Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind by Loung Ung [in AsianWeek]
One child escapes, the other is left behind: In this continuation of the bestseller, First They Killed My Father, Ung recounts her journey from her war-torn homeland to a new American life....
Vicenza, 14, is F.O.P. – fresh off the plane – from the Philippines where she was undoubtedly the belle of ball. Now a financially challenged immigrant in San Francisco who’s...
Somebody's Daughter
Ten Thousand Sorrows by Elizabeth Kim,
A masterful collection of loosely intertwined short stories from the author of the critically-acclaimed Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila which captures the immigrant life lived in between – not...
From the celebrated author of
Not exactly one of the newest titles (it arrived later than sooner on my desk), but certainly noteworthy because of its subject matter. It opens with the Pakistani birth of Sadika – an unwanted...
Call me old, but who really wants to read about a promiscuous 16-year-old school girl who uses her so-called charm to seduce an older divorcée, her societal power to seduce her servant, and her academic prowess...
“And this is how I remember it,” Chun Yu opens her memoir, written in narrative poetry. While her language is spare, her simple words paint evocative pictures of growing up. Stories of her separated...
A beautifully rendered, haunting autobiographical story about a young boy coming of age during China’s Cultural Revolution, a time marked with incomprehensible, dangerous, chaotic change. Absolutely breathtaking.
Review: <a href="http://bookdragonreviews.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/asianweek-2005-02-25-new-and-notable.pdf"...
As the only South Asian in her middle school, Maya knows all about being different in her tiny Canadian town. She doesn’t speak Bengali, she’s at that awkward stage of pimples and endless limbs,...
Undoubtedly, this 29-year-old author can write. His story is a little too convoluted, but it’s well worth the read. Gabriel Guttman (in German, ‘Gutmann’ is literally “good man”), a grisled Korean War veteran...
Clint Eastwood, Summer Love, and Cockfighting
The good news first: Rattawut Lapcharoensap’s family in Thailand is all fine; the tsunami thankfully did not harm them. The other good news: His collection of short stories, Sightseeing, which debuts...
A collection to share with your daughter – your sister, your cousin, even your mother. Thoughtful and eye-opening, this collection by women from many backgrounds recalls childhood experiences on when and how...
A touching, slim coming-of-age novel about young Maya who travels one summer to Chennai, India, with her mother. Both mother and daughter are still stinging from a year-old divorce. There in the folds of...
The final installation in Mehta’s 11-title series, Continents of Exile, explores his father’s love affair with another woman, documented through their love letters – the eponymous Red Letters. Written without judgment following the deaths...
The Philip Kan Gotanda Chronicles
He captured early-20th-century Hawai‘i with his bittersweet tale of thwarted love in Ballad of Yachiyo. He was the first playwright to ever dramatize life immediately after...
Calling himself "quite an ordinary man" even as he tops his country's List of Shame, Vikram Lall recounts four decades of his "in-between" life in...
One of the more intriguing, original novels I’ve come across in a long time – although I can’t really tell you what happened because I still haven’t figured it out. Presented in...
From one of the bad-boy editors of
Oh, wow!! What a compelling debut novel: Lonely, orphaned Ramchand, cheated out of any inheritance, works in a small sari shop. His quiet existence is challenged by two extremes: the overindulged, hypocritical life of...