Assimilation Archives - Page 4 of 16

My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs by Kazuo Ishiguro [in Library Journal]

03 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, British, British Asian, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Yes, reading the inimitable Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2017 Nobel Lecture is easy, but the better option is listening to his crisp, gentle voice instead. Perhaps Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, missed the memo on properly pronouncing Ishiguro's first name, but her introduction...

The Confusion of Languages by Siobhan Fallon [in Library Journal]

27 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Jordanian, Middle Eastern, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

After introducing a stupendous community of left-behind stateside military wives in her debut collection, You Know When the Men Are Gone, Siobhan Fallon presents in her first novel two women who have accompanied their U.S. Army husbands to Jordan. Shared circumstances ease Cassie and Margaret...

A Life of Adventure and Delight by Akhil Sharma [in Library Journal]

26 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian American

Badly behaved Indian and Indian American men claim the spotlight in Sharma's first story collection, yet moments of unexpected humor and pathos save at least some of the men from utter disdain. In "Cosmopolitan," a recently single older man studies women's magazines to become a...

Between the Lines by Nikki Grimes [in Shelf Awareness]

16 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Poetry, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW "We live in the same city, go to the same school, but each of us has a different story," a student observes. "What we have in common is trying to figure out how to tell it." Welcome back to Mr. Ward's English class, introduced...

Go Home! edited by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, foreword by Viet Thanh Nguyen [in Booklist]

13 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Nonfiction, Pan-Asian Pacific American, Poetry, Repost

The phrase, go home, encompasses polarizing intentions. It’s a reference to one’s safest place but can also be a hurled threat of exclusion. That polarity illuminates these 31 stories, essays, and poems by writers of diasporic Asian origin, compiled by self-described “Japanese-Chinese-Scottish-English-American” novelist Rowan Hisayo Buchanan...

10 Diverse Debut Story Collections [in The Booklist Reader]

16 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Arab, Black/African American, British, British Asian, Caribbean, Chinese American, Fiction, Korean, Latina/o/x, Lists, North Korean, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian, South Asian American, Translation

Short-story collection The Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri’s first published book, won the Pulitzer Prize. Phil Klay’s debut collection, Redeployment, got him the National Book Award. Even Tom Hanks got in on the short story game with his debut book, Uncommon Type, out last month. Right now, eyes are...

New Boy [Hogarth Shakespeare] by Tracy Chevalier [in Library Journal]

02 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Internationally lauded for historical novels (Girl with a Pearl Earring), Tracy Chevalier takes a surprising narrative path as she returns over the Pond to her capital birth-city (she’s been British-domiciled for decades) with the Bard in tow: Chevalier’s privileged fifth graders play out Othello...

Rich People Problems [Crazy Rich Asians 3] by Kevin Kwan [in Library Journal]

25 Sep, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Hong Kongese, Repost, Singaporean, Singaporean American, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Kevin Kwan’s third volume continues to expose – albeit with plenty of schadenfreudian humor – the outrageous excesses and over-the-top machinations that began with his debut, Crazy Rich Asians (currently in highly anticipated celluloid production). Lydia Look, who voiced book two, China Rich Girlfriend,...

Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang [in Christian Science Monitor]

02 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

'Sour Heart' author Jenny Zhang illuminates the immigrant's struggles to belong “Lena Dunham is like my fairy godmother,” Jenny Zhang revealed in a recent interview with The Guardian, albeit one who tweets and emails with unsolicited offers of editorial help. In the often capricious world of...

Refuge by Dina Nayeri [in Christian Science Monitor]

27 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, Persian, Persian American, Repost

'Refuge' is the story of an Iranian family in search of home Here’s the seemingly simple narrative frame: A father and daughter are separated and spend the next two decades both avoiding and yearning for reconnection. But Dina Nayeri’s sophomore novel, Refuge, is anything but straightforward,...

Chemistry by Weike Wang [in Library Journal]

24 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

After spontaneously cutting off eight inches of hair, Wang's never-named narrator returns to her chemistry lab and smashes five beakers. She insists, "Beakers are cheap," yet the personal price is inestimable: the shattered vessels parallel an equal number of portentous changes involving her PhD program,...

The Leavers by Lisa Ko [in Christian Science Monitor]

04 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

'The Leavers,' inspired by a real story, confronts transracial adoption “Everyone had stories they told themselves to get through the days,” Deming Guo muses the evening of his 22nd birthday, summing up a lifetime of leaving – and being left – that has defined his short...

Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran [in Library Journal]

20 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Indian American, Latina/o/x, Repost, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Soli is still a teenager when she becomes pregnant during her journey from her native Mexican village to northern California. Partly joyous because she's love-struck, mostly nightmarish for what she must endure to survive, Soli enters the United States illegally and eventually finds a...

Temporary People by Deepak Unnikrishnan [in Christian Science Monitor]

14 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Arab, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian, South Asian American

'Temporary People' depicts the lives of guest workers in the UAE The sense of displacement, of disconnect begins on the cover: The words “A Novel” written sideways, unobtrusively stamped along the left side under the title Temporary People, might be considered misleading. Made up of three...

Frontier by Can Xue, translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping [in Booklist]

07 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese, Fiction, Repost, Translation

“It will be interesting what people make of this one,” novelist-essayist Porochista Khakpour (The Last Illusion, 2014) reveals in her introduction, something she admiringly says about every Can Xue (The Last Lover, 2014) title. “Can Xue,” Khakpour explains, is both pseudonymous disguise and “synonymous with...

The Mortifications by Derek Palacio [in Library Journal]

21 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Caribbean, Caribbean American, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW A mother, Soledad, flees Cuba, abandoning her revolutionary husband Uxmal and absconding with their 12-year-old twins Ulises and Isabel. She bypasses Miami for Hartford, CT, finding work as a court stenographer, making her the transcriber of other people's words. Although Uxmal’s presence never seems to...

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee [in Booklist]

19 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Korean, Korean American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW A decade after her international best-selling debut, Free Food for Millionaires (2007), Min Jin Lee’s follow-up is an exquisite, haunting epic that crosses almost a century, four generations, and three countries while depicting an ethnic Korean family that cannot even claim a single shared...

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen [in Library Journal]

12 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American

*STARRED REVIEW Although publishing 10 months after Viet Thanh Nguyen won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for The Sympathizer, this collection precedes his novel by decades (the earliest entry dates from 1997). In a pre-Pulitzer interview, Nguyen credits his 15-year experience "characterized by drudgery and despair, laced with...

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See [in Booklist]

02 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

In a remote mountain village, the survival of an Akha tribe, one of China’s 55 ethnic minorities, depends on tea. Rigid traditions prohibit Li-yan from keeping her newborn. She saves her daughter by leaving her in a nearby town, wrapped in blankets with a tea...

Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada, translated by Susan Bernofsky [in Booklist]

02 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Tokyo-born, Berlin-domiciled Yoko Tawada (Facing the Bridge, 2007) returns with another fantastical and entertaining novel that combines a broken family saga, socio-political-environmental enlightenment, a treatise on writing, and bitingly well-placed satire. Seamlessly translated from German by the award-winning Susan Bernofsky, Memoirs of a Polar Bear introduces...

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