Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman [in Bloomsbury Review]
01 May, by in Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers
India in the 1940s is a time of tumultuous violence – the British troops are subduing independence efforts, citizens of different religious backgrounds are fighting each other, World War II is raging in Europe, and the...
I confess: I’m a Muth addict, even though technically my kids are too old for his picture books. But really, his books are ageless and we can all learn some major life lessons from them. Zen...
First published in 1983, Sidhwa’s haunting first novel has been brought back with a new introduction by grand dame Anita Desai. It's based on a true story Sidwha heard while traveling in Pakistan about a young...
When the brutal dictator Idi Amin violently grabbed power over Uganda, he declared in August 1972, that within 90 days all Indians would have to leave the country. Part of Uganda’s population since the 16th century,...
While Robert Chow’s life might be a bust, this second novel for the talented Lin turns out to be quite the page-turner. As the token Chinese policeman in 1976 New York Chinatown, Chow is also an...
Ironically named “Wealthy One,” Dhané is a poor farmer who can’t get a lucky break in the small village his family has called home for many generations. Originally published in the 1950s, this new edition offers...
The first two volumes of one of Japan’s top 10 manga bestsellers make their Stateside debut. Join the over-the-top adventures of newly inducted magic-key-carrying wizard Lucy (did she have to be so Barbie-like? Please!), motion-challenged fire...
Best known for her highly entertaining picture books (The Runaway Rice Cake, The Real Story of Stone Soup), Compestine enters the young adult market with a story that draws on her own childhood during the crushing...
The ever-prolific Laurence Yep has penned a brand-new American Girls series featuring Mia, a talented skater who chooses figure skating over the ice hockey she’s grown up playing with her three older brothers. Dedicated and tenacious,...
Part of Canongate’s much-praised Myths Series. Su Tong – best known Stateside for his novella Raise the Red Lantern, which became an Oscar-nominated film by legendary Zhang Yimou – breathes life into one of China’s oldest...
Based on more than 80-year-old actual immigration interviews, Laurence Yep imagines the conversation he never had with his father about his father’s experiences as a nervous young boy who arrived on Angel Island, the West Coast...
Indian-born, U.S.-, UK-, and now Denmark-domiciled Malladi is a literary chameleon, thanks in part to her changing addresses. Language, which features a young Afghan refugee woman escaping unnamable horrors under the Taliban, is almost like reading a sister text of Khaled Hosseini’s...
Meet Kimberly Keiko Cameron, aka “Skim,” a wannabe witch navigating her angst-filled teenage life in a 1990s Toronto high school. In this book created by cousins Mariko and Jillian, making their fabulous collaborative debut, Skim manages...
Maggie is the youngest in a family of baseball lovers. While she might not play herself – girls usually didn’t in the 1950s – she knows the game inside and out. She hangs out with guys...
Sameera Righton, who first appeared in First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover, now calls the White House “home.” Sparrow, as her parents call her, is the adopted Pakistani-born daughter of the new U.S. President and his First...
This slim volume resonates long after the last page, especially for mothers in today’s overscheduled, harried world.
Hua Wu, a recent Chinese immigrant working a dead-end waitress job in New York's Chinatown, meets stylish Jane Templeton...
Get ready for some rollicking fun with this debut novel about super-overachieving Maya, the perfect daughter who gets all As and still manages to help out in her parents’ Thai restaurant.
One small slip-up while her parents...
The Cultural Revolution was a harrowing decade of Chinese history. Moying Li recalls her life from ages 12 to 22, when she bore witness to brutal atrocities against her family, friends, and entire community – and...
Pakistani dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s sudden death in a mysterious 1988 plane crash remains unsolved. Hanif, once part of the Pakistani air force and now a British expat, cleverly presents a riotous fictional version of how...