The Lace Dowry by Andrea Cheng [in AsianWeek]
29 Sep, by in European, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost
Asian American-by-marriage, Andrea Cheng explores her Hungarian roots in this poignant story about 12-year-old Juli, whose mother decides Juli must have a most magnificent lace tablecloth as her marriage dowry. Juli, who...
As Najwa loses everything important in her life – her country, her father, her mother, her brother, her lover – she finds solace by embracing the strict tenets of fundamental Islam. While the book offers insight...
After her mother suddenly deserts the family, Amy and her father are left alone to create a new life across the country in California. A heartbreaking coming-of-age tale about growing up Cambodian...
Good Morning America viewers, with a panel of bestselling authors, chose Ahmedi’s story in a nationwide search for the most extraordinary true-life experience. Afghani-born Ahmedi’s 19 years are marked by...
A new translation of a Japanese classic that follows Botchan, the mischievous, fun-loving Tokyo-ite to rural southern Japan where he’s assigned to teach in a boys’ school. What’s a rule-breaker to do?
Review: 
Two interesting facts emerge: 1. young girls are bonded together to become laotongs (literally, “old sames”) for life and 2. women communicate using nu shu, a secret women-only written language. In the novel, 80-year-old...
Somebody's Daughter
Marie Myung-Ok Lee Finds Her Voice
Got the publication date confused and held it longer than intended – but can’t let it go without saying this is a grand coming-of-age story. Jazz Gardner travels to India with her family where...
Innocence lost: 17-year-old Ami is both schoolgirl and prostitute, pregnant by her mentally challenged older brother, brutally gang raped by a rock star and his groupies, but capable of restoring the dormant virility of...
If this 120-page novel rife with sex and violence were any longer, reading it would be unbearable. That it won Japan’s highest literary honor, the Akutagawa Prize, for its then 20-year-old author,...
The first two installments of a new trilogy from YA master Yep. Tiger’s Apprentice opens with the untimely death of Mistress Lee, the current Guardian of the mysterious rose which holds the future hope...
I can only hope that the majority of APA adolescent boys are nothing like Nick Park – the lone Asian American in a Connecticut suburb, convinced that his Korean American-ness is what...
Somehow missed this title earlier, even as it won the 2004 Paul Zindel First Novel Award. While the story is familiar – a young girl moves from a loving home filled with extended family...
A beautifully produced collection of intertwined poems that have more margin than print – although it’s the sparseness, that which is not written, that lingers.
Review: 
Published under a pseudonym because of its autobiographical nature, this hoping-to-be controversial novel recounts the erotic maturation of a young Muslim woman. She’s married off at 17 to an older man who brutalizes her under familial...
A heartbreakingly inspirational book about a young girl in a tiny rural Chinese village who desperately wants an education, and the love and gratitude she feels for her parents –...
Welcome to the fabulous world of the Bindi Babes, otherwise known as the dynamic Dhillon sisters, Amber, Jazz, and Geena. In the first installment of the trilogy, Bindi Babes, they manage to...
A loving tribute, memoir-style, to the author’s father, a South Vietnamese pilot shot down during the Vietnam War and assumed dead. Pham and his mother begin a new life in the United...
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...
Confession: I’m an utter Ishiguro groupie. His latest novel makes me only more obsessed, even as it completely creeps me out. Hailsham (halcyon? sham? ) is the English countryside boarding...