Repost Archives - Page 18 of 148

The Autumnal: The Complete Series by Daniel Kraus, illustrated by Chris Shehan, color by Jason Wordie, lettering by Jim Campbell [in Booklist]

28 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Kat Somerville will never win any mother-of-the-year awards. She shows up at the principal’s office black-eyed after her 7-year-old daughter, Sybil, bloodied another kid’s nose; rather than any admonishments, Kat brings Sybil a Stephen King novel. The rebellious pair abandon not only the school but...

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri, translated by Jhumpa Lahiri [in Booklist]

27 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American, Translation

Pulitzer Prize-winning polyglot Jhumpa Lahiri’s second title in Italian arrives in her own translation, narrated by Italian American Susan Vinciotti Bonito. Despite Bonito’s fluency in their shared language, her noticeably youthful timbre isn’t initially convincing as Lahiri’s unnamed, 40-something protagonist. And yet Lahiri’s unadorned, sharply...

Secret Life by Theo Ellsworth and Jeff VanderMeer, illustrated by Theo Ellsworth [in Booklist]

24 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

From the cover alone, it’s clear Theo Ellsworth’s visuals are unique, striking, and surreal. A sense of witnessing something unrecognizable resonates throughout, with bizarrely stylized images of people, beasts, and scenes surrounded by intricate backgrounds that might induce trypophobia in some. And yet, self-taught artist...

Himawari House by Harmony Becker [in Booklist]

23 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Japanese American, Korean, Repost, Singaporean, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Harmony Becker, who brilliantly created the artwork for George Takei’s Eisner-winning They Called Us Enemy (2019), makes her stupendous solo debut in what will prove to one of the best graphic titles of the year. The narrative might initially seem simple: a mixed-race U.S. teen...

Blue-Skinned Gods by SJ Sindu [in Booklist]

22 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

For always, Kalki – with his matching blue skin – has been told he’s a god, the tenth and final incarnation of Vishnu. His godliness supports the family’s Tamil Nadu ashram, where he lives with his controlling father, loving mother, uncle and his wife, and...

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi [in Booklist]

21 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Memoir, Nigerian, Nigerian American, Nonfiction, Repost

Just as only Akwaeke Emezi could have narrated their Freshwater debut, no other voice could have manifested their first nonfiction title. Presented as an epistolary mosaic addressed to family, friends, lovers, betrayers, and heroes, Emezi’s raw voice lays bare their unadorned writing. Although the vulnerability, arrogance, and...

Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park, translated by Anton Hur [in Booklist]

20 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

In the “big city” of Seoul, love isn’t easy to find – even tougher to secure is love that lasts. Young and Jaehee are best friends from university, bonded in their “boundless energy of [being] poor, promiscuous twenty-year-olds.” Young is a gay man, Jaehee a straight...

House of Sticks by Ly Tran [in Booklist]

17 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American

In 1993, 3-year-old Ly Tran arrived in Queens with her parents and three older brothers from South Vietnam. Their new apartment was not the nhà là – “a house made of sticks and dried leaves” – that had been their former home; stability, however, was...

Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo by Jo Koy [in Booklist]

16 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Southeast Asian American

That Jo Koy has created a sold-out, standing-ovation-earning stand-up career making people laugh while mining intimate family stories means no one else could possibly narrate his memoir. His hard-earned superstardom translates seamlessly into an audiobook, giving him a double-debut credit as author and narrator, presenting...

Hell of a Book by Jason Mott [in Booklist]

15 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Thanks to veteran narrator JD Jackson and newbie Ronald Peet, Mott’s fourth novel is also a “hell of an audiobook.” An unnamed writer (impeccably embodied by Jackson) embarks on his inaugural book tour because he’s written Hell of a Book. He’s been coached, trained,...

Whisper by Chang Yu-Ko, translated by Roddy Flagg [in Booklist]

14 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Taiwanese, Translation

Once upon a time, Wu Shih-sheng had a happy home with his wife and daughter. But then his daughter ran away and he fell heavily into debt after an accident; lost their home; took to sporadically driving a taxi; forced his wife, Kuo Hsiang-ying, into...

The Cabinet by Un-su Kim, translated by Sean Lin Halbert [in Booklist]

13 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

Kong Deok-geun is an “average administrative worker,” a position for which he surpassed 137 applicants for “a job that has no work.” His boredom, so severe that he’s named it “I-would-rather-eat-dog-treats-than-suffer-this-boredom,” sends him to the fourth floor, where he discovers Cabinet 13, then spends an...

Author Interview: Mesha Maren [in Shelf Awareness]

10 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Mesha Maren: 'Fear and Unease Can Be a Writer's Best Friend' Mesha Maren's 2019 debut, Sugar Run, took almost a decade to hit shelves. In the meantime, she published short stories in various prestigious journals (the Oxford American, the Southern Review) and won numerous prizes and fellowships (2015 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize,...

Perpetual West by Mesha Maren [in Shelf Awareness]

09 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Repost

To compress Mesha Maren's exhilarating second novel, Perpetual West, into a quick description would be an injustice to her intricately plotted, unsettling narrative about two 21-year-olds unsure of who they really are. Whereas her debut, Sugar Run, had its characters return to Maren's home landscape of rural...

Author Interview: Kei Miller [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Caribbean, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Kei Miller: Many Different Writers Kei Miller commands genres – poetry, fiction, essays – as adroitly as he navigates identities as a Jamaican native son, a British academic, a global award-winning writer, and, most recently, a Miami professor. As poet, he's been shortlisted for the Costa...

Things I Have Withheld by Kei Miller [in Shelf Awareness]

07 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Caribbean, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Literary chameleon Kei Miller (The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion) has produced award-winning short stories, novels, poetry, and essays. Things I Have Withheld is arguably his most stupendous title to date. These 14 exquisitely vulnerable essays explore his Jamaican heritage, his British...

Gordo by Jaime Cortez [in Shelf Awareness]

06 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost, Short Stories

As a visual artist and performer, Jaime Cortez has always been telling stories. He gets literal in his debut, Gordo, an impressive collection featuring the titular Gordo, a preteen middle child of Mexican American farm workers in California's 1970s Central Coast. Gordo is one of...

The Guncle by Steven Rowley [in Booklist]

05 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Titles about lonely survivors with just the right balance of lightening humor and lasting gravitas make for an undeniably popular genre. Think international sensation A Man Called Ove, whose global mega-success probably fueled the popularity of acerbic-but-redeemable-left-behinds-who-get-happy-endings sort of books. Steven Rowley’s latest is a prime example, superbly improved...

Good Eggs by Rebecca Hardiman [in Booklist]

04 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Irish, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

An octogenarian shoplifter doesn’t quite seem like a likely hero, but British actor Siobhan Waring will certainly make you believe otherwise. Kleptomaniacal Irish matriarch Millie is caught yet again at the village shop and this time her son Kevin (energetically embodied by Irish-born Gary Furlong)...

L.A. Weather by María Amparo Escandón [in Booklist]

03 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost

Oscar Alvarado is a multi-generational Angeleno Mexican American; his wife Keila was a high-school exchange student from Mexico City. They lovingly raised three daughters. Thirty-nine years later, their three-year-old twin granddaughters almost drown in their neglected pool. The accident fuels Keila’s marital discontent and emboldens...

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