Animal’s People by Indra Sinha [in Bloomsbury Review]
01 May, by in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Repost
A 2007 Booker Prize nominee, Sinha’s third title is presented as a series of 23 directly transcribed tapes, spoken by a creature called “Animal,” who was once human before an industrial chemical catastrophe (inspired by the...
In the latter 19th century, thousands of Chinese Americans were viciously purged from their homes throughout the West Coast. What makes Driven Out more than another tome of historical woe are the little-known tales of valiant...
A deserved Booker 2007 shortlister, Hamid’s slim, powerful title is a deconstruction of the failure of the American Dream for those who look like the enemy. Changez is a young, accomplished Pakistani transplant with a Princeton...
Marjane Satrapi on the "Axis of Evil," Cheese, and Exploring Family History
Marjane Satrapi changed my reading life. Before I picked up 
This is not a spoiler: Estella Habal's San Francisco's International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement is a story with a happy ending. Proof positive is the 2-year-old International Hotel, which stands...
This is one of those life-changing books. Truly. I read it just before my first-ever trip to India (hoping to also go to Bangladesh at some point, but hasn't happened...
For the average American, Tibet is not so much a troubled faraway land, but an ethereal concept marked by the kind face of the Dalai Lama, often in the company of devotee Richard Gere.
“In the West,...
Makibaka means 'struggle' – the struggle of Filipino Americans who survived great hardships to become Americans. Young Lakas inspires the inhabitants of the Makibaka Hotel to fight the building owner's attempts to force the tenants from...
A Bangladeshi immigrant family heads to Canada in search of asylum. When the father is inexplicably arrested at the border, the two daughters return alone to New York, where friends and family are disappearing without explanation....
With their loved ones incarcerated behind barbed wire in internment camps, the segregated, all-Japanese American 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team, led by Korean American Col. Young Oak Kim who recently passed away, became the most decorated...
An important compilation of essays, published posthumously, by longtime activist and Asian American Studies pioneer Ichioka. While numerous volumes focusing on the Japanese American internment already exist, Ichioka’s writings examine the specific period between the two...
In a hospital waiting room, Kenji Yoshino brushed away the reaching, worried hand of his first boyfriend as they waited for a diagnosis that could have been serious. Ten years later, Yoshino, a Yale Law School...
From the bestselling author of Wild Swans (together with a well-known academic), comes an unflinching look at one of the most powerful, influential figures of the 20th-century, not to mention one of the most...
Award-winning Haitian American writer 
The first available translation of important fiction highlighting the Japanese colonization of Korea: Kannani exposes the brutality endured by Koreans at the hands of their Japanese oppressors – even among the children – while Document follows...
The long-awaited follow-up to the provocative 
A long-overdue first biography of the life of extraordinary activist Yuri Kochiyama. Major plus: It’s extensively researched by a fellow activist.
Review: 
The Patiently Tenacious Paula Yoo
When Paula Yoo got her first official rejection from a publisher, she ripped up the letter and threw a bona fide temper tantrum. She...
In the wake of the devastation caused by the Cultural Revolution and the government corruptions of the Open Door Policy, the Chinese people can do little more than just survive – and some are...