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BookDragon Chinese American

Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto [in Booklist]

15 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Indonesian American, Repost, Singaporean American

Murder is never funny, except when it is. In Jesse Q. Sutanto’s rollicking debut, which she describes in a “Dear reader” foreword as “a love letter to my family – a ridiculously large bunch with a long history of immigration,” a fatal accident begets family...

Nights When Nothing Happened by Simon Han [in Booklist]

11 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

Jack is the older brother to six-years-younger Annabel, but in many ways, he’s the newest among the Cheng family. Born in China, he was raised by his grandparents when his mother, Patty, left to pursue a physics PhD in the U.S. with his photographer father,...

Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto, illustrated by Ann Xu [in Booklist]

05 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Commonwealth Writers’ Prize-winning Canadian Japanese novelist/poet Hiromi Goto (Half World, 2010) makes her stupendous graphic debut, in splendid artistic synchronization with Ignatz-nominated Ann Xu. “It never felt right here,” Kumiko thinks as she sneaks out of an assisted-living facility her daughters thought would be the...

Three Keys [Front Desk 2] by Kelly Yang [in Booklist]

14 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

The lively cast of Front Desk returns with narrator Sunny Lu, adding much-appreciated continuity. A relative audiobook newbie, Lu proves her expertise in ciphering middle graders to middle-aged adults. That she’s also an attorney makes the lawyers here – both the pompous and the heroic –...

Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen [in Booklist]

21 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Wall Street Journal correspondent Te-Ping Chen emerges as a fiction powerhouse, each of her 10 stories an immersive literary event. “Lulu,” which first appeared in the New Yorker, is a tale about the diverging life paths of twins, the overachieving daughter and the slacker...

A Lie Someone Told You about Yourself by Peter Ho Davies [in Booklist]

09 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British Asian, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Once upon a time, when the father was a young boy – the same age as his young son now – he wanted to be a crossing guard. After that, he wanted to be a writer. “‘And now you are one!’” the son gleefully...

What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez [in Booklist]

07 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Always approachable, immediately engaged, Hillary Huber returns as Sigrid Nunez’s cipher after voicing her 2018 National Book Awarded, The Friend. Once more, suicide looms, this time as a future intention rather than in response to a foregone event. In this is spare, sharp, simultaneously both daunting...

Measuring Up by Lily LaMotte, illustrated by Ann Xu [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Taiwanese, Taiwanese American

Debut author Lily LaMotte draws on her immigrant experiences – as well as her cooking show obsession – for a toothsome #OwnVoices graphic feast vibrantly illustrated by the Ignatz-nominated Ann Xu. For 12-year-old Cici, leaving Taiwan means separation from her beloved A-má (grandmother). In Seattle, Cici's...

Beauty by Christina Chiu [in Library Journal]

22 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

Judge Gish Jen anointed Beauty, Christina Chiu’s first fiction since her award-winning 2001 collection, Troublemaker and Other Stories, for the Santa Fe Writers Project’s James Alan McPherson Award, enabling publication from 2040 Books. A simple summary reveals Amy Wong's trajectory from an unmoored Manhattan 16-year-old...

White Ivy by Susie Yang [in Shelf Awareness]

12 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

Susie Yang's electrifying debut novel, White Ivy, has well earned its spot on the longlist for the Center for Fiction's 2020 First Novel Prize. Part immigrant story, part elitist takedown, part contemporary novel of wicked manners, White Ivy is an unpredictable spectacle. At 2, Ivy Lin...

A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor [The Carls, Book 2] by Hank Green [in Booklist]

15 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Chinese American, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Yes, indubitably, you’ll need to first read/listen to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (2018) to fully appreciate April’s resurrection, why/how we’re not alone, the need to save humanity despite, well, humans. While Kristen Sieh helmed Hank Green’s bestselling debut almost solo – Green himself did a...

Parachutes by Kelly Yang [in Booklist]

10 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

After a minute of unnecessary, ill-suited music, this recording opens with a chilling content warning: “This book contains scenes depicting sexual harassment and rape.” Kelly Yang’s highly anticipated follow-up to her award-winning middle-grade debut, Front Desk (2018), is markedly different from that book, as she...

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang [in Booklist]

07 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

At almost 19, Ama already has a dead soldier husband and three daughters. She marries two-decades-older Agong, another soldier with whom she has two more daughters. The youngest becomes Mother, who moves with Ama, Agong, and Jie (older sister), from Taiwan to Arkansas, only to be displaced...

Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan [in Booklist]

02 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, European, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Singaporean, Singaporean American

Following the über-success of his three-part Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin Kwan returns with another over-the-top bestseller, this time contemporizing and diversifying E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View. Lydia Look, narrator for previous Kwan titles, ushers the characters through a (practically) royal East/West wedding in Capri, then a...

Likes by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum [in Booklist]

31 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Short Stories

Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum’s (Ms. Hempel Chronicles, 2008) prowess here lies in her ingenious ability to elevate seemingly minor moments into the pivotal crux of a narrative. Take, for example, in “Julia and Sunny,” perhaps the most affecting of Bynum’s nine stories, “a small square of silky, pale blue material” that...

Hot Pot Night! by Vincent Chen [in Shelf Awareness]

22 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

"What's for dinner?" is an end-of-day call to action in homes everywhere. Debut author/illustrator Vincent Chen answers with Hot Pot Night!, a toothsome treat that gathers family, friends, and neighbors for what will be an evening of delectable communal dining. As the residents of an apartment...

Mimi Lee Gets a Clue [A Sassy Cat Mystery, Book 1] by Jennifer J. Chow [in Booklist]

06 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

Cat mysteries are a (bestselling) thing: the late Lillian Jackson Braun’s 29-volume Cat Who ...

Must I Go by Yiyun Li [in Booklist]

22 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Missing children loom in Yiyun Li’s latest novel, her second since her teenage son’s tragic 2017 suicide, which inspired Where Reasons End (2019). MacArthur “genius” Li is herself a suicide survivor, as revealed in Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life (2017). In her...

The Madwoman and the Roomba: My Year of Domestic Mayhem by Sandra Tsing Loh [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Despite the "golden years" promised by many, for writer, performer, and University of California, Irvine, professor Sandra Tsing Loh, her "fifty-fifth year was more like living a disorganized twenty-five-year-old's life in a malfunctioning eighty-five-year-old's body." With the same self-deprecating wit and sardonic charm with...

Five More to Go: Nathacha Appanah’s Tropic of Violence [in The Booklist Reader]

20 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Chinese, Chinese American, European, Fiction, Indian, Lists, Repost, South Asian, Translation

Tropic of Violence by Nathacha Appanah and translated by Geoffrey Strachan How can a story so harrowing, so wrenching be so gorgeous? In her third novel exquisitely translated by award-winning Geoffrey Strachan, Mauritius-born journalist and translator Appanah (Waiting for Tomorrow, 2018) presents the beginning and dissolution...

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SmithsonianAPA brings Asian Pacific American history, art, and culture to you through innovative museum experiences and digital initiatives.

About BookDragon

Welcome to BookDragon, filled with titles for the diverse reader. BookDragon is a new media initiative of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (APAC), and serves as a forum for those interested in learning more about the Asian Pacific American experience through literature. BookDragon is inhabited by Terry Hong.

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