The Tale of Murasaki by Liza Dalby + Author Interview [in aMagazine: Inside Asian America]
16 Oct, by in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Japanese, Nonethnic-specific, Repost
Court Intrigue: An interview with Liza Dalby about her new book, The Tale of Murasaki
Six hundred years before the Western world saw its first novel, Lady Murasaki Shikibu’s brilliant tome, The Tale...
As I read Karen Shepard’s debut novel, An Empire of Women, I couldn’t help thinking if the title was some sort of sarcastic joke, if not a blatant mistake, because the utter...
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Twelve short stories about daily life in modern China, penned by National Book Award winner for Waiting. The collection could be read as a companion title to Waiting, as Ha Jin returns to the same Muji...
Modern Girls
Growing up in a large, extended family in Hong Kong, 
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Kyoko Mori’s Stone Field, True Arrow is a love story – or sorts. An exasperating one, at that, filled with characters emotionally paralyzed to the point of utter immobility. Maya...
My initial reaction – and it does not fade through the course of the book – is utter annoyance at yet another non-Asian exoticizing, objectifying, making inscrutable the Asian culture and its people. But...
Raj Kamal Jha’s slim debut novel, The Blue Bedspread, is fabulous. It is perhaps the best book I’ve read this year – maybe even several years. It’s also a precious find, not the least...
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A word of advice: Don’t read The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (which just won the Pulitzer for fiction) at the same time as Anita Desai’s new collection of short stories, Diamond Dust....
A Legacy of Survival
What began as a casual lunch in San Francisco with a then-business acquaintance ended in a cathartic literary accomplishment for journalist Elizabeth Kim. After exchanging life stories, agent Patti...
To reveal that the theme song to Meera Syal's novel, Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee is Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” might...
The Divine Dr. Deepak Chopra
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In the title poem of Russell Leong’s 1993 poetry collection, The Country of Dreams and Dust (West End Press), an epic work encompassing the history of the Chinese in America, Leong alludes to what...
A Japanese American man recounts his grandfather’s journey from Japan to America, and back to Japan. He comes to understand his grandfather’s feelings of being torn by a sense of being home in two...
Sam wakes up one day with the face of his elderly grandfather. He has a frustrating time trying to convince his family and friends that he really is still Sam...
A lovely story about a young Japanese boy who learns about Christmas for the first time from his California-born Japanese American mother as she prepares a special pine tree, decorated with paper...
Mark is in bed with a high fever. His Uncle Scott sends him a metal box for trout flies, which brings back memories of Mark’s first fishing trip. He’s transported to a sparkling river,...