Children of a Fireland: A Novel by Gary Pak [in AsianWeek]
07 Apr, by in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hawaiian, Repost
In the small, conservative town of Kanewai, on Oahu, Hawaii, mischievous messages start mysteriously appearing on the walls of the old town movie theater slotted for demolition. Tensions rise as...
A collection of 10 inventive stories that capture a glimpse of contemporary life in a Vietnamese village where the writer, actress, director, and painter Doan Le lived for 30 years...
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...
Another tale of Pakistan (finally, multiple entries in this area!), this one a lyrically written love story – with all sorts of obstacles, of course – about a modern daughter running an inherited silk factory, and...
The discovery of an illicit link between the murder of a middle-aged salaryman and a college student is just the beginning. What the police find is a fantasy family the murdered man formed online,...
“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...
Wanda’s convinced that a monster lives in her closet. While everyone tries to tell her otherwise, Grandma actually confirms Wanda’s worst fears. But Grandma helps Wanda feel much better by making life for her...
An energetic little girl spends a delightful day with her father, frolicking through the neighborhood playground, landing softly in the safe embrace of Daddy’s hug.
Review: 
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"...
A small boy creates perfect little moments of love for everyone around him – for his pets, his siblings, his grandmother and, of course, his parents.
Review: <a...
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,...
In the wake of the devastation caused by the Cultural Revolution and the government corruptions of the Open Door Policy, the Chinese people can do little more than just survive – and some are...
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...
The Best Wake-up Call of All
Calls coming in at 4:26 a.m. don’t usually make most people just jump up and down and scream for joy. But Cynthia Kadohata, still half-asleep in her Los Angeles home, had...
With all the endless shelves of parenting titles, why not tout one that champions Asian influences? One major diversion, however, from traditional discipline tactics attributed to Confucius: While...
Here’s the set up: a 15-year-old boy runs away from home possibly in search of his long-missing mother and sister, and is befriended by a library employee and a young...
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 hybrid if I ever saw one: At the heart of the book is a sociological look at how food and ethnicity intersect in the immigrant world (think how our APA holiday tables might...
Nobel Prize-winner Naipaul continues Willie Chandran’s life story from 
Liu, a genetic scientist, arrives to visit her husband, Li, at his job site at the famed (or should that be infamous?) Three Gorges Dam Project...