BookDragon Civil rights Tag

The Case for Loving: The Fight for Interracial Marriage by Selina Alko, illustrated by Sean Qualls and Selina Alko

27 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Black/African American, Children/Picture Books, Hapa/Mixed-race, Nonfiction

"First comes love. Then comes marriage." As pervasively common as that children's rhyme is, the legal union between two people has not always been – nor is it still – a right granted to all Americans. In 1967, Richard and Mildred Loving challenged the state of...

The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan by Jenny Nordberg

08 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Afghan, Audio, European, Nonfiction, Swedish

A girl is born: "She is perfect, down to her tiny, grasping fingers." But here's what her life will probably look like: "...

Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay

24 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Fiction, Haitian, Haitian American, Memoir, Nonfiction

If I were to choose the one book that affected me most this year – the one that ran the entire spectrum from giddiest to maddest, from eye-opening in wonder to eye-scrunching in horror – this is it. Bad Feminist has forever changed the way I read,...

Frog by Mo Yan, translated by Howard Goldblatt [in Library Journal]

16 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese, Fiction, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Wan Xin, aka Gugu, is a revered obstetrician who has delivered generations of Gaomi Township citizens over the last half century. Yet for every live birth, she's aborted at least as many pregnancies, proving her patriotism by fervently upholding China's one-child policy; even relatives...

Wall by Tom Clohosy Cole

14 Dec, by SIBookDragon in British, Children/Picture Books, European, Fiction

"My mom said that while the wall was being made, our dad got stuck on the other side." The story is specific to Germany where the Berlin Wall went up in 1961, dividing a single city into two, cleaving family members from one another –...

A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

10 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Chinese American, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Young Adult Readers

A fatally injured 9-year-old girl, a third-grade boy labelled by teachers as "‘mentally retarded,’" a restless doctor burnt out from overwork in refugee camps, are saving the world. Rachel Beckwith didn't survive a highway collision, but her ninth birthday wish to raise $300 to build a faraway...

Malala: A Brave Girl from Pakistan | Iqbal: A Brave Boy from Pakistan by Jeanette Winter

29 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Biography, Children/Picture Books, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Pakistani, South Asian

Earlier this month, 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai made world history by becoming the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. She shares the award for 2014 with India's Kailash Satyarthi: the pair were cited "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the...

Map of Betrayal by Ha Jin [in Library Journal]

24 Sep, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW CIA agent Gary Shang was convicted of spying for China yet called himself "a patriot of both the United States and China." Decades after Gary's death, Lilian, his only child with his American wife, unexpectedly inherits his diary from his longtime mistress and discovers...

brown girl dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

17 Sep, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Black/African American, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Poetry, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

Not to play favorites, but since the 2014 National Book Awards Longlist For Young People’s Literature was announced earlier this week, I'm putting my bet on Jacqueline Woodson’s childhood memoir-in-verse, brown girl dreaming, to not only to make the shortlist (announced October 15), but go all the...

Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield

03 Sep, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Japanese American

Patty Takeda moves in with her mother for the two weeks before her wedding. On the third day in her old room, she's woken by the sound of the doorbell, and is alarmed to hear her mother Lucy use the word "Inspector." Just a few blocks...

I Remember Beirut by Zeina Abirached, translated by Edward Gauvin

29 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Lebanese, Memoir, Middle Eastern, Nonfiction, Translation, Young Adult Readers

As in my post for Beirut’s preceding, award-winning companion title, A Game for Swallows, I find I need to start at book's end. "I remember Georges Perec!" the final image announces. Initially seeming to be unrelated to the rest of the book, the unexpected homage to the experimental...

I Am China by Xiaolu Guo [in Library Journal]

18 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, British, British Asian, Chinese, Fiction, Repost

London-based Xiaolu Guo’s third novel in English (she published six prior in China) opens with a desperate love letter-in-transit "from a place I cannot tell you about yet…when I am safe I will be able to let you know where I am." Over almost 400...

Discover WeNeedDiverseBooks with Sara Farizan’s If You Could Be Mine

01 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, WeNeedDiverseBooks, WNDB.SummerReadingSeries2014, Young Adult Readers

Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson

04 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Young Adult Readers

Although Fridays are predominantly reserved for manga, I thought July Fourth trumped the usual today. Kirby Larson’s Hattie Big Sky, a 2007 Newbery Honor title, examines American patriotism from a perspective I can't remember encountering before in fiction. While the target audience is younger readers, surely adults...

Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill

10 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Black/African American, Canadian, Fiction

Let's start with the bottom line: read this. [Or listen – narrator Adenrele Ojo is superb.] I guarantee this stupendously epic, unforgettably affecting story of Aminata Diallo will haunt you long after you finish. Born in 1745, Aminata is 11 when she's violently abducted from her...

Africa Is My Home: A Child of the Amistad by Monica Edinger, illustrated by Robert Byrd

09 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Biography, Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific

In what should have been a year-long contract of difficult labor as a "pawn" for a 9-year-old girl whose family cannot survive otherwise, becomes a horrific journey to the other side of the world. Named Magulu by her parents, she becomes Margru because of a...

Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez & Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation by Duncan Tonatiuh

08 May, by SIBookDragon in Biography, Children/Picture Books, Latina/o/x, Nonfiction

In 1947, seven years before Brown v. Board of Education desegregated all public schools throughout the United States, the Mendez family of Westminster, California, finally won a three-year fight for an equitable education for their children – and all children like them. In an era...

Flight by Sherman Alexie

24 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Young Adult Readers

I spent my last birthday with Sherman Alexie ...

The Fences Between Us: The Diary of Piper Davis, Seattle, Washington, 1941 by Kirby Larson

07 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Young Adult Readers

How’s this for new math: the first 286 pages hold about the same weight as the final 25 pages. The fictional diary expounds and entertains, revealing a 13-year-old’s West Coast experiences during World War II; the ending “Life in America in 1941” section illuminates and...

A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Nayeri

19 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American

Before she is even a teenager, Saba Hafezi reveals herself to be quite the unreliable narrator. Telling stories, however, is what will save her youthful soul ...