BookDragon

Five More (Audiobooks) to Go: Kate Atkinson’s Transcription, read by Fenella Woolgar [in The Booklist Reader]

03 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Canadian, European, Fiction, Hong Kongese, Japanese, Korean American, Lists, Repost

Transcription by Kate Atkinson and read by Fenella Woolgar Actress Fenella Woolgar and author Kate Atkinson have shared many creatively fruitful unions. Seasoned fans will recognize Woolgar from the 2011 BBC screen adaptation of Atkinson’s Case Histories, in which she played the sister of protagonist Jackson Brodie’s lover....

Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes, adapted by Ilan Stavans, illustrated by Roberto Weil [in Booklist]

30 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Latina/o/x, Repost, South American, Young Adult Readers

Ilan Stavans and Roberto Weil, whose last collaboration, Mr. Spic Goes to Washington (2008), loosely contemporized Frank Capra’s similarly named, iconic film, use a comparable time-bending, pop-culturizing, humor-inducing graphic technique to adapt Cervantes’ 17th-century tome. Stavans compresses the original 125 chapters into just 30, remaining generally faithful to...

We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices: Words and Images of Hope edited by Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson [in Shelf Awareness]

29 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Black/African American, Children/Picture Books, Hapa/Mixed-race, Middle Grade Readers, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Pan-Asian Pacific American, Poetry, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Inspired by their 7-year-old great-niece's distress over the 2016 elections, Just Us Books’ co-founders Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson created We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices as a contemporary antidote for fear. Recalling their dangerous experiences growing up in the 1950s and...

The Summer of Jordi Perez (and the Best Burger in Los Angeles) by Amy Spalding [in Library Journal]

28 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Without glossing over more difficult subjects – fat shaming, homophobia, parental (non)acceptance, matters of consent – Amy Spalding's (The New Guy [and Other Senior Distractions]) latest is a charming contemporary love story, complete with blogs, social media, rating apps, and more. For the summer before senior...

This Is Cuba: An American Journalist under Castro’s Shadow by David Ariosto [in Booklist]

27 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cuban, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

For a self-described “young American photojournalist who then boasted only pidgin Spanish,” David Ariosto’s arrival in Havana in 2009 on assignment for CNN was “the chance of a lifetime.” Determined to be “somehow different from those pink-faced tourists,” he’s quickly reduced to an epithet, yuma – street...

The Plotters by Un-su Kim, translated by Sora Kim-Russell [in Booklist]

26 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Reseng, 32, has been a professional assassin for 15 years, minus a short factory-worker stint at 22, while playing house with the love of his life. That he’s survived this long – never mind his risky career, he’s also a two-pack-a-day smoker with a...

Transcription by Kate Atkinson [in Booklist]

23 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW So transforming was Fenella Woolgar’s performance of Kate Atkinson’s stupendous Life after Life (2013), the immediate reaction here is joyful relief at hearing Woolgar take aural control of another Atkinson novel. From an inexperienced, untested teenager embarking on her first job, in 1940, to...

Under the Same Sky by Britta Teckentrup [in Shelf Awareness]

22 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Britta Teckentrup presents a wide, expansive world in Under the Same Sky. All the many species – lions, penguins, wolves, domestic cats – are connected by "the same love," "the same games," and "the same songs." Even forest bears and tropic flamingos "face the same storms"...

An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma [in Booklist]

21 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW The story seems familiarly simple. A man and a woman fall in love, but their happy-ever-after is fraught with obstacles. Yet nothing is quite that straightforward in Chigozie Obioma’s (The Fishermen, 2015) latest, starting with his narrator, who happens to be a 700-year-old chi...

A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum [in Booklist]

20 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Palestinian, Palestinian American, Repost

“No matter how many books you’ve read, no one has ever told you a story like this one.” The prologue’s emphathic statement is not exactly accurate. Tara Westover’s Educated (2018) and Anouk Markovits’ I Am Forbidden (2012) feature women trapped by religion and culture who...

Five More to Go: Gina Apostol’s Insurrecto [in The Booklist Reader]

19 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Lists, Repost, Short Stories, Young Adult Readers

Insurrecto by Gina Apostol With shrewd insight, inventive plotting, and stinging history lessons, Gina Apostol, who received the PEN Open Book Award for Gun Dealers’ Daughter (2012), puts the “unremembered” Philippine-American War on literary display. Adjectives such as humorous, playful, and ingenious seem almost disrespectful when describing a book anchored...

The Tale of Cho Ung: A Classic of Vengeance, Loyalty, and Romance translated by Sookja Cho [in Christian Science Monitor]

16 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Translation, Young Adult Readers

The Tale of Cho Ung introduces Korean classic tale to English speakers Despite being “the best-selling fictional narrative during the late Chosŏn period” (1392-1910) of pre-modern Korea, little is known about the provenance of The Tale of Cho Ung. The author remains unknown and its initial composition...

Buried Lives: The Enslaved People of George Washington’s Mount Vernon by Carla Killough McClafferty [in Shelf Awareness]

14 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Black/African American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

When he was just 11 years old, George Washington inherited ownership of 10 human beings. By the time he died in 1799, Washington's estate on the Potomac River, Mount Vernon, was home to 317 enslaved African American men, women, and children: 123 people owned by...

Mostly White by Alison Hart [in Booklist]

13 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost

Blood ties spanning almost a century connect Emma, an Indian Residential School runaway, to her great-granddaughter, Ella, a struggling actor. In 1890 Maine, Emma – born to a Passamaquoddy Native father and an African American mother, is violently uprooted and trapped in a tortuous school...

The April 3rd Incident: Stories by Yu Hua, translated by Allan H. Barr [in Library Journal]

12 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Clearly the internationally lauded Yu Hua's translator of choice, Pomona professor Allan H. Barr anglophones seven early stories Yu (Brothers) wrote between 1987 and 1991. In his edifying introduction, Barr explains that during China's "post-Mao liberalization" (from the late 1970s into early 1980s), "writers devoted...

Five More to Go: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Friday Black [in The Booklist Reader]

09 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Caribbean, Caribbean American, Chinese American, Fiction, Lists, Repost, Short Stories

Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s dozen stories are disturbingly spectacular, made even more so by how he magnifies and exposes the truth. On first reading, the collection might register as speculative fiction, but current headlines about racism, injustice, consumerism, and senseless violence prove...

Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough [in Library Journal]

08 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW At 12, Artemisia Gentileschi loses her mother, but not before "Prudentia Montone spent/ the last of her strength/ to burn into [Artemisia's] mind/ the tales of women/ no one else would/ think to tell" – including biblical heroines Susannah and Judith, who thwarted male...

Florida by Lauren Groff [in Booklist]

07 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

Lauren Groff (Fates and Furies, 2015) lives in Florida and is married with two sons – not unlike five of the protagonists among the 11 stories here. Unlike with her previous titles, Groff narrates, adding a layer of intimacy to further enhance the first-person perspective...

I Should Have Honor: A Memoir of Hope and Pride in Pakistan by Khalida Brodi [in Library Journal]

06 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Nonfiction, Pakistani, Pakistani American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

When she was 25, Forbes named Khalida Brohi to its 2014 "30 Under 30: Social Entrepreneurs" list for founding Sughar Foundation, which trains and empowers rural Pakistani women. Brohi makes both her authorial and performance debuts as she chronicles her journey from a rural Pakistani...

One Part Woman by Perumal Murugan, translated by Aniruddhan Vasedevan [in Library Journal]

05 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Repost, South Asian, Translation

In many ways, Kali and Ponna's lives couldn't be more fertile. Their fields and their cows keep them well nourished. Their playfulness and passion feed their souls. But after 12 years of marriage, they remain childless, leaving the couple helpless against the disdain disguised as...

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