Coming-of-age Archives - Page 10 of 55

Somewhere in the Unknown World: A Collective Refugee Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang [in Shelf Awareness]

21 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Black/African American, European, Hmong American, Memoir, Myanmarese (Burmese) American, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian American, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

"The people in this book are people from your lives," Kao Kalia Yang writes to her three sleeping children in the final chapter of her affecting hybrid nonfiction collection, Somewhere in the Unknown World: A Collective Refugee Memoir. Minnesota – where Yang has lived for...

A Girl Is a Body of Water by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi [in Booklist]

20 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Uncategorized

At almost 15 hours, Uganda-born, UK-domiciled Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s (Kintu) Ganda folklore-infused sophomore title is a sprawling epic with a vast cast that challenges, even occasionally derails, a seasoned narrator like Tovah Ott (Ott’s credits seem few, but under two additional aliases, she’s commanded hundreds...

Dead Girls by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW "As a girl, I sensed that there wasn't really anywhere I was safe," Selva Almada (The Wind That Lays Waste) reveals in the chilling author's note about growing up in a provincial Argentinian town. By 8, Almada had already experienced verbal sexual abuse, accosted...

Mañanaland by Pam Muñoz Ryan [in Booklist]

08 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

Readers might need the opening sentence repeated here: “Somewhere in the Américas, many years after once-upon-a-time and long before happily-ever-after, a boy climbed the cobbled steps of an arched bridge in the tiny village of Santa Maria in the country of the same name.” The...

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang [in Booklist]

07 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

At almost 19, Ama already has a dead soldier husband and three daughters. She marries two-decades-older Agong, another soldier with whom she has two more daughters. The youngest becomes Mother, who moves with Ama, Agong, and Jie (older sister), from Taiwan to Arkansas, only to be displaced...

The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta [in School Library Journal]

03 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, British, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW British-born to a Greek Cypriot mother and Jamaican father, Dean Atta established himself as a poet and performer in 2012. Here he gorgeously debuts as both author and narrator of his novel-in-verse in which his fictional stand-in, Michael Angeli, matures from an end-of-the-millennium baby...

Igifu by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated by Jordan Stump [in Shelf Awareness]

28 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, European, Fiction, French, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW A Rwandan exile living in France, Scholastique Mukasonga pulled from her extraordinary life to write two notable memoirs, Cockroaches and The Barefoot Woman (a 2019 National Book Award Translated Literature finalist). Autobiographical elements continue to haunt her exquisite collection, Igifu, through five wrenching stories. Born in 1956, Mukasonga had a...

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist by Adrian Tomine [in Booklist]

24 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW As early as age 8, Adrian Tomine (Killing and Dying) publicly announced exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up: “A famous cartoonist,” he told his Fresno class in 1982. He confused his teacher, who thought perhaps he aspired to be Walt...

Happiness Will Follow by Mike Hawthorne [in Booklist]

23 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Latina/o/x, Memoir, Nonfiction, Puerto Rican, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Born Michael Anthony Hawthorne, his last name was “swiftly pilfered from [his] father” by his Puerto Rican mother “to keep [him] safe in ways she never was.” Yet surviving into adulthood was a near-superhuman feat: his single mother’s fierce love came with horrific stipulations...

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW The magic happens here on every page, the perfection personified by debut author/artist Trung Le Nguyen’s autobiographical homage to the infinite power of storytelling. The opening page ingeniously distinguishes three interwoven narratives with three color palettes: red is the urgent now, about young Tiến...

Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In by Phuc Tran [in Booklist]

03 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW What you might miss if you opt for the audiobook is a rather unexpected table of contents page, on which every chapter title is a (western) literary classic, from The Picture of Dorian Gray to The Iliad. Books, indeed, guide debut author Phuc Tran’s life, especially as...

When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller [in School Library Journal]

02 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

Keller's narrative can't be faulted – the story is achingly gorgeous. A widowed Korean American mother and her two mixed-race daughters move from California to Washington to live with their glamorous, unconventional Halmoni – grandmother" in Korean. Older sister Sam – suffering from sullen teenagerhood...

Inheritors by Asako Serizawa [in Shelf Awareness]

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

Pieces of Asako Serizawa's intriguing novel-in-interlinked-stories, Inheritors, have been published since 2005 and winning awards (O. Henry, Pushcart) since 2013. Her acknowledgements reveal "this book [took] so long to write," but her tenacity is a gift to readers. With 13 stories featuring five generations of...

Bright by Duanwad Pimwana, translated by Mui Poopoksakul [in Booklist]

16 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Thai, Translation

“You stay here. I’m taking your brother over to Grandma’s. I’ll be back in a bit,” 5-year-old Kampol’s father promises. Just a few days ago, “something went down at his house”: Kampol’s mother disappeared, and now his father and not-yet-1-year-old baby brother are leaving. Most of...

Turtle Under Ice by Juleah del Rosario [in School Library Journal]

14 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

Juleah del Rosario's sophomore novel-in-verse is a haunting elegy, revealed in the back-and-forth voices of two sisters. Rowena is the star soccer athlete, Ariana the artist who might not graduate. They're students at the same high school, but the older hardly acknowledges the younger; at...

The Son of Good Fortune by Lysley Tenorio [in Christian Science Monitor]

07 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Repost

His name was chosen to bring good fortune. So far, it isn’t working. Lysley Tenorio’s novel The Son of Good Fortune explores the sorely tested bonds of a Filipino mother and her son living in the shadows in America. Eight years have passed since award-winning writer and...

Fairest: A Memoir by Meredith Talusan [in Shelf Awareness]

01 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Filipina/o American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

For Meredith Talusan, transformation looks like this: "Sun Child," "Harvard Man," "Lady Wedgwood." In the nimbly titled Fairest, award-winning journalist Talusan shares an unflinching exploration of identity. "Mirrors were not just mirrors to me," she writes in her prologue, "but bridges made of light to fantastic...

Author Interview: Traci Chee [in Shelf Awareness]

30 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

The Magic of Reality Traci Chee is the author of The Reader Trilogy and the novel We Are Not Free, coming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on September 1. She studied literature and creative writing at UC Santa Cruz and earned a Master of Arts degree from San Francisco...

We Are Not Free by Traci Chee [in Shelf Awareness]

29 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Japanese American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In a mesmerizing genre-switch, YA author Traci Chee moves from the fantasy worldbuilding of her acclaimed The Reader trilogy (The Reader; The Speaker; The Storyteller) to World War II historical fiction, with unforgettable results, in We Are Not Free. As a fourth-generation Japanese American, Chee gets personal, affectingly...

You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat [in Booklist]

25 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab American, Fiction, Repost

The “demarcation” begins over a wardrobe malfunction: a 12-year-old girl, improperly, according to the local men, dressed in shorts, arrives at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem with her mother and uncle. Exchanging the forbidden shorts for her uncle’s “baggy trousers” gives her a...

BookDragon Coming-of-age Tag