Booklist Archives - Page 20 of 39

The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio [in Booklist]

02 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Latina/o/x, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South American, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Making both her print and audio debut, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is a double powerhouse. As a writer, she gifts readers her “creative nonfiction, rooted in careful reporting, translated as poetry, shared by chosen family, and sometimes hard to read.” She’s anything but hard to...

Vanishing Monuments by John Elizabeth Stintzi [in Booklist]

31 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

The novel’s narrator answers, under certain circumstances, to Alani, Al, Allie, Annie, Sofia, even Hedwig or Hedy, although the latter two are names belonging to the narrator’s mother. For the last 27 years, parent and child have been estranged, since a 17-year-old Alani ran away...

Long Story Short: 100 Classic Books in Three Panels by Lisa Brown [in Booklist]

29 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

So this isn’t Shakespeare. No, wait ...

Nori by Rumi Hara [in Booklist]

27 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In this delightful, already Ignatz-nominated debut by Japan-born, Brooklyn-based Rumi Hara, 3-year-old Nori is cared for by her grandmother (who can’t always keep up) while both parents work. Each of these six adventurous shorts features a contrasting single color overlaid on otherwise black-and-white panels, capturing...

Four by Four by Sara Mesa, translated by Katie Whittemore [in Booklist]

26 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Repost, Spanish, Translation

Located in “the now defunct city of Vado” is Wybrany College, “which we pronounce güíbrani colich.” Allegedly founded by a Polish businessman in 1943 to educate exiled orphans, Wybrany has since morphed into an elite boarding school mostly for rich and powerful progeny. The “never...

Umma’s Table by Yeon-sik Hong, translated by Janet Hong [in Booklist]

25 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW For artist Madang Bae, life is divided into two opposing spheres, “The world I’ve worked so hard to leave behind ...

Food Rules: A User’s Manual by Michael Pollan [in Booklist]

24 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Lauded (worshipped?) food journalist/activist Michael Pollan has seven simple words for us here: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” In the third iteration of his 2009 bestseller (#2 was a charming 2011 illustrated collaboration with artist Maira Kalman), Pollan takes the mic 11...

Paying the Land by Joe Sacco [in Booklist]

22 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Canadian, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Repost

Best known for his Palestine books – most notably, Footnotes in Gaza (2010) – frequent Eisner Award-winner Joe Sacco’s nonfiction titles share essential overlapping features: talking heads given agency to speak their truths, exquisitely detailed artwork, meticulously revealed events. Here Sacco heads to Canada’s Northwest Territories, home...

Bluebeard’s First Wife: Stories by Ha Seong-nan, translated by Janet Hong [in Booklist]

21 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Bestselling Korean author Ha Seong-nan and award-winning Canadian translator Janet Hong are two-for-two at spectacular pairing, repeating the successful partnership of Ha’s collection, Flowers of Mold (2019), with another sensational, 11-story collaboration. The titular “Bluebeard’s First Wife” features a 31-year-old woman who marries a...

Five More to Go: Nathacha Appanah’s Tropic of Violence [in The Booklist Reader]

20 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Chinese, Chinese American, European, Fiction, Indian, Lists, Repost, South Asian, Translation

Tropic of Violence by Nathacha Appanah and translated by Geoffrey Strachan How can a story so harrowing, so wrenching be so gorgeous? In her third novel exquisitely translated by award-winning Geoffrey Strachan, Mauritius-born journalist and translator Appanah (Waiting for Tomorrow, 2018) presents the beginning and dissolution...

The Fallen by Carlos Manuel Álvarez, translated by Frank Wynne [in Booklist]

18 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cuban, Fiction, Mexican, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW The family is Cuban. The son, 18, is fulfilling his military conscription, enduring mind-numbing sentry duty any way he can until his release. The mother, once a schoolteacher, is housebound with a violently debilitating illness. The father, who manages a four-star tourist hotel, is...

Five More to Go: Kim Hyun Sook’s Banned Book Club [in The Booklist Reader]

15 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Canadian, Cuban, Cuban American, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Jewish, Korean, Latin American, Lists, Memoir, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook with Ryan Estrada, illustrated by Ko Hyung-Ju Busan-based wife-and-husband team Kim and Estrada mine Kim’s young adult experiences to expose a chilling period of Korean history so antithetical to the globally addictive entertainment of K-dramas and K-pop currently synonymous...

Five More to Go: Corinne Manning’s We Had No Rules [in The Booklist Leader]

14 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Chinese American, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Indian American, Korean, Laotian American, Lists, Repost, South Asian American, Translation, Ukrainian, Ukrainian American

We Had No Rules by Corinne Manning Corinne Manning’s author statement couldn’t be clearer: “I had no idea how to write authentically until the day when I typed the sentence ‘Oh, f*ck it. I’m writing lesbian fiction.’” That declaration became “Gay Tale,” one of 11 stories...

Echo on the Bay by Masatsugu Ono, translated by Angus Turvill [in Booklist]

13 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Masatsugu Ono’s second novel, originally published in his native Japan as Nigiyakana wan ni seowareta fune (Boat on a Choppy Bay), won the prestigious Mishima Yukio Prize, and now arrives Anglophoned by award-winning Angus Turvill, who also translated Ono’s Lion’s Tread Point (2018). Ono, too, is...

The Library of Legends by Janie Chang [in Booklist]

06 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

They dubbed themselves the Minghua 123: 114 students and nine professors (plus 16 uncounted servants-laborers). In 1937, to escape the Japanese onslaught, they flee their university in Nanking to seek refuge a thousand miles westward. Saving their lives includes safeguarding 147 volumes of the Library...

Quichotte by Salman Rushdie [in Booklist]

01 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

STARRED REVIEW Sixteen hours. Multiple layers of convoluted narrative. A vast cast in need of distinct distinguishing by age, gender, social standing, ethnicity, region, accent. Who you gonna call? Already a proven collaborator after The Golden-House (2017) and Shame (audio 2017), Adam returns as Rushdie’s voice-of-choice for his latest meandering...

Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel Mallory Ortberg [in Booklist]

30 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

“Just because you have a testosterone prescription and a new sense of exhilaration doesn’t mean you have to go around setting down your life story,” Daniel Mallory Ortberg writes (and thankfully narrates), disguised as “Paul and Second Timothy: The Transmasculine Epistles.” His response to his...

At Night, I Become a Monster by Yoru Sumino, illustrated by loundraw, translated by Diana Taylor [in Booklist]

29 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Japanese, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

He’s “something like a six-legged beast made of pure darkness,” but come morning, he’s back to being “too serious” middle-schooler Adachi. More observer than participant among his peers, he keeps silent as the class pariah, Yano, is bullied almost daily. When a few boys, claiming...

Apsara Engine by Bishakh Som [in Booklist]

27 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Indian American, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW A woman goes out for her regular evening walk on the beach, contemplating her relationship with her husband, until she sees a mermaid washed up on the shore. And here text and graphics suddenly diverge: the words reveal a recent affair, while the frames...

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid [in Booklist]

26 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

Regardless of skin color, net worth, socioeconomic background, you will cringe here – as well as laugh (possibly guffaw), roll your eyes, shake your head, perhaps even cry. Narrator Nicole Lewis has quite the diverse cast to perform – which she does with energetic aplomb and...

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