Above all else, Janie is a survivor. She escaped the horrifying deaths that took her entire family in her native Cambodia. She's outlived her adoptive Canadian mother who passed away just last year. She's built a fulfilling career as a scientist specializing in brain research. She's...
Introduced to U.S. readers by award-winning Canadian author Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch in last year's Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War, Son Thi Ahn Tuyet's story continues – literally one step at a time. Now that Tuyet has a real home with her own real family – Dad, Mom, sisters Beth and...
I admit I had a few false starts before I finally settled into Patricia McCormick's latest, which was a 2012 National Book Award finalist for Young People's Literature. Based on the horrifying experiences of Cambodian activist/humanitarian Arn Chorn-Pond’s childhood survival during the brutal Khmer Rouge control...
Kim Thúy is one tough writer to get to, although she declares in our first email exchange when I finally track her down, “I am not at all the kind who plays hard to get :-) .” Attempts to contact her included pleas to both her...
Kim Thúy’s Ru: An Apple for the Reader Ah, well . . . better start with true confessions: my words appear on the back cover of the U.S. edition (at least the first printing) of Vietnamese Canadian author Kim Thúy’s debut novel, Ru. The blurb is...
So I've been mulling over this book for a month-plus, and still remain rather conflicted. The one solid conclusion I can offer is this – if I were to rank Susan Choi's titles, my list would read thusly: American Woman, based loosely on the Patty Hearst...
This might be a spoiler of sorts: The advance galley is printed with a March 12, 2013 pub date, but when I went searching for an image of the book's cover to load here, online bookstores list a May date. Hmmm ...
Both the inside and outside covers here are exactly the same: a mostly well-ordered, three-generation family tree ...
Although Vincent Lam's first novel hit shelves months ago, I waited (and waited) to read it because I was afraid – seems to be my modus operandi for follow-up titles to books I've cherished, unable to move on for fear of grave disappointment. Lam's interconnected story...
Joel Pickford's titular journey took him through an 8,000-mile trek to some of the most remote villages in Laos, five years of interviewing Hmong refugees, and five years of reading Hmong history and ethnography. The result is a gorgeous, startling, intimate portrait of an ethnic...
* STARRED REVIEW The recipient of international accolades – including Canada’s coveted Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction (2010) for its original Canadian debut in French – this extraordinary first novel unfolds like ethereal poetry. The enigmatic title means “a small stream and, figuratively, a flow, a discharge—of...
She begins her life as Ling, the first-born twin of a well-to-do Shanghai family. Half the family is cleaved from the other, seeking new fortune on the British outpost called the Black Isle. During the sea voyage that takes Ling, her twin Li, and their father...
Eric Gamalinda and I overlapped in New York City in the 1990s, when I knew (of) him more as a poet. I should know better (blame it on youth!) than to label him by genre, because clearly Gamalinda is a multi-faceted writer (as well as a playwright,...
When I recently met Loung Ung in person at one of her Washington, DC readings, we were the lone Asian women in the room. Yes, get ready with your "uh-oh." Within minutes, a random stranger asked if Ung and I were sisters. Surprisingly, I behaved...
April is National Poetry Month. Every once in a long while, even a poetry-dullard like me has a poetic WOW!-moment. Certainly I'm not alone ...
Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is one of those mega-award-winning Canadian authors (with more than a dozen titles) who hasn't crossed over our shared border (just yet!) with the same success. She's best known for her historical novels for younger readers about what must be one of...
I think I will forever remember this book, perhaps not so much for the story, but for a single word: a blind young man sitting in the dark with hands running across the pages answers when asked what he's doing ...
Half-way through reading this debut autobiographical novel-in-verse, I had a lively conversation about the cover with a delightful new friend who happens to be a bonafide kiddie-book expert. We had just finished sharing our shock over the recent fiasco surrounding the one-too-many finalists for the 2011 National Book...
Before you open Somaly Mam's astonishing memoir, you need to be prepared to bear witness to some of the most horrific acts a human being can commit against another, especially helpless young girls. Once you begin, the frank, unmitigated writing will not allow you to...
Eight years have passed (far too quickly) since I last saw the inimitable Jessica Hagedorn. Her 2003 novel, Dream Jungle, was about to come out and we were in desperate search of boba tea in New York’s East Village. Faced with a closed tea salon...
