Hapa/Mixed-race Archives - Page 3 of 14

Papaya Salad by Elisa Macellari, translated by Carla Roncalli Di Montorio [in Booklist]

26 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Italian, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Southeast Asian, Thai, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Although Thai Italian artist Elisa Macellari’s Kusama (2020) hit U.S. shelves first, Papaya Salad is actually her debut title, originally published in 2018 in her native Italy. Introducing her tale as “a story the protagonist told me when I was a child and which I stumbled across...

Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha Trethewey [in Booklist]

03 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey makes both her prose and narrating debut with a startling memoir that alchemizes neverending trauma into an exquisite memorial. On June 5, 1985, Trethewey’s mother, Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough, was murdered by former stepfather Joel Grimmett on Atlanta’s Memorial...

Kimiko Does Cancer by Kimiko Tobimatsu, illustrated by Keet Geniza [in Booklist]

30 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Filipina/o American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese American, Memoir, Repost

“I’m not a big fan of the common sentiment, ‘Cancer made me a better person,’” Kimiko Tobimatsu admits in her author’s note. “But then, cancer did make me a better person.” Diagnosed at 25 with “a rare form of breast cancer – mucinous,” Tobimatsu is...

The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta [in School Library Journal]

03 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, British, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW British-born to a Greek Cypriot mother and Jamaican father, Dean Atta established himself as a poet and performer in 2012. Here he gorgeously debuts as both author and narrator of his novel-in-verse in which his fictional stand-in, Michael Angeli, matures from an end-of-the-millennium baby...

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...

A World Between by Emily Hashimoto [in Booklist]

25 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian American, Japanese American, Repost

Eleanor and Leena meet in 2004 in a Boston college-dorm elevator. Eleanor is a hapa Californian – her mother is white, her father Japanese American. Leena’s traditionally immigrant Indian American family is a few towns over in Lowell. That fall semester is spent intensely falling,...

When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller [in School Library Journal]

02 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

Keller's narrative can't be faulted – the story is achingly gorgeous. A widowed Korean American mother and her two mixed-race daughters move from California to Washington to live with their glamorous, unconventional Halmoni – grandmother" in Korean. Older sister Sam – suffering from sullen teenagerhood...

The Shape of Family by Shilpi Somaya Gowda [in Booklist]

23 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

Once upon a time, the Olander quartet was just about perfect: white American Keith and Indian-born cosmopolitan Jaya fall madly in love in London and eventually settle in northern California to raise their two children. When eight-year-old Prem drowns in the family’s pool, 13-year-old Karina...

Turtle Under Ice by Juleah del Rosario [in School Library Journal]

14 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

Juleah del Rosario's sophomore novel-in-verse is a haunting elegy, revealed in the back-and-forth voices of two sisters. Rowena is the star soccer athlete, Ariana the artist who might not graduate. They're students at the same high school, but the older hardly acknowledges the younger; at...

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...

The House of Deep Water by Jeni McFarland [in Shelf Awareness]

19 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

For Jeni McFarland, who survived childhood sexual assault, talking about her trauma "was like a dam burst," she reveals in an interview with her publisher. "It was so cathartic writing about it that I couldn't stop." That horrific survival, further aggravated by being one of...

Glorious Boy by Aimee Liu [in Library Journal]

04 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Liu’s eponymous “glorious boy” exists at the intersection of families, communities, countries, cultures – and, for a while, life and death. His spirited, adventurous parents – Shep, a British doctor obsessed with the healing power of indigenous plants, and the American Claire, a would-be...

The Royal Abduls by Ramiza Shamoun Koya [in Shelf Awareness]

16 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

In her provocative, intense debut novel, The Royal Abduls, Ramiza Shamoun Koya introduces the extended members of a fractured family four years after the horrors of 9/11. Each is attempting to deal with ongoing anti-Muslim challenges, from microaggressions to outright civil rights abuses. Despite a shared...

Starling Days by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan [in Booklist]

13 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese American, Repost

After a decade together, Oscar and Mina married, but on their wedding night, Mina downed all the pills she could find, yet somehow lived. Six months later, she’s walking across George Washington Bridge. She’s already sent one of her purple flip-flops into the dark below...

Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park + Author Interview [in Shelf Awareness]

16 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Author Interview/Profile, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean, Korean American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Fan Fiction, 50 Years Later Almost two decades have passed since Linda Sue Park became the first Korean American – and only the second Asian American – to win the Newbery Medal, in 2002 for A Single Shard. She's since published dozens of titles (Gondra's Treasure; Forest of...

All-American Muslim Girl by Nadine Jolie Courtney [in School Library Journal]

03 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Jordanian American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

For Allie Abraham, "hiding is easy: reddish-blond hair, pale skin, hazel eyes," in other words – white. That she looks "textbook Circassian…from the Caucasus region. (Hey, they don't call it Caucasian for nothing)," is her ethnic inheritance from her immigrant Circassian Jordanian history professor father....

Reproduction by Ian Williams [in Booklist]

21 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Canadian, Caribbean American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

Everything here sounds off-kilter – on purpose. Discomfort pervades the reading, whether conversations are awkwardly not-quite-synched between speakers, or sentences spoken in an (unnamed) Caribbean island patois are made purposefully wooden and German words and phrases become virtually unintelligible. That jagged performance, however, seems integral...

Africaville by Jeffrey Colvin [in Shelf Awareness]

25 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Canadian, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

The town of Africville exists, designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1996. The small coastal community on the edge of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was home to black residents since the early 1800s, the majority with southern U.S. and Caribbean origins. Narrative magazine assistant editor Jeffrey...

Older Brother by Mahir Guven, translated by Tina Kover [in Shelf Awareness]

18 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, French, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Syrian, Translation

Two brothers. Two narrators. Two type fonts: serif for "The Older Brother" chapters; sans serif for "The Younger Brother." Their family has shrunk as Mahir Guven's debut, Older Brother, begins: "...

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