The Red Letters: My Father’s Enchanted Period by Ved Mehta [in AsianWeek]
The final installation in Mehta’s 11-title series, Continents of Exile, explores his father’s love affair with another woman, documented through their love letters – the eponymous Red Letters. Written without judgment following the deaths...
Devi’s failed suicide attempt sends her back home to her parents, where she refuses to speak but decides to cook. Before she can regain her voice – as she becomes...
First and foremost: This is one of the best books I’ve read this year in spite of the historical improbability laid out at the novel’s end. Ayoshi, a woman artist in 1869 Japan, paints in order...
An intimate memoir about a three-decade relationship between the Dalai Lama and the author Chan that begins with high-pitched giggles over Chan’s Fu Manchu-style mustache and ends with the gift of a...
With Hollywood’s latest creative raids into the East (Ringu/The Ring, Ju-on/The Grudge, My Sassy Girl being remade with Rachel Leigh Cook and directed by Bend It Like Beckham’s...
The first-ever comprehensive anthology in the West of Indian writing, represented in prose, poems, and memoirs by 38 writers from the 1850s to the 1990s.
Review: <a...
An interesting departure for Desai, who turns to Mexico to tell the story of a hapless Boston graduate student who accompanies his ambitious girlfriend abroad. While wandering, he discovers a lost part of his...
The Philip Kan Gotanda Chronicles
He captured early-20th-century Hawai‘i with his bittersweet tale of thwarted love in Ballad of Yachiyo. He was the first playwright to ever dramatize life immediately after...
Responding with Hope to 9/11: A Talk with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni About Her Latest Novel, Queen of Dreams
Three years after the tragic events of 9/11,
This has got to be the easiest-looking cookbook I’ve seen ever … with favorites like sukiyaki and shabu-shabu, even teppanyaki.
Review:
I tell you ...
A sweet collection of 101 tips from the creators of the best-selling American Girl series on how all girls – the pictures are very inclusive! – can feel their best about themselves.
Review: <a href="http://bookdragonreviews.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/asianweek-2004-10-28-new-and-notable.pdf"...
Calling himself "quite an ordinary man" even as he tops his country's List of Shame, Vikram Lall recounts four decades of his "in-between" life in...
A welcoming, gentle manual of sorts for even the most overscheduled on how to let go of anger and fear to live a more peaceful, fulfilling life — not to...
Just looking at the cover of this book will make you a little happier. … It’s a delightful visual romp that captures Japan’s love affair with the entertaining goldfish: most of these overbred guys are anything...
An academic – but thoroughly readable – look at what defines the growing, loose boundaries of South Asian American literature, an area in which titles appear to be multiplying daily.
Review: <a href="http://bookdragonreviews.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/asianweek-2004-10-28-new-and-notable.pdf"...
I couldn't stop salivating over these whimsical creations – think butterflies and chicks and sailboats and even soccer balls – done in sushi!! And the full-color, step-by-step illustrations even had me believing that I...
While the Asian American and Pacific Islander community has definitely made progress in gaining political visibility, so much more needs to be done. So next week, especially, make sure to go out...
A contemporary presentation of the ancient Chinese classic, filled with stunning black-and-white photographs that complement each of the 64 ideographs.
Review:
Bombay plays the starring role in this entertaining (at times disturbing) epic memoir by a South Asian American writer who returns to the world’s largest city – now called Mumbai – with his London-raised...