Cultural exploration Archives - Page 8 of 35

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays by Scaachi Koul [in Library Journal]

Certain authors are their own best narrators – even more true for memoirs (think Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Luvvie Ajayi). Here, Scaachi Koul’s accomplished reading comes with the bonus of regular vocal interjections from her father. With this first book, a collection of smart, sassy, revealing...

Rich People Problems [Crazy Rich Asians 3] by Kevin Kwan [in Library Journal]

25 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Hong Kongese, Repost, Singaporean, Singaporean American, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Kevin Kwan’s third volume continues to expose – albeit with plenty of schadenfreudian humor – the outrageous excesses and over-the-top machinations that began with his debut, Crazy Rich Asians (currently in highly anticipated celluloid production). Lydia Look, who voiced book two, China Rich Girlfriend,...

Refuge by Dina Nayeri [in Christian Science Monitor]

27 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, Persian, Persian American, Repost

'Refuge' is the story of an Iranian family in search of home Here’s the seemingly simple narrative frame: A father and daughter are separated and spend the next two decades both avoiding and yearning for reconnection. But Dina Nayeri’s sophomore novel, Refuge, is anything but straightforward,...

Where the Line Is Drawn: A Tale of Crossings, Friendships, and Fifty Years of Occupation in Israel-Palestine by Raja Shehadeh [in Booklist]

29 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Memoir, Nonfiction, Palestinian

With the publication of Palestinian Walks (2008), Shehadeh recognized Henry Abramovitch as an important “walking companion” in his lyrical, bittersweet record of the encroaching Israeli occupation of his Palestinian homeland. That mention becomes the focus of Shehadeh’s newest title, in which he chronicles a half-century...

The Great Passage by Shion Miura, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter [in Booklist]

20 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW At 27, Majime – whose very name means “serious, diligent” – is recruited from sales by the Dictionary Editorial Department of Gembu Books to help compile The Great Passage, an überdictionary destined to guide users across the vast sea of words. Socially awkward Majime embarks...

Chemistry by Weike Wang [in Library Journal]

24 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

After spontaneously cutting off eight inches of hair, Wang's never-named narrator returns to her chemistry lab and smashes five beakers. She insists, "Beakers are cheap," yet the personal price is inestimable: the shattered vessels parallel an equal number of portentous changes involving her PhD program,...

Books for Living by Will Schwalbe [in Library Journal]

09 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

“Throughout my life I’ve looked to books for all sorts of reasons,” Will Schwalbe reveals, “to comfort me, to amuse me, to distract me, and to educate me.” Reading, discussing, and exalting books eased him and his late mother through the final months of her...

Author Interview: Jimin Han [in Bloom]

02 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Repost

The Small Revolutions Make Way for the Big Ones Recent Korean history seems to be getting quite the literal spotlight from both sides of the globe – by native Korean and Korean American writers alike. In Human Acts – Han Kang’s follow-up to her Man Booker International...

Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age by Amani Al-Khatahtbeh [in Library Journal]

25 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab American, Audio, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

On September 11, 2001, 9-year-old Amani Al-Khatahtbeh should have been enjoying Yearbook Day at her New Jersey elementary school. Instead, “[t]hat day has become crystallized in my memory,” Al-Kahatahtbeh writes – and narrates, “not just for how harrowingly scary it [was] – how we didn’t...

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal [in Booklist]

18 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, British Asian, Fiction, Repost

Nikki’s begrudging agreement to help her sister, Mindi, “find a husband the traditional way” takes her to Southall, a predominately South Asian immigrant neighborhood in west London, to post a discreet marriage advert at the gurdwara (Sikh temple). Unlike Mindi, Nikki considers herself modern and...

A Small Revolution by Jimin Han [in Booklist]

17 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Repost

In a Pennsylvania college dorm, five teens are trapped in a life-and-death situation. The quintet’s point of connection, allegedly dead, is a Korean American student, Jaesung, who was reported to have perished in a recent car fire in Seoul. Yoona, in whose room the terror plays...

No Other World by Rahul Mehta [in Library Journal]

06 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

In this debut novel (following Quarantine), western New York in 1985 and western India in 1998 are introduced as prologue, with both time and place connected by the 12-going-on-13-year-old and 26-year-old versions of Kiran Shah, whose coming-of-age as a bicultural gay Indian American is...

Stop North Korea! A Radical New Approach to the North Korean Standoff by Shepherd Iverson

01 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Korean, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, North Korean, Repost

Korean studies professor Shepherd Iverson, who describes his eight-year residency in South Korea as having “gone native,” promises a “monograph ...

LaRose by Louise Erdrich [in Library Journal]

07 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW In rural North Dakota, Landreaux and Ravich are friends and neighbors, further bound by their wives who are half sisters. With a single gunshot, their lives change forever, when Landreaux aims at a buck at the edge of a field bordering both properties and...

14 Cows for America by Carmen Agra Deedy in collaboration with Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah, illustrated by Thomas Gonzalez

31 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in African, Black/African American, Children/Picture Books, Cuban American, Nonfiction

Kimeli, a young Maasai man, returns to his village in Kenya after being away for a long time with “one story [that] has burned a hole in his heart.” He remembers the “[b]uildings so tall they can touch the sky,” he saw the “[f]ires so hot...

The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap by Gish Jen [in Booklist]

30 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Nonfiction, Repost

Beloved novelist Gish Jen (World and Town, 2010) expands on the East-West cultural paradigm she applied to examining art and culture in her previous nonfiction work, Tiger Writing (2013), to see “what it can show us about the world.” As the U.S.-born child of Chinese immigrants,...

To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey [in Library Journal]

12 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Uncategorized

*STARRED REVIEW Walter Forrester, a self-described "stubborn old man" without living relatives, contacts Alaska museum curator Joshua Sloan with an offer to donate numerous effects of his great-uncle Lt. Col. Allen Forrester and Forrester's wife, Sophie. In 1885, Allen Forrester embarked on a formidable mission to chart...

The Boy & the Bindi by Vivek Shraya, illustrated by Rajini Perara [in School Library Journal]

28 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

A young boy, curious about his “Ammi’s dot … a bright and pretty spot,” innocently asks, “Why do you wear that dot?/What’s so special about that spot?” His mother crouches to eye level so he can touch her forehead as she explains, “It’s not a...

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See [in Booklist]

02 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

In a remote mountain village, the survival of an Akha tribe, one of China’s 55 ethnic minorities, depends on tea. Rigid traditions prohibit Li-yan from keeping her newborn. She saves her daughter by leaving her in a nearby town, wrapped in blankets with a tea...

Author Interview: Vanessa Hua [in Bloom]

25 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

On Secrets and the Long, Long Process Journalist Vanessa Hua spent the last couple of decades filing articles from around the globe – China and Ecuador, Burma and Panama, and beyond – which surely gave her the worldly familiarity that resonates throughout her fiction debut, Deceit...

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