Civil rights Archives

Blood Scion [Blood Scion, Book 1] by Deborah Falaye [in School Library Journal]

22 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in African, Audio, Black/African American, Canadian, Fiction, Nigerian, Nigerian American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Nigerian Canadian author Deborah Falaye’s Yoruban mythology-inspired debut (introducing a planned duology) presents Nagea, a nation brutalized by the genocidal Lucis. Only her grandfather has managed to keep 15-year-old Sloane safe, until she’s drafted into the army. Being a Scion – “a descendent of the...

I Was a Rat! by Philip Pullman [in School Library Journal]

16 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, British, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Philip Pullman’s 1999 fairy-tale-adjacent, murine fable begets a delightful audio adaptation, gloriously dramatized by British actor Robert Glenister, who effortlessly showcases a dazzlingly vast cast. One moonlit night, a little boy in a torn uniform knocks on cobbler Bob and washerwoman Joan’s door announcing,...

My Nest of Silence by Matt Faulkner [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW After learning of Europe’s Nazi concentration camps as a child, Matt Faulkner also discovered how Americans of Japanese descent were unjustly imprisoned during WWII, a revelation made more urgent because of family connections: his great-aunt Adeline; her daughter, Mary; and Mary’s children were held...

Mighty Justice (Young Readers’ Edition): The Untold Story of Civil Rights Trailblazer Dovey Johnson Roundtree by Dovey Johnson Roundtree and Katie McCabe, adapted by Jabari Asim [in School Library Journal]

24 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Black/African American, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Until her death at 104 in 2018, Dovey Johnson Roundtree—“a Black woman born in the early twentieth century in the Jim Crow South” – shared a remarkable 24-year friendship with Katie McCabe, a self-described “white woman who came of age in 1950s Washington, DC.” Theirs...

Love in the Library by Maggie Tokuda-Hall, illustrated by Yas Imamura [in Shelf Awareness]

24 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Japanese American, Nonfiction, Repost

"This is a true story. Mostly," Maggie Tokuda-Hall (Squad) explains in her author's note in Love in the Library, both a revealing exposé of unjust history and an exceptional tribute to love. Tokuda-Hall's maternal grandparents are Tama, a librarian, and George, the library's most constant patron....

I’d Like to Say Sorry, but There’s No One to Say Sorry To: Stories by Mikołaj Grynberg, translated by Sean Gasper Bye [in Shelf Awareness]

05 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Eastern European, European, Fiction, Jewish, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Photographer/psychologist/author Mikołaj Grynberg is best known in his native Poland for his documentary nonfiction featuring his generation of Polish Jews, born after the Holocaust and raised by survivors. Grynberg turns to fiction for the first time with I'd Like to Say Sorry, but There's No One...

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka [in Booklist]

20 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Award-winning, bestselling Julie Otsuka is averaging one book per decade, making each exquisite title exponentially more precious. Here she creates a stupendous collage of small moments that results in an extraordinary examination of the fragility of quotidian human relationships. Initially set in an underground pool, it voices...

Discipline by Dash Shaw [in Booklist]

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

Graphic titles about Quakers aren't exactly a hot topic – or are they? This season brings two Quaker-related comics in quick succession: David Lester's Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay and this, Dash Shaw's Discipline, a haunting fictionalization of a teenage Quaker Civil War soldier. Quakers...

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story created by Nikole Hannah-Jones [in Booklist]

02 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW In 2019, Pulitzer Prize–winning, MacArthur “Genius” Nikole Hannah-Jones “made a simple pitch” for a special issue of The New York Times Magazine to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the August 1619 arrival of the White Lion, the ship which carried the first captive Africans...

Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, a Graphic Novel by David Lester, with Marcus Rediker and Paul Buhle [in Shelf Awareness]

19 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Black/African American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Benjamin Lay, small in stature with dwarfism, was a monumental historical figure almost lost until historian Marcus Rediker published The Fearless Benjamin Lay (2017), which returned Lay to prominence as "the first revolutionary abolitionist." Canadian artist David Lester energetically distills Rediker's biography into a...

Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost

The incarceration of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II is undoubtedly one of the most egregious episodes in 20th-century U.S. history. Third-generation Japanese American Naomi Hirahara carves a little-known sliver from that grievous experience and layers it with mystery to create her...

A Song Everlasting by Ha Jin [in Shelf Awareness]

12 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

Powerlessness pervades Ha Jin's perceptive A Song Everlasting, as his protagonist leaves fame and familiarity in one country to flee toward ambiguity and adaptation in another. Freedom, Yao Tian reasons, is his driving motive. National Book Award-winner Jin (A Map of Betrayal), notable for empathically crafting...

Infinite Country by Patricia Engel [in Booklist]

10 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Repost, South American, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW When 15-year-old Talia is shocked by the inexplicable, brutal murder of a cat, her outraged sense of fairness immediately takes control and she punishes the feline killer with similar torture – landing her in a remote girls’ prison school for youth offenders. She devises...

The Legend of Auntie Po by Shing Yin Khor [in Shelf Awareness]

04 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Singaporean American

The year is 1885 and Mei and her father, Ah Hao, work in a Sierra Nevada logging camp in this mesmerizing middle-grade debut by author/illustrator Shing Yin Khor (The American Dream?). The first few pages of Khor's clever graphic novel delineates underlying racial disparities: "Every night,...

We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration by Frank Abe and Tamiko Nimura, illustrated by Ross Ishikawa and Matt Sasaki [in Booklist]

15 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Three months after the Pearl Harbor bombings, rumors of racist mass eviction became reality when President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, unlawfully condemning 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent into concentration camps across the western U.S. Following political leaders spouting conspiracy...

Hard Like Water by Yan Lianke, translated by Carlos Rojas [in Booklist]

10 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Fiction, Repost, Translation

In China, notes Yan Lianke’s Anglophone enabler-of-choice Carlos Rojas, there exists “a literary subgenre known as ‘revolution plus love,’ which was popular ...

You People by Nikita Lalwani [in Shelf Awareness]

31 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, British Asian, Fiction, Repost

Nikita Lalwani's alternating narrators in her remarkable third novel, You People, seemingly have little in common beyond a shared place of employment: a London pizzeria with predominantly undocumented staff. Nia, a 19-year-old Welsh transplant escaping an abusive home life, was asked to leave Oxford University, where...

Author Interview: Silvia Moreno-Garcia [in Shelf Awareness]

20 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Canadian, Fiction, Latin American, Mexican, Repost

Silvia Moreno-Garcia: On Publishing, Racism, and a "Real Horror Story" Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a literary chameleon, successfully writing across genres, including speculative short fiction (This Strange Way of Dying), historical fantasy (The Beautiful Ones), magical realism (Gods of Jade and Snow) and horror (Mexican Gothic). She's also edited several anthologies, is the publisher of micro-indie...

Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia [in Shelf Awareness]

19 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Latin American, Mexican, Repost

Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mexican Gothic) opens Velvet Was the Night with an epigraph quoting a June 1971 U.S. Department of State telegram about the Hawks, a murderous Mexican government-trained "shock group" supported by the CIA. She ends with this final sentence in her afterword: "My novel is noir,...

Asian American #OwnVoices: Artfully Narrated Middle Grade, YA, and Crossover Audiobooks [in School Library Journal]

17 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese American, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian American, Iranian American, Japanese American, Korean American, Lists, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Pakistani American, Persian American, Repost, South Asian American, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

Welcome to Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month. The year remains somber, as the APA community combats dramatically increasing anti-Asian violence around the country and continues to mourn the eight people, including six women of Asian descent, killed in a Georgia mass shooting. Despite a U.S....

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