BookDragon Hapa/Mixed-race

Dragon Springs Road by Janie Chang + Author Interview [in Bloom]

21 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

Ever since she was a child, Janie Chang was steeped in family tales she inherited from her parents about the generations that came before. For decades, she remained the family’s repository until, at age 53, she presented the world with her debut novel, Three Souls,...

The Kindness of Enemies by Leila Aboulela [in Library Journal]

05 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Arab American, Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW In a dual narrative, Leila Aboulela (Minaret; Lyrics Alley), winner of the inaugural Caine Prize for African Writing, exposes the impossibility of definitively taking sides. In 2010 Scotland, the global war on terror pixilates the lives of history professor Natasha, her student Oz, and...

How To Party with an Infant by Kaui Hart Hemmings

10 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Hawaiian, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Mele, single mother of Ellie, joined the San Francisco Mother's Club (SFMC) to be matched with the perfect playgroup, something that never happened. Two years later, she's part of a rogue, "laughing, sh*t-talking, texting, even talking on the phone" fivesome that came together organically at...

Discover WeNeedDiverseBooks with Nicola Yoon’s Everything Everything

07 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Black/African American, Caribbean American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, WeNeedDiverseBooks, WNDB.SummerReadingSeries2016, Young Adult Readers

Discover WeNeedDiverseBooks with Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes’ Secret Coders

02 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Black/African American, Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, WeNeedDiverseBooks, WNDB.SummerReadingSeries2016

Discover WeNeedDiverseBooks with Margarita Engle’s Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music

13 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Biography, Black/African American, Caribbean, Caribbean American, Children/Picture Books, Chinese American, Cuban, Cuban American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Latina/o/x, Nonfiction, WeNeedDiverseBooks, WNDB.SummerReadingSeries2016

The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies [in Booklist]

11 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Hong Kongese, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW British-born of Welsh and Chinese parentage, Peter Ho Davies (The Welsh Girl, 2007) has lived stateside since 1992, but this is his first U.S.-set title. In it he explores the history of his adopted home in four sections. In “Gold,” he links the completion of...

Discover WeNeedDiverseBooks with Maya Soetoro-Ng’s Ladder to the Moon

06 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indonesian American, WeNeedDiverseBooks, WNDB.SummerReadingSeries2016

Turning Japanese: A Graphic Memoir by MariNaomi

24 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Japanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

In 1995 at age 22, MariNaomi leaves her boyfriend of five years, her job, her San Francisco home and transplants herself 50 miles south in San Jose, where she almost immediately "move[s] into an idyllic, century-old one bedroom cottage that rested on a large plot of untamed...

Discover WeNeedDiverseBooks with Marilyn Nelson’s American Ace

22 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Black/African American, European, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Irish American, Middle Grade Readers, Poetry, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, WeNeedDiverseBooks, WNDB.SummerReadingSeries2016, Young Adult Readers

American Ace by Marilyn Nelson [in School Library Journal]

06 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Black/African American, European, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Irish American, Middle Grade Readers, Poetry, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW When Connor's grandmother dies, she leaves his father a ring, a pair of pilot's wings, and a letter explaining that the man who raised Connor's father was not his biological father. With his father paralyzed by depression, Connor takes the two mementoes and the...

Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa [in Library Journal]

21 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, South Asian American, Sri Lankan American, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW On an afternoon in November 1999, the 50,000-strong disruption of the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle imploded with tear gas and violence. Sunil Yapa’s debut pivots around teenage runaway Victor, whose initial plans to sell marijuana for profit morphs into tenacious participation with...

United States of Japan by Peter Tieryas + Author Interview [in Bookslut]

07 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Japanese American, Korean American, Repost

Alternate histories have been "a thing" for decades. Lauded titles are many, but World War II-related novels in which the so-called good guys don't win seem to have yielded quite a few bestsellers through the decades, including The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, Fatherland...

The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee [in Christian Science Monitor]

22 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean American, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

'The Queen of the Night' blends opera and mystery into a grandiose read Fourteen-plus years after his Whiting Award-ed debut, Edinburgh, hit shelves in late 2001, literary social media-darling Alexander Chee returns with The Queen of the Night, in which another – albeit very different –...

Master Keaton (vol. 5) by Naoki Urasawa, story by Hokusei Katsushika and Takashi Nagasaki, translated and adapted by John Werry

12 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, British Asian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

For those of us of a certain (old) age, we might remember an animated rabbit used to sell artificially colored, chemically flavored powder that altered milk into some sort of sweet goop: Quiky the Quik Bunny would quip "You can't drink it slow, if it's Quik."...

Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music by Margarita Engle, illustrated by Rafael López

28 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Biography, Black/African American, Caribbean, Caribbean American, Children/Picture Books, Chinese American, Cuban, Cuban American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Nonfiction

Thank the stars for all the women who never succumbed to 'you can't' and 'you're not allowed,' and the constant cacophony of insistent 'no's. Meet another such hero: drum dream girl. In spite of her strikingly diverse heritage – Chinese, African, and Cuban! – all her elders agree...

The Good Little Book by Kyo Maclear, illustrated by Marion Arbona

24 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race

Winter is quickly settling around us ...

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon [in School Library Journal]

02 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Nicola Yoon’s superb debut begins and ends with books. Stories are how 18-year-old Madeline has survived with Severe Combined Immunodeficiency – "you know it as 'bubble baby disease’" – in her sanitized world that includes only her doctor mother and a nurse. She's been content...

Master Keaton (vols. 3-4) by Naoki Urasawa, story by Hokusei Katsushika and Takashi Nagasaki, translated and adapted by John Werry

16 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, British, British Asian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Well, I've done it now – binge-read two volumes of my latest favorite manga obsession. I really was trying to space out the fabulous adventures of Taichi Hiraga Keaton, our British/Japanese hapa professor/insurance investigator (ha! of course, he's so much more than that!), but once begun...

Secret Coders (Volume 1) by Gene Luen Yang & Mike Holmes

18 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Black/African American, Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific

"Listen. I'm going to tell you a story -- " Well, of course, if two-time National Book Award finalist (third time will be the charm!) Gene Luen Yang is involved with the explicating, you're going to listen, and listen well. This former high school computer science...