BookDragon Hapa/Mixed-race
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow
14 Jul, by in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race
So here I sit facing a familiar conundrum ...
Liar by Justine Larbalestier
13 Jul, by in Audio, Australian, Black/African American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Middle Grade Readers, Young Adult Readers
Micah is a boy. Micah is a girl. Micah is 17, a senior in a progressive New York City private school. Micah's father went to Marseille in search of his unknown black French father and came back with a white French wife. Micah's father is an...
The Last Werewolf Trilogy: The Last Werewolf, Talulla Rising, By Blood We Live by Glen Duncan
07 Jul, by in Adult Readers, Audio, British, British Asian, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race
In a roundabout way I can't quite recall, I ended up at this 2007 New York Times article, "Young Man Behaving Badly," and learned that bestselling author Glen Duncan is hapa British Asian. I found his latest title, By Blood We Live, magically waiting on my shelves, only...
Sidewalk Dancing: A Novel in Stories by Letitia Moffitt
02 Jul, by in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Hawaiian, Short Stories
Two genres set my reading heart aflutter: novels in verse (highly ironic as I am an utter poetry dullard) and interlinked short storied novels. Hapa Hawaiian native Letitia Moffit’s Sidewalk Dancing falls in the latter category ...
How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway
26 May, by in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Japanese American
Okay, I confess the cover put me off from opening the book for months (well, actually, years); I recently compromised by choosing to go aural and was surprisingly delighted to spend almost eight hours with narrators Laural Merlington and Emily Durante (who take turns reading as mother and...
Legend Trilogy: Legend, Prodigy, and Champion by Marie Lu
13 May, by in Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Middle Grade Readers, Young Adult Readers
While production doesn't seem to have started just yet, news that Marie Lu's bestselling dystopic trilogy is coming to a theater near you keeps resurfacing since CBS Films bought rights to Legend in 2011. That Lu has a much-hyped new series, The Young Elites, hitting shelves this fall, will surely add pressure to...
No Matter the Wreckage by Sarah Kay, illustrations by Sophia Janowitz
02 May, by in Adult Readers, Hapa/Mixed-race, Poetry, Young Adult Readers
Goodness gracious! I have so much to tell you about this book! Allow me to lay out some pre-reading, preparatory directions: First, go meet Sarah Kay through her 2011 TED debut. She is so expressive and impressive both, that watching her once will give you the magical ability to...
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng [in Library Journal]
01 May, by in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost
*STARRED REVIEW Celeste Ng’s debut is one of those aching stories about which the reader knows so much more than any of the characters, even as each yearns for the unknowable truth. “Lydia is dead,” the novel opens – blunt, unnerving, devastating. She’s only 16, the middle of three...
Bird by Crystal Chan
17 Apr, by in Audio, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers, Young Adult Readers
In the small town of Caledonia, Iowa, Jewel stands out: she's "'half-Jamaican, a quarter white, and a quarter Mexican.'" As if to provide a physical embodiment of Jewel's hapa background, the audible producers cast Amandla Stenberg, who played the heartbreaking role of young Rue in the film version of The...
Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood by Varsha Bajaj
24 Mar, by in Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian, Indian American, Middle Grade Readers, South Asian, South Asian American
Okay, so what are the chances?! Varsha Bajaj's exuberant debut middle grade novel begins with a food allergy that sends her teen protagonist, the titular Abby Spencer, to the ER with an anaphylactic reaction. Talk about eerily prescient – less than 12 hours later, I'm repeating...
We Are Water by Wally Lamb
27 Feb, by in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Nonethnic-specific
Over the past couple weeks, I've been a bit of an ethnic voyeur, picking up bestselling 'mainstream' titles in search of their APAness. I confess I picked up Wally Lamb's latest purely because I somehow learned the protagonist is named Annie Oh – Oh usually being a Korean...
The Undertaking of Lily Chen by Danica Novgorodoff
14 Feb, by in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Young Adult Readers
Before Danica Novgorodoff’s story even begins, her dedication page offers crucial tidbits: in paying homage to her grandparents, she reveals both her Chinese heritage and inspiration ["To my grandparents, Eugene and Ellen Chen Novgorodoff"]; in quoting a July 2007 article from The Economist (we're talking pretty...
A Well-Tempered Heart by Jan-Philipp Sendker, translated by Kevin Wiliarty
21 Jan, by in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Myanmarese (Burmese), Myanmarese (Burmese) American, Southeast Asian, Translation
Every once in a while, only the very best schmaltz will do. Earnest and endearing, this just-arriving-in-translation sequel to the international mega-bestseller, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, is a through-the-night read that will leave you sighing and swooning. Okay, so we're not talking Nobel-quality: "'I speak of a...
The Frangipani Hotel by Violet Kupersmith [in Library Journal]
16 Jan, by in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Short Stories, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American
*STARRED REVIEW What is most haunting in Kupersmith's nine multi-layered pieces are not the specters, whose tales are revealed as stories within stories, but the lingering loss and disconnect endured by the still living. With an American father and a Vietnamese "former boat refugee" mother, the...
Yokohama Yankee: My Family’s Five Generations as Outsiders in Japan by Leslie Helm
17 Dec, by in Adult Readers, European, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Japanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction
'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...
Marisol McDonald and the Clash Bash | Marisol McDonald y la fiesta sin igual by Monica Brown, illustrated by Sara Palacios, Spanish translation by Adriana Domínguez
16 Nov, by in Bilingual, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Latina/o/x, South American
In case you need an introduction to the "unique, different, and one of a kind" Marisol McDonald, check out her 2011 debut here: Marisol McDonald Doesn't Match. Now that she's starring in her second book, I hope that means Marisol's got her own series going, so we...
Splash, Anna Hibiscus! by Atinuke, illustrated by Lauren Tobia
03 Nov, by in African, British, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race
As gorgeous as the large snowflakes are where I am, just to be contrary, I'm wishing for sun and surf! I can't remember the last time I went splish-splashing, so clearly I'm overdue! For now, I'll just have to join Anna Hibiscus on her beckoning...
The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride
26 Oct, by in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Audio, Biography, Black/African American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Memoir, Nonfiction
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...