Eric Gamalinda and I overlapped in New York City in the 1990s, when I knew (of) him more as a poet. I should know better (blame it on youth!) than to label him by genre, because clearly Gamalinda is a multi-faceted writer (as well as a playwright,...
As much as I enjoy collections populated by multiple contributors, I have yet to finish a multi-writer title in which every chapter from cover to cover is of memorable quality. That said, The Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays, edited by Tara L. Masih, featuring 20...
Another confession: While recently listening to Rupert Degas narrate parts of Hari Kunzru's Gods without Men, I got such a nostalgic pang to hear Degas read Haruki Murakami (after experiencing A Wild Sheep Chase, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and select stories from The Elephant Vanishes thus far in Degas'...
Sometimes I need three major reminders to get me to open a book I've been anxiously waiting to read. Who knows why, but I admit to being lost and misdirected often! So first the inimitable Mz. Jessica Hagedorn had to tell me (almost a year...
How silly of me for waiting so long to read this, the venerable Anita Desai's latest, when I've had the galley for almost a year (it pubbed last December). Instead, I've slogged through too many disappointing, tedious, nightmare-inducing titles when I could have been celebrating...
March 11, 2011, 14:46 Japan Standard Time: A magnitude-9.0 earthquake lasts six minutes, followed by a 50-foot tsunami that, within 15 minutes, plows inland six miles and causes meltdowns in five nuclear plants. “In one’s wildest imagination, this is beyond conceivable,” write editors Elmer Luke...
Short shorts (of the literary variety, ahem!) are not particularly new. Hemingway (no, I'm not a fan) probably gave the genre its biggest boost with his exemplary six-word version: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." Given our overloaded 21st-century mental circuits, short shorts seem to be just...
Considered together, this collection of 15 stories is a welcome statement of women's literary empowerment. The second anthology published by FEMRITE, the Uganda Women Writers' Association founded by novelist/short story writer/playwright-turned Ugandan Cabinet member Mary Karoro Okurut and officially launched in 1996, is testimony that "Ugandan women...
More and more, I've noticed book cover flaps yielding important tidbits (which makes me a bit concerned about such covers going astray, especially for picture books handled by so many little hands!). But worry aside, how fitting to find this on the front flap about...
Few Nepali writers have thus far landed on western bookshelves, with only two exceptions who come immediately to mind – elegant Samrat Upadhyay (Arresting God in Kathmandu, The Royal Ghosts) and activist Manjushree Thapa (The Tutor of History, Seasons of Flight). So to find another Nepali author writing in English is a...
Having been so enthralled by MacArthur "Genius" Fellow Yiyun Li’s debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, then her novel, The Vagrants, I admit I held off on this, her latest collection, for over a year. I seem to have difficulty immediately reading the newest book of...
No one has such an unpredictable, quirky, downright wacky imagination as Haruki Murakami. And even though your brain knows he's created an impossible universe, everything on the page seems so convincing, you'll go along for the ride – any ride with Murakami at the helm. Even almost...
All is definitely not fair in love and war ...
This is not your parents' (or your grandparents') Asian American theater. That I can even say that is proof of massive progress. What a difference a few decades makes ...
Talk about a surprisingly fortuitous bonus: If you get the audible version of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, included in the deal is Junot Díaz's debut title, Drown, a collection of 10 mostly-related short stories. That both Díaz titles are read with such fluency...
With 20-plus books published in Taiwan and China, writer/painter Mu finally makes his English debut with a collection of 13 stories he chose from three previous titles. The result is, in a word, uneven. Standouts outshine the less than memorable, perhaps making the latter seem that...
"'I hope other people – particularly women – listen to these stories and become kinder to their own sex,'" a woman laments, her life made unbearable by her female in-laws who condemn her because she literally flushed away the evidence of her virginal blood. "'I don't understand...
Here's an uncommon venue for an East/West cultural exchange: manga across borders! Under the auspices of the French Institutes and Alliances in Japan, 10 French-speaking "comic creators" and seven Japanese manga artists wrote 16 chapters (two French creators worked together) inspired by their experiences visiting...
Following up two unforgettable novels that earned her a MacArthur Fellows Program "Genius" Award (which comes with a no-strings-attached $500,000 "stipend" over five years!) in 2008 was surely going to be hard work. Last year, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie debuted her first short story collection ...
The idea is fascinating; so obviously simple yet undeniably clever. Six French graphic book artists were sent to Korea to be "completely immersed." Six Korean manwha artists were also asked to participate. All 12 were given "complete carte blanche" to convey their individual views of...
