Cassandra Campbell Archives

African Town by Irene Latham and Charles Waters [in Booklist]

14 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Poetry, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction

Fourteen voices (each embodying a specific poetic form!) – enlivened by 14 performers – take turns bearing witness in this novel in verse. Perspectives shift among the enslavers, the enablers to such inhumanity, their victims, and their descendants, revealing decades from capture to post-Civil War...

Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town by Barbara Demick [in Booklist]

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

Let’s just agree that Casandra Campbell is not fluent in any Asian languages – which makes her an odd (mis)casting choice for a title set mostly in Tibet, populated by mostly Tibetan characters. That said, lauded journalist Barbara Demick’s extraordinary latest is a book to...

True Story by Kate Reed Petty [in Booklist]

13 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In a story of “they said, she heard, he believed, she can’t remember,” whom do you trust? Even the title misleads – True Story: A Novel – while the final words confirm little: “But I’m trusting you to see this is true ...

Very Nice by Marcy Dermansky [in Booklist]

02 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Pakistani, Repost

Satire? Irony? A nine-hour extended joke? Certainly Marcy Dermansky’s latest is rife with almost every stereotype/cliché – the only one she thankfully avoids is the brown man as terrorist. That said, for those who survive the first eight hours and 40 minutes, the final poolside scene...

The Tenth Muse by Catherine Chung [in Booklist]

01 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean American, Repost

“I suppose I should warn you that I tell a story like a woman: looping into myself, interrupting,” announces Catherine Chung’s protagonist Katherine. “Things have never seemed straightforward to me; the path has never been clear.” As the child of a WWII veteran father and...

The Last Word: Audios of Posthumously Published Books – Part 2 [in Booklist]

04 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab American, Audio, Australian, Black/African American, European, Lebanese American, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American, Translation, Vietnamese American

The one thing in life that’s guaranteed is, well, death. But books are certainly a lasting legacy. And sometimes, when we get the books after their creator has passed on, an audiobook can breathe new life into the text, animating from beyond. A bittersweet legacy, indeed, but...

The Caregiver [audio] by Samuel Park [in Booklist]

25 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Korean American, Repost, South American

In April 2017, 41-year-old Park died of stomach cancer. His sophomore title was published 17 months later, aided by a close friend for over two decades, the novelist Curtis Sittenfeld, who played a significant role in deciphering Park’s final handwritten notes in order to get...

The Last Word: Audios of Posthumously Published Books [in Booklist]

01 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, British, European, Fiction, Indian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American

The one thing in life that’s guaranteed is, well, death. But books are certainly a lasting legacy. And sometimes, when we get the books after their creator has passed on, an audiobook can breathe life into the text, animating from beyond. Here, we have a handful...

My Name is Venus Black by Heather Lloyd

28 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Young Adult Readers

Venus Black gets straight As, has never gotten drunk, smoked pot, or skipped a class. She’s also a 13-year-old murderer, sent to juvenile lock-up for shooting her stepfather. Within days, her younger half-brother Leo – “[he] has what [their mother] Inez calls ‘developmental issues’” –...

Everything Here Is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee [in Library Journal]

08 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost, South American

Mira T. Lee’s impressive debut – both a celebration and mourning of the bond between two sisters, the younger afflicted with mental illness, the elder desperate to save her – deserves better aural interpretation. The full cast (in rare recognition, a who-was-who is added at...

The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs [in Library Journal]

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

Nina Riggs died February 26, 2017. Cassandra Campbell gently narrates most of the work, until Kirby Heyborne takes over to read the afterword by Riggs’s husband, John, and shatters your heart. For a book about fatal diseases – Riggs was diagnosed at 37 with breast cancer;...

Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki [in Library Journal]

24 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Lady Daniels is supposed to be writing a memoir about raising her now-18-year-old mute son Seth, who communicates just fine using American Sign Language (ASL) and rapid typing on various screens. Lady’s toddler needs child care, however – Lady has recently pushed hubby out –...

Eleven Hours by Pamela Erens [in Library Journal]

24 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Caribbean American, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW In a Manhattan hospital, two women are each pregnant – one obviously, the other not yet visibly. Lore arrives with no partner, no friends, and no support, but she is armed with a several-page birth plan with which she expects to control the...

Fortune Smiles: Stories! by Adam Johnson [in Library Journal]

01 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW To bring Adam Johnson’s six stories – which together won the 2015 National Book Award for fiction – to waiting ears takes a village of seasoned narrators. In “Nirvana,” Jonathan McClain deftly voices a desperate husband who uses technology to soothe his ill wife. Dominic Hoffman –...

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, foreword by Abraham Verghese [in Library Journal]

24 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Audio, Indian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW In his sublime "foreword [that] might be better thought of as an afterword," physician and bestselling author Abraham Verghese reveals that he came to know Paul Kalanithi "most intimately when he'd ceased to be." That, too, is true of every listener here. Neurosurgeon Kalanithi died in...

I Love You More by Jennifer Murphy

27 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific

What are the chances: I seem to be island-hopping this week ...

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

08 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific

If Gillian Flynn isn't already a household name, she will be sure enough. The film version of her mega-bestselling 2012 novel Gone Girl is due to hit screens in October with Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike starring as the troubled couple. Since Flynn herself wrote the...

Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison by Piper Kerman

01 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction

My older teenager tells me the series of the same name is what 'everyone' is watching: "It's the new favorite show," she insists. So when I found the book ("there's a book?" the daughter asks with surprise; there's almost always a book first!) available to...

The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout

23 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific

Small-town Maine, where Elizabeth Strout was born and raised, has been home to her four novels. In her first title since she won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for her novel-in-13-stories, Olive Kitteridge, Strout returns to tiny Shirley Falls where she set her acclaimed, chilling debut, Amy and Isabelle. This time, in The Burgess...

Paris Was the Place by Susan Conley

13 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, South Asian

In Susan Conley's debut novel defined by deep relationships, the most intriguing alliances get neglected and overlooked for the more commonplace and predictable. Willow – called Willie – moves to Paris to be closer to her peripatetic brother Luke who was most recently in China bringing safe...

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