YELL-Oh Girls! Emerging Voices Explore Culture, Identity, and Growing Up Asian American edited by Vickie Nam [in aMagazine: Inside Asian America]
Young Asian American girls from all over the country share poems, essays, and stories that speak of their bicultural roots – feeling at home in no land, challenging family relationships made more difficult by...
Here's the book that brought more tears of joy, sadness, and the greatest of hope this month: With the ever-growing phenomenon of transracial adoption, Sacred Connections should be in every adoptive family's library. While...
The Kip Club
Kip Fulbeck is not your average performance artist. At age 35, he’s a tenured professor at UC Santa Barbara, does outreach programs for at-risk kids, was a nationally ranked swimmer, and he...
Da Pidgin Guy: Lee Tonouchi reclaims his native language
They call him “Da Pidgin Guerrilla.” Bekuz o’ da way he talk. And da fak dat he determined to keep duh langwage of da Locals alive....
Silicon Valley thriller with a Korean American hero who could have kicked a little more ass, but adds a few new twists to the meaning of "family secrets." Our hero Allen Choice's...
A quirky debut collection populated by the inhabitants of a fictional California seaside town, not unlike Half Moon Bay. Lee's memorable characters are so real, you'll swear you know some of them! Absolutely fabulous.
Review: <a href="http://bookdragonreviews.wordpress.com/files/2009/08/amagazine-2001-0607-new-and-notable.pdf"...
A disturbing tale of a 12-year-old city boy's induction into power within a provincial fifth-grade classroom. And you thought kids today grow up too fast!
Review:
A definitive look at how we diverse people of Asian descent (Asians make up some 57% of the world population!) got lumped together as "Oriental" in the U.S. and eventually claimed our status as...
The best of the latest crop of South Asian diaspora titles is The Death of Vishnu, a startling debut novel, the first of a planned trilogy by math professor
Another debut, Motherland tells the coming-of-age story of 15-year-old Maya. Afraid that she has become too Americanized growing up in New York, Maya's parents ship her off for the summer to the remote, mountaintop home of...
A startlingly complex novel, The Glass Palace opens with a literal bang, as British cannons thunder over the noise of a busy Burmese marketplace in 1885. A historical work that sweeps over a century...
The premise of this disappointing novel revolves around Ramji, who, by the time he arrives in the U.S. in 1968 from his home in Dar es Salaam, East Africa (now Tanzania), he is already doubly displaced....
Thank goodness for reliable standbys:
Here's looking forward to the next generation of writers of South Asian descent: Bolo! Bolo! includes 84 diverse pieces, from poetry to essays to short stories. The title refers to a Hindi colloquial phrase...
Let's face it, the media is great at creating and perpetuating stereotypes. Take Asians: inscrutable and mysterious, sly and calculating, from the shuffling house boy to the prostitute with the heart of gold, from Ming the...
Never mind its faults. Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail, by Malika Oufkir and Michele Fitoussi is going to sell well. It's already a runaway bestseller in France, where it debuted in 1999 as...
This anthology, which includes both short stories and excerpts from larger works, celebrates the diversity of Asian American literature, from the many literary styles to the various ethnic backgrounds, ages...
A great book overall because most of it is told in the actual voices of the very Asian Americans who helped create our history. Takaki's follow-up, A Different...
Dogeaters Run
Jessica Hagedorn still sees her bestselling classic,
Laying a Golden Egg
Everything – let me say that again – everything about this book is fabulous. So you’re off the hook: you can stop reading this review right now.
A...