Friendship Archives - Page 12 of 113

Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness by Kristen Radtke [in Shelf Awareness]

20 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW When Kristen Radtke (Imagine Wanting Only This) began writing Seek You in 2016, the world was rather different. "Loneliness is one of the most universal things any person can feel," her author's note posits, but still-looming, pandemic-mandated isolation imbues her spectacular graphic memoir with...

The One Thing You’d Save by Linda Sue Park [in School Library Journal]

19 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Korean American, Poetry, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction

*STARRED REVIEW “Imagine that your home is on fire. You’re allowed to save one thing. / Your family and pets are safe … / Your Most Important Thing. Any size.” With that, Ms. Chang challenges her class to name their Most Important Things. “For once we...

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas [in School Library Journal]

18 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Sure, reading is rewarding, but here you’ll want to listen in to share the delighted wonder of narrator Avi Roque and writer Aiden Thomas discussing their affirming #OwnVoices debuts as trans Latinx creators, a bonus at recording’s end. Deservedly lauded and awarded all over the...

Starfish by Lisa Fipps [in School Library Journal]

17 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Poetry, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction

Eleven-year-old Ellie has been bullied most of her life for being fat. The mean girls are bad enough, but her weight-obsessed mother might unintentionally be her worst enemy – what mother pushes bariatric surgery on her tween? Ellie’s best friend is moving away, which means that...

Miss Meteor by Tehlor Kay Mejia and Anna-Marie McLemore [in School Library Journal]

16 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Once upon a time, Lita “turned from star-stuff thrown off a meteor into a girl” and became “to everyone around” the daughter of the local curandera Bruja Lupe. That meteor gave the New Mexico town its name – yes, Meteor – as well as the...

Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost

The incarceration of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II is undoubtedly one of the most egregious episodes in 20th-century U.S. history. Third-generation Japanese American Naomi Hirahara carves a little-known sliver from that grievous experience and layers it with mystery to create her...

Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost by David Hoon Kim [in Shelf Awareness]

14 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

In 2007, the New Yorker published "Sweetheart Sorrow," which became the first chapter of David Hoon Kim's enigmatic debut, Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost. The duration of the novel's opening 30ish pages is the only time Fumiko – a Japanese student in Paris who...

People Like Them by Samira Sedira, translated by Lara Vergnaud [in Shelf Awareness]

13 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, European, Fiction, French, Repost, Translation

Samira Sedira's first English-language title, translated by Sara Vergnaud, is clearly marked "a novel" on its cover, and yet so much of the story is true. People Like Them is a fascinating amalgam of gruesome headlines – French newspapers in 2003 reported that an entire family...

A Song Everlasting by Ha Jin [in Shelf Awareness]

12 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

Powerlessness pervades Ha Jin's perceptive A Song Everlasting, as his protagonist leaves fame and familiarity in one country to flee toward ambiguity and adaptation in another. Freedom, Yao Tian reasons, is his driving motive. National Book Award-winner Jin (A Map of Betrayal), notable for empathically crafting...

Red, White, and Whole by Rajani LaRocca [in School Library Journal]

11 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Indian American, Middle Grade Readers, Poetry, Repost, South Asian American, Verse Novel/Nonfiction

“I have two lives. / One that is Indian, / one that is not,” 13-year-old Reha introduces herself. During the week, she “swim[s] in a river of white skin” at school; “on weekends / [she] “float[s] in a sea of brown skin and black hair...

Best Day Ever! by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Leah Nixon [in Shelf Awareness]

09 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Best friends can't always be on their best behavior, and, sometimes, even the best days can turn bad in seconds. Prolific author Marilyn Singer (Every Month Is a New Year) captures that push-and-pull in her energetic picture book Best Day Ever!, illustrated by debut artist Leah...

Disquiet by Zülfü Livaneli, translated by Brendan Freely [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Translation, Turkish

Former UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador Zülfü Livaneli's startling Disquiet requires multi-layered engagement: to appreciate it as a penetrating novel about a Turkish family confronting murder and to acknowledge it as intense sociopolitical testimony of contemporary, too-little-known, ISIL-led (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) genocide of the...

Colorful by Eto Mori, translated by Jocelyne Allen [in Booklist]

06 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Young Adult Readers

“I want to write a novel that will allow young people who are tired of living to have a break from their own lives.” This is the starting point for Eto Mori’s tale, first published in Japan in 1998 and now a classic. Issues challenging...

Battles in the Desert by José Emilio Pacheco, translated by Katherine Silver, afterword by Fernanda Melchor [in Shelf Awareness]

05 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latin American, Mexican, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Mexican poet, writer, and essayist José Emilio Pacheco's novella Battles in the Desert returns in a glorious 40th-anniversary edition, re-translated by Katherine Silver from her own decades-old original. Award-winning author Fernanda Melchor appends an illuminating afterword that contextualizes the coming-of-age classic in the Mexican canon. Carlos, still...

The Legend of Auntie Po by Shing Yin Khor [in Shelf Awareness]

04 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Singaporean American

The year is 1885 and Mei and her father, Ah Hao, work in a Sierra Nevada logging camp in this mesmerizing middle-grade debut by author/illustrator Shing Yin Khor (The American Dream?). The first few pages of Khor's clever graphic novel delineates underlying racial disparities: "Every night,...

The Silence by Don DeLillo [in Booklist]

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

At under two hours, Don DeLillo’s latest is easily a straight-through listen. What happens during that short time proves mind-bogglingly far-reaching: a worldwide technological shutdown. Jim and Tessa are in flight from Paris to Newark, with evening plans to watch Super Bowl 2022 at Max...

Asadora! (vol. 2) by Naoki Urasawa, translated by John Werry [in Booklist]

02 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

And so the intriguing layers – always characteristic of auteur Naoki Urasawa’s series – begin to multiply in volume 2 of his latest Stateside import, brought into English by frequent manga translator John Werry (who lent his talents to the first volume, and the continuity...

The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina, translated by Lucy Rand [in Booklist]

01 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Italian, Japanese, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW The titular phone booth is real: it stands at Bell Gardia in coastal Ōtsuchi, Japan, built in 2010 to communicate with a dead relative via an unconnected phone that carries conversations into the wind. Since the March 2011 Tōhoku disaster, 30,000 visitors have sought...

The Bombay Prince [A Mystery of 1920s India Book 3] by Sujata Massey [in Shelf Awareness]

29 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

Sujata Massey introduced feisty Perveen Mistry, India's first female solicitor, in the Agatha Award-winning The Widows of Malabar Hill in 2018. In the meticulously researched and entertainingly executed The Bombay Prince, Massey continues to mine details from the lives of two groundbreaking Indian women – Cornelia Sorabji and...

The Startup Wife by Tahmima Anam [in Booklist]

28 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Bangladeshi American, British Asian, Fiction, Repost, South Asian American

Dhaka-born, Harvard PhD-ed, London-domiciled Tahmima Anam has won prestigious accolades for her Bengal trilogy into which she’s lyrically woven Bangladeshi history with personal inspiration. She turns utterly contemporary in her newest novel, which reads rather like an elevated, fictional version of Anna Weiner’s Uncanny Valley...

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