For those of us of a certain age, we remember well that shampoo commercial ...
If you're looking for the quirky, original Yoko Ogawa, her latest, Hotel Iris, is probably not for you. Go back to your bookstore or library and check out the delightfully inimitable The Housekeeper and the Professor (2009), about a genius math professor with only an 80-minute...
Okay, so I'm not quite sure of the U.S. publication date for Xinran's latest ...
Sometimes it takes me years to read certain books. Oftentimes, fear is involved. Sometimes when I like a book so very much, I'm afraid the next book by that author just might disappoint. So I do the denial thing and move said title deeper down...
Every time I close a Mas Arai mystery (this is my third – I know, I need to catch up), and in spite of the sometimes gruesome body count, I have to admit I miss the crotchety old man with his Japanese phrases mixed in...
Happy Cinco de Mayo from Perico and his human family! While everyone busily prepares for the big picnic and festivities on the rented barge that will float down the San Antonio River, Perico the parrot looks for ways he can help, too. But Grandmother and Aunt...
By the time I actually met Sonya Chung, debut novelist of Long for This World, which hit shelves in March, I was already a groupie. Long was one of those suddenly-surprising-out-of-nowhere books that make you gasp. A publicist sent it to me initially and it...
Having discovered manga late in life, I seem to be making up for lost time ...
Confession: I got to hang out twice with Srikanth – otherwise known as "Chicu" – Reddy two days in a row last weekend, first for the Asian American Literary Review's "8: A Symposium," and then for an Amnesty International Human Rights Art Festival literary panel. Even though my...
Even though "Uncle" calls her Rosa Garcia, Tzunun Chumil knows her real Mayan name, and that in Spanish, Tzunun is 'colibrí,' which means "hummingbird." She knows somewhere that she has a mother and father that once loved her very much, that she lived a happy...
Inspired by two real children in Dhaka whom Ann Malaspina met on her travels through South Asia, Yasmin's Hammer is yet more proof for the need to educate girls throughout the world. When a cyclone destroys their home village "by a lazy river," two sisters – Mita and...
What a perfect companion text to Kip Fulbeck's part asian • 100% hapa, his previous title for Chronicle Books ...
Five years ago, Taipei-born Malaysian British Tash Aw landed in the media spotlight with The Harmony Silk Factory, complete with public speculations about an allegedly enormous debut advance. Decorated with multiple important prizes, including Commonwealth and Whitbread first novel awards, Aw’s Factory earned him both...
Warning: I can't find any promises of a volume 2 (or 3, 4, or more!) anywhere in, on, or around this book. Nothing in the publicist's note, either! Uh-oh ...
This weekend, I get to meet Kyoko Mori in livetime [I'm scheduled to moderate an Asian American literary panel on Sunday morning as part of the first-ever Amnesty International Human Rights Art Festival, sponsored by the brand-new Asian American Literary Review). Anyone can join me,...
For anyone and everyone who has or knows a middle-grader with braces (or about to get braces), this is the book of choice to share. "I've been telling people about what happened to my teeth ever since I knocked them out in sixth grade," writes...
Jack Lime is a self-described "detective, a private investigator, a gumshoe." He's also a new student at Iona High School, who landed mid-9th grade in the ultra-planned, exclusive community from the City of Angels to live with his grandmother after the tragic death of his...
It's no wonder that this kiddie classic by longtime DC-area local Audrey Penn has sold some 4.5 million copies! I can proudly say I've added more than a few copies to that total, as it's one of those incredibly appropriate stories for an experience that every...
The latest in what has become practically a franchise – Audrey Penn's Kissing Hand series – deals with an extremely difficult subject ...
Min opens her latest with guilty sobs recalling her "brainwashed" teenaged self in 1970s China, when she was forced to denounce Pulitzer and Nobel prize-winning writer Pearl S. Buck to Madame Mao. That guilt clearly drove Min (Red Azalea) to write this "based on the...
