Cultural exploration Archives - Page 4 of 35

Measuring Up by Lily LaMotte, illustrated by Ann Xu [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Taiwanese, Taiwanese American

Debut author Lily LaMotte draws on her immigrant experiences – as well as her cooking show obsession – for a toothsome #OwnVoices graphic feast vibrantly illustrated by the Ignatz-nominated Ann Xu. For 12-year-old Cici, leaving Taiwan means separation from her beloved A-má (grandmother). In Seattle, Cici's...

Dancing in the Mosque: An Afghan Mother’s Letter to Her Son by Homeira Qaderi, translated by Zaman Stanizai [in Shelf Awareness]

05 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Afghan, Afghan American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

During the 985 nights since she was cleaved from her then 19-month-old, still-breastfeeding son, Homeira Qaderi managed to escape her native Afghanistan and eventually settle in California. Her son, now 4, has been told his mother is dead. With this haunting memoir, Dancing in the...

Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh [in Library Journal]

26 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

Arya Sagar, who has dozens of Indian/South Asian audio credits, enhances Amitav Ghosh’s ("Ibis" trilogy) already penetrating around-the-world mythic quest with his mellifluous narration, especially heightened with (mostly) agile adjustments for regional accents. Ghosh’s peripatetic hero, Deen Dutta, is an earnest Brooklyn-based rare books dealer,...

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...

Author Interview: Kelli Jo Ford [in Shelf Awareness]

21 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Dreaming the Impossible Even before Kelli Jo Ford's debut, Crooked Hallelujah was released, it garnered accolades: the seventh chapter, "Hybrid Vigor," won the Paris Review's Plimpton Prize in 2019, and Ford's pre-publication manuscript won the 2019 Everett Southwest Literary Award from the University of Central Oklahoma. Ford is...

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...

No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories by Jayant Kaikini, translated by Tejaswini Niranjana [in Booklist]

24 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian, Translation

Seemingly quotidian lives centered in Mumbai fill Jayant Kaikini’s second translated collection, the first book in translation to win the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. These 16 stories, written from 1986 to 2006, were selected and translated by the award-winning Tejaswini Niranjana, who in...

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo [in Booklist]

18 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Fiction, Poetry, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Producers/directors, take note: this is how to effectively record an audiobook with more than a single narrator. Here, Melania-Luisa Marte reads Camino’s chapters, while author Elizabeth Acevedo picks up Yahaira’s. For chapters featuring both girls, Marte and Acevedo take turns in dialogue. When their...

Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Kelli Jo Ford makes a magnificent #OwnVoices debut with Crooked Hallelujah. The book already has significant plaudits: the seventh chapter, "Hybrid Vigor," won the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize in 2019, and her pre-publication manuscript won the 2019 Everett Southwest Literary Award from the University of...

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance by Zora Neale Hurston, edited by Genevieve West [in Booklist]

03 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Armed with significant acting credits and plentiful lauds, Aunjanue Ellis makes her audiobook debut as the voice of one of the 20th-century’s most celebrated, iconic writers. In a word, her performance is stupendous. Texas Woman’s University professor Genevieve West’s definitive new collection features, for...

Nori by Rumi Hara [in Booklist]

27 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In this delightful, already Ignatz-nominated debut by Japan-born, Brooklyn-based Rumi Hara, 3-year-old Nori is cared for by her grandmother (who can’t always keep up) while both parents work. Each of these six adventurous shorts features a contrasting single color overlaid on otherwise black-and-white panels, capturing...

Paying the Land by Joe Sacco [in Booklist]

22 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Canadian, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Repost

Best known for his Palestine books – most notably, Footnotes in Gaza (2010) – frequent Eisner Award-winner Joe Sacco’s nonfiction titles share essential overlapping features: talking heads given agency to speak their truths, exquisitely detailed artwork, meticulously revealed events. Here Sacco heads to Canada’s Northwest Territories, home...

Diversifying the Audiobook Industry: Four Asian American Narrators Take the Mic [in Library Journal]

11 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Author Interview/Profile, Chinese American, Indian American, Korean American, Lists, Repost, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

The publishing industry has been hard hit by COVID-19: festival and conference cancelations, library and bookstore shutterings, disappearing book tours, publishers’ office closings, production delays – especially with international printers – and, alas, probably more obstacles to come. But digital audiobooks can be the ideal,...

Grandpa Grumps by Katrina Moore, illustrated by Xindi Yan [in Shelf Awareness]

20 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

Despite Daisy's carefully prepared "Things to do with Yeh-yeh" list, her goal during the week of her grandfather's visit is something far more challenging: "I have to make him smile before he leaves!" In creating Daisy and her Grandpa Grumps, Katrina Moore (One Hug) explores multi-generational,...

All-American Muslim Girl by Nadine Jolie Courtney [in School Library Journal]

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

For Allie Abraham, "hiding is easy: reddish-blond hair, pale skin, hazel eyes," in other words – white. That she looks "textbook Circassian…from the Caucasus region. (Hey, they don't call it Caucasian for nothing)," is her ethnic inheritance from her immigrant Circassian Jordanian history professor father....

Friend by Nam-nyong Paek, translated by Immanuel Kim [in Booklist]

02 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, North Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW As a Superior Court judge, among Jeong Jin Wu’s most difficult tasks is to resolve divorce petitions and face “the burden of having to deal with another family’s misery.” His latest case involves an opera celebrity and factory worker desperate to terminate their almost-10-year...

Diary of a Murderer and Other Stories by Young-Ha Kim [in Booklist]

11 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Short Stories, Translation

Author Young-Ha Kim, translator Krys Lee (herself an award-winning writer; Drifting House), and actor David Shih repeat the triumvirate success of Kim’s I Hear Your Voice to deliver his latest collection of four chilling, engrossing stories. The eponymous, novella-length “Diary of a Murderer” – the best of an...

Palimpsest: Documents from a Korean Adoption by Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, translated by Hanna Strömberg [in Booklist]

31 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Korean, Memoir, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom opens with definitions of two seemingly unrelated, yet brilliantly paired, words: palimpsest, “a very old text or document in which writing has been removed and covered or replaced by new writing,” and adoption, “the act of legally taking a child to be taken...

Where We Come From by Oscar Cásares [in Booklist]

26 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost

With Spanish names, phrases, and whole sentences appearing every few pages, bilingual narrator Yaeli Arizmendi (the voice of Laura Esquivel’s Spanish editions) instinctively settles into Oscar Cásares’s (Amigoland) latest, in which he returns to his Tex-Mex border hometown of Brownsville. Almost-septuagenarian Nina’s life is not her...

Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen [in Shelf Awareness]

22 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Taiwanese, Taiwanese American, Young Adult Readers

"This novel is a romp," Abigail Hing Wen promises (and delivers!) about Loveboat, Taipei. The Loveboat, she explains in her opening note to readers, is the popular name for Chien Tan, a real-life Taiwanese summer language program aimed at diasporic teens, with a reputation for...

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