Family Archives - Page 46 of 144

Cuba: My Revolution by Inverna Lockpez, illustrated by Dean Haspiel, colored by José Villarrubia

As the world welcomes 1959, 17-year-old Sonya is a hopeful young woman, despite the violent chaos that threatens her home city of Havana. Her boyfriend has already fled Cuba for Miami with his family, but Sonya is determined to contribute to the coming revolution by...

Everything Here Is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee [in Library Journal]

08 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost, South American

Mira T. Lee’s impressive debut – both a celebration and mourning of the bond between two sisters, the younger afflicted with mental illness, the elder desperate to save her – deserves better aural interpretation. The full cast (in rare recognition, a who-was-who is added at...

Girls Burn Brighter by Shobha Rao + Author Interview [in The Booklist Reader]

07 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, South Asian, South Asian American

“I can’t think of a happier story”: Shobha Rao talks GIRLS BURN BRIGHTER After 15 years of writing and 15 years being rejected, Shobha Rao made her fiction debut two years ago with An Unrestored Woman, a collection of a dozen impeccable stories – savage and...

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward [in Library Journal]

06 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

In her second National Book Award-winning title, Jesmyn Ward returns to Bois Sauvage, MS, where her first NBA winner, Salvage the Bones, played out; Bones’ Skeetah and Eschelle appear momentarily here. Jojo, 13, and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their African American grandparents. Their drug-addicted mother...

Dust and Other Stories by Yi T’aejun, translated by Janet Poole [in Booklist]

05 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW During Japan’s brutal occupation of Korea (1910–45), marked by systematic suppression of the Korean language, culture, and identity, Yi T’aejun produced stories that were “considered among the best of his time.” Translator Janet Poole’s impressive introduction not only contextualizes Yi’s significance in the Korean canon...

Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich [in Library Journal]

02 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost

Twenty-six-year-old, four-months-pregnant Cedar Hawk Songmaker was adopted by Minneapolis liberals but has recently reconnected with her extended Ojibwe birth family. Reunion notwithstanding, the world is in dystopic collapse – evolution is in rapid reverse, the Church of the New Constitution has usurped control, the human...

The Graybar Hotel by Curtis Dawkins [in Library Journal]

28 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

Although the "Son of Sam" law prohibited criminals from profiting from their crimes by writing books or creating other crime-based entertainment, the Supreme Court struck down the law in 1991 citing First Amendment violations. Decades later, Dawkins, a convicted murderer serving life without parole, received...

The Confusion of Languages by Siobhan Fallon [in Library Journal]

27 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Jordanian, Middle Eastern, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

After introducing a stupendous community of left-behind stateside military wives in her debut collection, You Know When the Men Are Gone, Siobhan Fallon presents in her first novel two women who have accompanied their U.S. Army husbands to Jordan. Shared circumstances ease Cassie and Margaret...

A Life of Adventure and Delight by Akhil Sharma [in Library Journal]

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

Badly behaved Indian and Indian American men claim the spotlight in Sharma's first story collection, yet moments of unexpected humor and pathos save at least some of the men from utter disdain. In "Cosmopolitan," a recently single older man studies women's magazines to become a...

Sakura’s Cherry Blossoms by Robert Paul Weston, illustrated by Misa Saburi [in Shelf Awareness]

23 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Japanese, Japanese American, Repost

With a name that means "cherry blossom," Sakura's favorite time of the year is understandably spring, when her namesake blooms. Her grandmother gently nurtures her floral appreciation: "Together they sat/ in the shade of pink petals/...

Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Louise Heal Kawai [in Library Journal]

21 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Fourth grader he may be, but our narrator is quite the sharp observer of his surroundings. His father is dead; his mother runs a "fortune-telling and that kind of stuff" salon. She's often the recipient of his unguarded bluntness: "If video games make you stupid,...

Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin [in Library Journal]

20 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Jewish, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW That Aviva Grossman became infamous as "Florida's answer to Monica Lewinsky" provides a quick snapshot of why she's now living in small-town Maine as Jane Young. As a 20-year-old intern to Miami Congressman Aaron Levin, she not only had that affair with the married,...

Between the Lines by Nikki Grimes [in Shelf Awareness]

16 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Poetry, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW "We live in the same city, go to the same school, but each of us has a different story," a student observes. "What we have in common is trying to figure out how to tell it." Welcome back to Mr. Ward's English class, introduced...

Trenton Makes by Tadzio Koelb [in Booklist]

15 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cuban American, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost

WWII is over, and men return home, many to left-behind wives who became wholly self-supporting citizens out of necessity. For one such couple in Trenton, New Jersey, the postwar clash proves fatal, and the sole survivor completely reinvents herself. “My name is Abe Kunstler. I was...

Go Home! edited by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, foreword by Viet Thanh Nguyen [in Booklist]

13 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Nonfiction, Pan-Asian Pacific American, Poetry, Repost

The phrase, go home, encompasses polarizing intentions. It’s a reference to one’s safest place but can also be a hurled threat of exclusion. That polarity illuminates these 31 stories, essays, and poems by writers of diasporic Asian origin, compiled by self-described “Japanese-Chinese-Scottish-English-American” novelist Rowan Hisayo Buchanan...

In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees by Jeff Talarigo [in Booklist]

12 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Palestinian, Repost

Jeff Talarigo, a peripatetic global citizen whose spare, exquisite fiction also tends toward the international – Japan for The Pearl Diver (2004), the North Korean and Chinese border for The Ginseng Hunter (2008) – alchemizes his time in Gaza into this affecting novel in loosely...

Ask a North Korean: Defectors Talk about Their Lives Inside the World’s Most Secretive Nation by Daniel Tudor [in Booklist]

08 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, Korean, Nonfiction, North Korean, Repost, Translation

For Western readers, most North Korea-focused titles cover two categories, writes Daniel Tudor, former Korea correspondent for The Economist: politics and “testimony-style books written by defectors who tell horror stories.” What’s missing are “the real daily experiences of the vast majority of the North Koreans”...

Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History by Camille T. Dungy [in Library Journal]

07 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

In writing about new motherhood, changing dynamics in her closest relationships, navigating a demanding career requiring extensive travel, and witnessing her tiny child grow into her own person, Camille T. Dungy (Tropic Cascade) is unabashedly forthright and perceptive. Her observations are made especially piercing when...

We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria by Wendy Pearlman [in Library Journal]

06 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab, Audio, Middle Eastern, Nonfiction, Repost

As she did for Palestinians in Occupied Voices, Wendy Pearlman (political science, Northwestern Univ.) again gives agency to a population under siege, this time to Syrians. Fluency in Arabic provides Pearlman direct access to “hundreds of Syrian men, women, and children” of all backgrounds –...

The Heirs by Susan Rieger [in Library Journal]

01 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Susan Rieger (The Divorce Papers) shows how a wealthy Manhattan family's marital dysfunctions break, prune, and graft the branches of their family tree. Rupert Falkes, a British orphan-turned-New York elite, is dead. As far as the world knows, he's survived by his blue-blooded wife, Eleanor, their...

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