Friendship Archives - Page 29 of 113

Immigrant Heritage Month by the Book(s)! [in The Booklist Reader]

June is #ImmigrantHeritageMonth, which began in 2014 and has been recognized and celebrated by the (Obama) White House as “a time to celebrate diversity and immigrants’ shared American heritage” since 2015. “Immigration,” the White House declares, “is part of the DNA of this great nation.” Perhaps now more than ever...

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder [in Booklist]

12 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Without names, these people, this island, could be anyone, anywhere. As fantastical as the premise of her latest Anglophoned novel seems, Yoko Ogawa (The Housekeeper and the Professor, 2009) intends exactly that universality. Initially, small things disappeared – “Ribbon, bell, emerald, stamp.” What didn’t just...

Travelers by Helon Habila [in Booklist]

20 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, European, Fiction, Repost

Reminiscent of Arthur Schnitzler’s late-19th-century play La Ronde (and the dozens of multi-genre adaptations since), Helon Habila’s (Oil on Water, 2011) fourth novel is a round-the-world journey that links disparate, desperate strangers. An unnamed African history scholar (his PhD pending) and his American wife, Gina, relocate from Arlington,...

Internment by Samira Ahmed [in Booklist]

15 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

Much like the 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent imprisoned during WWII by FDR’s Executive Order 9066, Muslim Americans are rounded up and incarcerated in an alternate, albeit all-too-familiar U.S. following the 2016 presidential election. Seventeen-year-old Layla and her parents are forcibly removed from their Los...

Song of Arirang by Kim San and Nym Wales, edited by George O. Totten and Dongyoun Hwang [in Booklist]

09 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Korean, Nonfiction, Repost

He’s had almost two dozen names, yet his story was forgotten for 40 years. More recently, despite their violent 20th-century histories, four countries – China, Japan, and his native Korea, now cleaved into North and South – all claim him as a local hero. Perhaps best...

Audio Picks for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month [in School Library Journal]

08 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian, Indian American, Iranian, Iranian American, Korean American, Lists, Middle Grade Readers, Persian, Persian American, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian, South Asian American, Taiwanese American, Young Adult Readers

May is Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month. Why May? The first Japanese people immigrated to the United States on May 7, 1843, and the transcontinental railroad – built mostly with immigrant Chinese labor – was completed on May 10, 1869. In 1977, Congressional legislation...

The Last Word: Audios of Posthumously Published Books [in Booklist]

01 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, British, European, Fiction, Indian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American

The one thing in life that’s guaranteed is, well, death. But books are certainly a lasting legacy. And sometimes, when we get the books after their creator has passed on, an audiobook can breathe life into the text, animating from beyond. Here, we have a handful...

Diverse Novels in Verse for National Poetry Month [in School Library Journal]

25 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in African, Biography, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Chinese American, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Hong Kongese, Japanese American, Latina/o/x, Lists, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Poetry, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

Organized by the Academy of American Poets, National Poetry Month, in April, has been celebrated annually since 1996. While reading, writing, even performing poetry should be a year-round activity, National Poetry Month is a welcome catalyst to get verse newbies and doubters interested and involved. In...

Evening in Paradise: More Stories by Lucia Berlin [in Booklist]

19 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW In 2015, A Manual for Cleaning Women collected 43 stories Lucia Berlin left before her 2004 death, making her an overnight – albeit posthumous – literary sensation. Here are 22 more, presented in some semblance of chronological order, mirroring Berlin’s own peripatetic exploits (Texas,...

Five More to Go: Margaret Atwood and Reneé Nault’s The Handmaid’s Tale [in The Booklist Reader]

16 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Lists, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Reneé Nault In the decades since its 1985 publication, Margaret Atwood’s dystopic classic has spawned audio, film, radio, theater, opera, ballet incarnations, and, most recently, the wildly popular television series (which veers significantly from the original, ahem). Given the evergreen...

The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel by Margaret Atwood and Reneé Nault, illustrated by Reneé Nault [in Booklist]

15 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Given the evergreen veneration of Margaret Atwood’s dystopic classic that, since its 1985 publication, has spawned audio, film, radio, theater, opera, and ballet incarnations and, most recently, the wildly popular television series, this graphic novel was certainly inevitable. Canadian artist Reneé Nault is credited...

The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton [Booklist]

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

Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt certainly seems to be an ideal choice to narrate a labyrinthine, multigenerational mystery tied to a posh British countryside home, Birchwood Manor. “And I? I had no choice; I stayed behind,” Froggatt crisply assures Birchwood’s only permanent ghostly resident, who ends...

The Parisian by Isabella Hammad [in Booklist]

08 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Palestinian, Palestinian American, Repost

Born to a Cairo-based merchant father, raised by his paternal grandmother in Nablus, educated in a Constantinople boarding school, Midhat Kamal is already a peripatetic polyglot when he arrives in France. While he studies medicine at the University of Montpellier, he lives with a doctor...

Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates [in Booklist]

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

Prodigious Joyce Carol Oates’ latest novel reads rather like a mash-up of The Hunger Games, The Handmaid’s Tale, even A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. In 2039, in the Reconstituted North American States, 17-year-old Adriane Strohl is “the spiky-haired girl with the big glistening...

Flowers of Mold by Ha Seong-nan, translated by Janet Hong [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Joining a growing cohort of notable Korean imports, Ha Seong-nan’s dazzling, vaguely intertwined collection of 10 stories is poised for Western acclaim. In “Flowers of Doom,” a loner painstakingly studies his neighbors by sifting through their trash – “Garbage never lies” – eventually deciphering...

All That Is Left Is All That Matters by Mark Slouka [in Booklist]

22 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

James Anderson Foster narrates 13 of 15 stories in Slouka’s newest collection, his second in two decades after his 1998 short-fiction debut, Lost Lake. Fathers and sons, husbands and wives, sons and mothers, men and animals figure prominently here. Foster effortlessly embodies these diverse characters,...

The Lonesome Bodybuilder, by Yukiko Motoya, translated by Asa Yoneda [in Booklist]

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

Yukiko Motoya – who’s won major literary awards in her native Japan – makes her English-language debut (Anglophone-enabled by Asa Yoneda) with a label-defying, eyebrow-raising, beguilingly entertaining collection. Six narrators – Natalie Naudus, Brian Nishii, Erin Bennett, Paul Michael Garcia, Tanya Eby, and Kate Mulligan...

Princess Bari by Sok-yong Hwang, translated by Sora Kim-Russell [in Booklist]

18 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Because she was the seventh daughter, Princess Bari – whose name means “abandoned” – was discarded as a baby only to return in triumph to save the world. Like her mythic Korean namesake, Bari is the unwanted seventh girl in a house desperate for sons....

Everlasting Nora by Marie Miranda Cruz [in Booklist]

12 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American

If the middle-grade Filipino American market had an audio representative, Amielynn Abellera would be the reigning voice. She’s already narrated two of Newbery Medal-winning Filipino American Erin Entrada Kelly’s three MG titles, and she’s quite the energetic cipher for debut novelist Marie Miranda Cruz’s feisty...

White Dancing Elephants by Chaya Bhuvaneswar [in Booklist]

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

Loss – by disappearance, destruction, or death – looms throughout Chaya Bhuvaneswar’s award-winning debut collection. Priya Ayyar’s shared Indian heritage with both Bhuvaneswar and many of her characters adds a comfortable fluency, as Ayyar gives distinct characterizations to parents and children, siblings and lovers, friends and...

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