-born Buruma, who is half English and half German Jew, arrived in Tokyo to study film at Nihon University College of...

I Am I Am I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell [in Library Journal]

03 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Irish, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Cats may have nine lives, but Maggie O’Farrell, who won the Costa Book Award for The Hand That First Held Mine, has had 17, as revealed in this stupendous collection of essays named for various body parts that have caused her near demise. Her...

The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History by Aida Edemariam [in Library Journal]

01 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Nonfiction, Repost

Within the first few minutes, the chameleonic Adjoa Andoh quickly grabs listeners' attention with the high-pitched ululating trilling that will repeat throughout the almost 10 hours of narration here. Ethiopian Canadian journalist Edemariam couldn't have found a better narrator to embody her late nonagenarian grandmother,...

Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home by Sisonke Msimang [in Booklist]

17 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Afghan, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South African

Before personal and political events finally allowed her to go “home” to South Africa, Sisonke Msimang spent her first 20-plus years in peripatetic exile. Born in Zambia, Msimang and her two younger sisters were “raised on a diet of communist propaganda and schooled in radical...

Core Collection: Refugee Stories [in Booklist]

06 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Arab, British, Cuban, Cuban American, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Iranian, Iraqi, Italian, Jewish, Lists, Memoir, Middle Eastern, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Translation, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

More than 65 million people, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, have been forced to leave their homes. Whether they are made refugees in another country or displaced internally, 2017 UN data shows that “nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute as a...

The Dead Eye and the Deep Blue Sea: A Graphic Memoir of Modern Slavery by Vannak Anan Prum, edited by Ben Pederick and Jocelyn Pederick [in Booklist]

05 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cambodian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

According to 2016 International Labor Organization data, “at least 40 million people are held in servitude.” Among these modern-day slaves was Vannak Anan Prum, a Cambodian man whose determination to finance his pregnant wife’s impending hospital stay sent him away from their village to find...

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture edited by Roxane Gay [in Library Journal]

13 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Haitian American, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

"What is it like to live in a culture where it often seems like it is a question of when, not if, a woman will encounter some kind of sexual violence?" Roxane Gay (Hunger) posits in the introduction to her latest title, a "place for...

Educated by Tara Westover [in Library Journal]

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

As the youngest of seven children born to a junkyard-tending father and midwife-herbalist mother in remote Idaho, Tara Westover realizes at age 7 that the single fact “that makes [her] family different: we don’t go to school.” Her family espouses Mormonism, although their practices tend toward...

The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers [in Library Journal]

31 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab, Arab American, Audio, Biography, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

Dion Graham has narrated 10 – which is almost all – of McSweeney's founding publisher and literary powerhouse Dave Eggers's books. Graham showcases his staggering genius for aural incarnations across gender, ethnicity, culture, age – whatever details Eggers writes, Graham inspiringly brings to listeners' ears. Their...

The Heart Is a Shifting Sea by Elizabeth Flock [in Library Journal]

17 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Indian, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian

Journalist Elizabeth Flock's intention to write about "the Indian love story" – "because it seemed more honest and vulnerable," especially when compared to her parents' multiple failed marriages – began in 2008 when she first lived in Mumbai. Although a spinal injury unexpectedly sent her...

Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot [in Library Journal]

15 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Repost

"Indian girls can be forgotten so well they can forget themselves." After reading Terese Marie Mailhot’s 160 pages or listening to not-quite-four hours narrated by Rainy Fields, forgetting is not an option. Presented as an essay collection, Mailhot's work lays bare her experiences as a...

My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs by Kazuo Ishiguro [in Library Journal]

03 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, British Asian, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Yes, reading the inimitable Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2017 Nobel Lecture is easy, but the better option is listening to his crisp, gentle voice instead. Perhaps Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, missed the memo on properly pronouncing Ishiguro's first name, but her introduction...

A River in Darkness: One Man’s Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa, translated by Risa Kobayashi [in Library Journal]

23 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Japanese, Korean, Memoir, Nonfiction, North Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Memoirs by North Korean defectors have proliferated, but Masaji Ishikawa's, originally published in 2000, might be the first available in English translation by a Japanese-born escapee. The Japanese bestseller, I Was Kim Jong Il's Cook (2004), by pseudonymous Kenji Fujimoto, could be the only other...

So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo [in Library Journal]

17 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

If you eschew potentially significant discomfort, then you're probably not ready to talk about race. Then again, denial is no longer an option: "These last few years, the rise of voices of color, coupled with the widespread dissemination of video proof of brutality and injustice...

Graphic Gems: Novels, Biographies, and Memoirs for Younger Readers [in The Booklist Reader]

05 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Japanese American, Lists, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Russian, Russian American, Translation, Turkish, Turkish American, Young Adult Readers

Since I recently shared some utterly satisfying single-volume graphic titles for adults, I figured I should point out a few outstanding titles for middle-grade and YA readers, as well. That said, so-called grown-ups will surely find many of these titles just as satisfying. Equal literary...

Graphic Gems: Novels, Story Collections, and Memoirs for Adults [in The Booklist Reader]

04 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British Asian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Japanese American, Korean American, Lists, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

While I’m addicted to various manga series (click here and here for some of my favorites), I’ve also discovered the satisfaction of single-volume graphic titles offering that perfect balance of fascinating narrative and gorgeously complementary, enhancing art. From goofy to haunting, comforting to challenging, and...

The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq by Dunya Mikhail, translated by Dunya Mikhail [in Booklist]

28 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Iraqi, Iraqi American, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

Award-winning poet Dunya Mikhail, an Iraqi exile who fled her homeland in 1996 and eventually settled in Michigan, makes her nonfiction debut with a hybrid text that combines reportage and personal memoir with the intention of giving voice to northern Iraqi women victims of Daesh...

What a Wonderful Word by Nicola Edwards, illustrated by Luisa Uribe

26 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction

Earlier this year, the National Book Foundation announced the addition of a fifth National Book Award: the National Book Award for Translated Literature. The news made me positively giddy: such specific recognition feels long overdue because I'm convinced translators do some of the hardest literary...

Go Home! edited by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, foreword by Viet Thanh Nguyen [in Booklist]

13 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Nonfiction, Pan-Asian Pacific American, Poetry, Repost

The phrase, go home, encompasses polarizing intentions. It’s a reference to one’s safest place but can also be a hurled threat of exclusion. That polarity illuminates these 31 stories, essays, and poems by writers of diasporic Asian origin, compiled by self-described “Japanese-Chinese-Scottish-English-American” novelist Rowan Hisayo Buchanan...

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