Grass for My Pillow by Saiichi Maruya, translated by Dennis Keene [in AsianWeek]
First published more than 35 years ago, Pillow follows the story of Shokichi Hamada, who escapes military service during World War II by fleeing to the countryside – and by...
First-ever, encyclopedic summary of APA playwrights’ lives and works. Exceptionally thorough resource.
Review:
A fascinating, serpentine tale of a privileged Indian boy who at 15 is thrown out into the streets by the man he thought was his father, and how he becomes a chameleon re-inventor of himself in...
Three generational-saga of a south Indian village family, which begins in 1899 with the patriarch, Solomon Dorai, village headman, and continues through a tumultuous period of political upheavals and changes...
Picturing the Worlds of Chris Soentpiet
No number of rejections could dampen Chris Soentpiet’s determination to succeed and put his artwork forward. Even after being refused by more than 10 publishers as a fresh-faced college...
Collateral Damage
The Aug.13 issue of USA Today reports that more than 150 books that deal with Sept. 11 have already been or are about to be...
Journey to the East: Katy Robinson's search for her Korean family in A Single Square Picture
BOISIE, IDAHO — In 1977 at the age of 7, Kim Ji-yun left Seoul and arrived in...
Fox Girl takes readers back to post-Korean War “America Town,” where the abandoned, racially mixed children of U.S. soldiers fought for bare survival and Korean women continued to service occupying GIs in order to put food...
Over 60 years ago, the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 – “a day that will live in infamy” as then-President Roosevelt named it – eventually led to the signing of Executive Order 9066...
Child's Play: The Writerly Life of Newbery Award-Winner Linda Sue Park
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — When Linda Sue Park first received the call last spring that she had won the top honor in children’s literature –...
Love's Labor's Not Lost: Kaya Press
Sunyoung Lee and Juliana Koo make up the two-person office that is Kaya Press, a tiny, independent Asian/Asian Pacific American-focused, not-for-profit book publisher based in New York City. For...
A look at the long-term implications of the U.S.’s role in East Asia, the Americanization of Asia, and – even more importantly – the “extraordinary” Asianization of America.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2002...
Fascinating look at Japanese American junior high school students writing letters of patriotic loyalty to their homeroom teacher, in the face of impending, unjust internment.
Review:
At first glance, one might think this is one cheesy title, but the contents redeem: it’s provocative, beautifully rendered, and just plain fun. Not to mention just a little bit...
At 23, Greenfeld “set off for Asia to become a writer, intrigued by the lurid tales of booms, busts, drugs, sex, violence, magic.” Part memoir, part social history, all wild ride, Deviations catches glimpses...
A history of two revolutionary women in Nepal who challenged corruption and dictatorship, whose stories were deliberately lost and then nearly forgotten, and the author’s own search for truth.
Review: <a...
The much awaited follow-up to the bestselling A Fine Balance. A family saga of sorts, set in a Bombay apartment (really, it’s getting to be a genre of its own!), about an elderly, Parkinson’s...
A tragic coming-of-age melodrama about two girls, Maple and Wild Ginger, brainwashed by Mao and the Cultural Revolution, packaged in a surprisingly slim volume.
Review:
The follow-up to Gao’s Nobel Prize-winning Soul Mountain. At the request of his naked, white German lover in the relative freedom of a Hong Kong hotel room in 1996, Gao’s fictionalized counterpart...