With or Without You by Domenica Ruta
Ah, well ...
Ah, well ...
"For any serious artist, it is a terrible feeling of surrender when you realize there is no place in the world for your voice, when all that you express seems marginalized or in vain ...
Theater producer/critic/playwright Warren Hoffman (The Passing Game) insists that audiences have been "duped" into believing that the Broadway musical "is the most innocent of art forms when, in fact, it is one of America's most powerful, influential, and even at times polemical arts precisely because...
"If this book leads to even a single rescue, then my time in bondage was worth it," Shyima Hall writes in the penultimate paragraph in the final chapter of her new memoir. That "time in bondage" she refers to is four long years during which...
In spite of a history that spans centuries – especially in California – Hollywood has long remained an elusive destination for Asian Pacific Americans seeking not always celluloid glory, but at the very least, mere participation and fair representation. From immigration restrictions, limited casting opportunities, miscegenation laws,...
As spare as this book is, it's turned out to be one of the most bookmarked (with skinny stick-its) titles I've recently read. Written by an autistic Japanese then-13-year-old, the English translation arrives six years later courtesy of parents of an autistic child – internationally...
"'Who is Malala?'" the gunman demanded on that fateful day, October 9, 2012, before he shot three bullets into a bus carrying teenage girls to school. Unable to answer then, Malala answers now in her new memoir for all the world to read: "I am...
Before discussing content, I must start with a warning about presentation – think of it as a public service announcement: Choose the page, choose the page, choose the page! Although narrator Sumalee Montano (an American actress of Filipina and Thai/Chinese descent with a Harvard degree) lists...
An 85-year-old grandmother makes a special birthday trip from the U.S. to Tanzania where three generations celebrate with a surprise safari through Serengeti National Park. The story is special enough ...
Co-authors Susan L. Roth and Cindy Trumbore, whose last project à deux was the glorious The Mangrove Tree set in the tiny African country of Eritrea, travel south to the Caribbean to present another memorable story of preservation and conservation. Welcome to Puerto Rico, home of the Puerto Rican parrot, also...
'Sprawling' barely begins to describe journalist/editor Leslie Helm's ambitious family history that spans nearly a century-and-a-half, three continents, and the titular five generations of a German Japanese American family with current branches spread throughout the rest of the world. Prompted by the death of his difficult...
My older teenager tells me the series of the same name is what 'everyone' is watching: "It's the new favorite show," she insists. So when I found the book ("there's a book?" the daughter asks with surprise; there's almost always a book first!) available to...
Deborah Ellis has a doubly powerful schtick: first, her nonfiction titles give underrepresented children a highly visible podium for their very own words (Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak, Off to War: Voices of Soldiers’ Children, Children of War: Voices of Iraqi Refugees, Kids of Kabul: Living Bravely through...
Malcolm and I started out great here. We usually do. He's judgmental, opinionated, smart, questioning, and downright entertaining. Outliers remains my all-time Gladwell favorite, then Blink, then Tipping Point. I thought he faltered a bit in his last title, What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures, but those contents weren't...
Introduced to U.S. readers by award-winning Canadian author Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch in last year's Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War, Son Thi Ahn Tuyet's story continues – literally one step at a time. Now that Tuyet has a real home with her own real family – Dad, Mom, sisters Beth and...
In case you haven't planned your Turkey Dinner coming up in exactly a week (who, me? menu? what's that?), here's a collection filled with irreverently toothsome suggestions. Having grown up eating kimchi with every chestnut-stuffed bird or surreally spiraled pink ham (or both), I couldn't...
Muthini – whose name means "suffering ...
With the impending release of the book-to-screen adaptation of Catching Fire on November 22, Suzanne Collins will again be back in the headlines sooner than later. Although The Hunger Games trilogy is what made her a household name, Collins does have other (dare I say ...
What writer and musician James McBride initially thought might take just six months to write required 14 long years to produce his now-almost-20-year-old debut title, The Color of Water. "Mommy" – McBride never calls her anything else – was never a cooperative subject: she shared her memories in her...
Although published a quarter century apart, these are two books that tell a single tears-of-joy-inducing family story. If chronology is important, you might read Patricia Polacco's multi-generational family epic out of publication order – that is, Blessing Cup (out this year) first, and then Keeping Quilt (which debuted in...