Southeast Asian American Archives - Page 5 of 8

World and Town by Gish Jen

14 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Cambodian, Cambodian American, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American

Hattie Kong's email inbox is full of desperate pleas from various relatives to please send back her parents' bones to the family plot in Qufu, China. Because her American missionary mother and her Confucius-descended Chinese father found their final rest in Iowa, the remaining Kong...

Roots and Wings by Many Ly

15 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Cambodian, Cambodian American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Young Adult Readers

Born and raised in a small Pennsylvania town, the only connection 14-year-old Grace has to her Cambodian heritage are her mother and her grandmother. While these three generations of women clearly need and love one another, they are uncertain as to how to truly know each...

Dogtag Summer by Elizabeth Partridge

31 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Middle Grade Readers, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American

I admit it: more than a few pages now have drying leftover droplets. Elizabeth Partridge, whose last title was the multi-award-winning Marching for Freedom, sure knows how to make a jaded old reader go sniff, sniff. On the last day of seventh grade, best friends Tracy and Stargazer...

Alive in the Killing Fields: Surviving the Khmer Rouge Genocide by Nawuth Keat with Martha E. Kendall

22 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Cambodian, Cambodian American, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Young Adult Readers

'Collateral damage' is such a detached, sanitized phrase for the innocent people who pay the highest price for the tragic folly of war; and surely the youngest and the eldest suffer the greatest. "I want people to know the truth about what happened," Nawuth Keat told...

Dragon Chica by May-lee Chai

15 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cambodian American, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Southeast Asian American

May-lee Chai’s second novel is one of those titles to consider reading from the end, in this case with the "Acknowledgements," where the Chinese Caucasian hapa Chai recounts her long personal involvement with the Cambodian American community. At 15, writing for her Midwest hometown newspaper in the...

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Loung Ung + Author Interview

10 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Cambodian, Cambodian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American

For someone who has experienced hell, Loung Ung is a bright, welcoming voice filled with inviting laughter. She’s warm: “I just had dinner with my writing group last night. They’re my PenGals. I just love them! I don’t know what I would do without them.” She’s practical:...

A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

06 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Memoir, Nonfiction, Singaporean American, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American

A toothsome distraction from the recent Tiger Mother hunt, journalist Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan offers A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family, which takes readers from Carnegie Hall into fragrant kitchens, trading threatened stuffed animals for pineapple tarts, Prokofiev for pandan. Tan's strong-willed...

This Is All I Choose to Tell: History and Hybridity in Vietnamese American Literature by Isabelle Thuy Pelaud [in San Francisco Chronicle]

26 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American

What's wrong with this scenario? Robert Olen Butler's A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain wins the Pulitzer Prize despite "his portrayal of sweet and off-beat Vietnamese American caricatures,"...

Mali Under the Night Sky: A Lao Story of Home by Youme

07 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Biography, Children/Picture Books, Laotian, Nonfiction, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American

As thin as this title might seem, it actually embodies three important sections. The main focus is clearly the story of young Mali, which begins with her carefree life in her native Laos...

Quiet As They Come by Angie Chau [in San Francisco Chronicle]

17 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American

Through 11 dovetailing stories that begin in the 1980s and move toward today, Angie Chau's absorbing debut collection, Quiet As They Come, follows three branches of an extended family that has miraculously escaped the Vietnam War. The 12 refugees attempt to adapt and survive the...

East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres by Andrew Lam

23 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Memoir, Nonfiction, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American

Unlike the rest of Andrew Lam’s relatives who only want to bombard him with questions about meeting Hiroyuki Sakai of Iron Chef fame (I don't watch TV and I hate to cook), what I want to know is, 'how's the love life?' Some might say...

Bobby the Brave (Sometimes) by Lisa Yee, illustrated by Dan Santat

09 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Middle Grade Readers, Southeast Asian American, Thai American

Bobby Ellis-Chan – skateboarder, goldfish trainer, football-challenged son of legendary NFL star "The Freezer" who is now a stay-at-home dad – is back. He's a year older and a grade higher from when he made his entertaining debut in Bobby vs. Girls (Accidentally), brought to you once...

I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita [in Library Journal]

18 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese American, Pan-Asian Pacific American, Repost, Southeast Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Comprising 10 novellas that took 10 years to craft, this is Yamashita’s (Circle K Cycles) magnum opus. Year by year, the novellas mark a decade’s worth of tumultuous Asian Pacific American (APA) history, from 1968, when ethnic studies was painfully birthed in San Francisco,...

Short Girls by Bich Minh Nguyen

27 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American

At first impression, the story is very familiar: two American-born sisters of Vietnamese American immigrants – one the high-achieving 'good' daughter with her law degree, the other the 'lost' daughter with fast friends and temporary jobs that never last long. But in Bich Minh Nguyen's heart-string-pulling...

Leaving Yesler by Peter Bacho + Author Interview

20 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Southeast Asian American, Young Adult Readers

On Old-Timers, Boxing, and Lots of Sex (mostly off the page ...

Bobby vs. Girls (Accidentally) by Lisa Yee, illustrated by Dan Santat

27 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Chinese American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Southeast Asian American, Thai American

Just in time for back-to-school, Lisa Yee (of the fabulous Millicent/Stanford/Emily trilogy) debuts her latest middle grade novel about two best friends who suddenly find each other on opposing sides ...

The Vietnam War: A Graphic History by Dwight Jon Zimmerman and Wayne Vansant, foreword by General Chuck Horner (Ret.)

03 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonfiction, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

The Vietnam War undoubtedly remains one of the most confusing, hotly-debated events of world history. Decades later, the war's legacy cannot be accurately measured, much less fully understood. Just in time for back-to-school, the first-ever graphic version – 140 pages of black-and-white-drawings – of the complicated war...

The Bender Files: A Fictional Memoir by Æ Trinh

18 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American

Excessive behavior has always provided seemingly unlimited literary fodder, but few writers have succeeded in creating great books from such source material. Alas, while Trinh's debut effort has a few brow-raising hairpin page-turns, her characters' bender-binges (drinking, drugs, bad relationships) soon grow too tedious to sustain a reader's interest. Eydie...

all the broken pieces: a novel in verse by Ann E. Burg

06 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Middle Grade Readers, Poetry, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

Not only will you be unable to put this down, you'll have to be careful to remember to breathe while reading this unforgettable debut novel written entirely in free verse. By age 10, Matt Pin has already had a harrowing life as a child of...

I Loves Yous Are for White People: A Memoir by Lac Su [in San Francisco Chronicle]

02 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American

Lac Su is a survivor of things so harrowing that just recounting some of those experiences, even from the distance of a keyboard tapping out a review of his memoir, I Love Yous Are for White People, makes the heart wince. As a 5-year-old immigrant to...

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