Friendship Archives - Page 20 of 113

The Sky Is Blue with a Single Cloud by Kuniko Tsurita, translated by Ryan Holmberg [in Shelf Awareness]

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

An English-language debut, The Sky Is Blue with a Single Cloud is a label-defying collection of Kuniko Tsurita's gekiga – literally, "dramatic pictures," referring to more serious graphic work for adult audiences. Organized chronologically from 1966 to 1980, the historical compilation includes Tsurita's early magazine submissions as a...

Hot Pot Night! by Vincent Chen [in Shelf Awareness]

22 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

"What's for dinner?" is an end-of-day call to action in homes everywhere. Debut author/illustrator Vincent Chen answers with Hot Pot Night!, a toothsome treat that gathers family, friends, and neighbors for what will be an evening of delectable communal dining. As the residents of an apartment...

Bright by Duanwad Pimwana, translated by Mui Poopoksakul [in Booklist]

16 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Thai, Translation

“You stay here. I’m taking your brother over to Grandma’s. I’ll be back in a bit,” 5-year-old Kampol’s father promises. Just a few days ago, “something went down at his house”: Kampol’s mother disappeared, and now his father and not-yet-1-year-old baby brother are leaving. Most of...

Stand Up, Yumi Chung! by Jessica Kim [in School Library Journal]

15 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Korean American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

Greta Jung energetically embodies 11-year-old Yumi Chung's evolution from quiet odd-girl-out to feisty stand-up-comedian-in-the-making. At her exclusive L.A. private school, Yumi is rarely noticed, except by the bully harassing her as "Yu-MEAT" (for her barbecue-scent-infused clothing from helping at her family's Koreatown restaurant) or "Top...

The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-Eun, translated by Lizzie Buehler [in Shelf Awareness]

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

Pristine beaches, spectacular landscapes, cultural landmarks might have been the go-to tourist destinations once upon a time, but in Yun Ko-eun's sly, compelling novel, The Disaster Tourist, scenes of death and destruction are where the people really want to go. Global voyeurism is succeeding, with...

Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America by W. Caleb McDaniel [in Booklist]

09 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

Winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in History, W. Caleb McDaniel’s 2019 debut gets a 2020 aural adaptation, helmed by prolific Paul Heitsch, who adds solemn gravitas to an utterly compelling narrative. Born enslaved in 1818/1820 in Kentucky, Henrietta Wood was freed in 1848 and...

The Toni Morrison Book Club by Juda Bennett, Winnifred Brown-Glaude, Cassandra Jackson, Piper Kendrix Williams [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW In their joint introduction, four The College of New Jersey colleagues – three African American women, one gay white man, all PhD-ed – declare, “Toni Morrison is our greatest living historian about love, race, nation, and just about everything else of consequence.” The Nobel...

Mimi Lee Gets a Clue [A Sassy Cat Mystery, Book 1] by Jennifer J. Chow [in Booklist]

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

Cat mysteries are a (bestselling) thing: the late Lillian Jackson Braun’s 29-volume Cat Who ...

Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler [in Booklist]

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

At under five hours, Anne Tyler’s latest is her shortest, but all her usual ingredients for a satisfying listen are here: familiar Baltimore setting, characters who evolve, family and friends with memorable sideline storylines. Fitting easily into Tyler’s pantheon of repeating narrators (Blair Brown, Kimberly Farr,...

Author Interview: Traci Chee [in Shelf Awareness]

30 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

The Magic of Reality Traci Chee is the author of The Reader Trilogy and the novel We Are Not Free, coming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on September 1. She studied literature and creative writing at UC Santa Cruz and earned a Master of Arts degree from San Francisco...

We Are Not Free by Traci Chee [in Shelf Awareness]

29 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Japanese American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In a mesmerizing genre-switch, YA author Traci Chee moves from the fantasy worldbuilding of her acclaimed The Reader trilogy (The Reader; The Speaker; The Storyteller) to World War II historical fiction, with unforgettable results, in We Are Not Free. As a fourth-generation Japanese American, Chee gets personal, affectingly...

It’s Not All Downhill From Here by Terry McMillan [in Booklist]

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

Multi-talented Terry McMillan has been narrating her titles for 15 years already! She’s aurally involved in various incarnations – abridgements, as part of a cast, and here as a solo narrator. She shares the same age, 68, with protagonist Loretha, whose beloved husband Carl, suddenly dies...

Little Josephine: Memory in Pieces by Valérie Villieu, illustrated by Raphaël Sarfati, translated by Nanette McGuinness [in Booklist]

26 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

For Parisian nurse Valérie Villieu, the proverbial City of Lights is “filled with solitude, isolation, and confinement” – especially for the elderly. Villieu meets soon-to-be-84 Josephine, trapped in her tiny apartment with a stuffed dog and bear as her only constant companions. For months, Josephine...

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...

I’ll Be the One by Lyla Lee [in Shelf Awareness]

23 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Korean American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Helmed by director Nahnatchka Khan (Netflix's Always Be My Maybe), an HBO Max adaptation of Lyla Lee’s I'll Be the One was announced six months prior to the book's publication date. Before Hollywood hijacks your imagination, though, get to know Skye off-screen in this delectable...

The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd [in Booklist]

21 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Egyptian, Fiction, Jewish, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW To begin at the end seems most fitting: “If Jesus actually did have a wife ...

Deacon King Kong by James McBride [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW On a cloudy September 1969 afternoon, septuagenarian widower Sportcoat – less respectfully dubbed Deacon King Kong for his addiction to the local moonshine – shot 19-year-old drug dealer Deems, then saved Deems’ life with an unseemly version of the Heimlich maneuver when Deems nearly...

Skin Deep [Siobhan O’Brien Book 1] by Sung J. Woo [in Library Journal]

16 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Despite her Asian features, her father really is Irish, her mother Norwegian. Her name is Siobhan O’Brien, never mind everyone’s surprise when trying to gauge the incongruity between her face and that moniker. Short answer: Siobhan is a Korean-born, upstate New York–raised transracial adoptee. At...

The Madwoman and the Roomba: My Year of Domestic Mayhem by Sandra Tsing Loh [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Despite the "golden years" promised by many, for writer, performer, and University of California, Irvine, professor Sandra Tsing Loh, her "fifty-fifth year was more like living a disorganized twenty-five-year-old's life in a malfunctioning eighty-five-year-old's body." With the same self-deprecating wit and sardonic charm with...

Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener [in Booklist]

14 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Jewish, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Once upon a time, Anna Weiner was a literary agency assistant, living on “the edge of Brooklyn with a roommate [she] hardly knew, in an apartment filled with so much secondhand furniture it almost had a connection to history.” She was “broke” but “never poor,”...

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