Friendship Archives - Page 38 of 113

The Last Days of Café Leila by Donia Bijan + Author Interview [in Bloom]

01 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, Persian, Persian American, Repost

Café Leila & Beautiful Ruins: Q&A with Donia Bijan “Strange things happened when I returned to Tehran in 2010 after thirty-two years in exile,” writes Donia Bijan in her recent essay, “The Women’s Hour.” Traveling with her sister, she found her childhood home – the hospital their father built...

Mad Country: Stories by Samrat Upadhyay [in Library Journal]

30 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nepali, Nepali American, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Vikas Adam’s remarkable chameleonic range proves ideal for Samrat Upadhyay’s (Arresting God in Kathmandu) latest superb collection, set mostly in Nepal. Exceptionally gifted with accents, Adam could easily be mistaken for a multi-person cast; he's effortlessly convincing as a disappointed father, a female inmate,...

Beartown by Fredrik Backman, translated by Neil Smith [in Library Journal]

18 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Repost, Swedish, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Swedish author Fredrik Backman’s novels tackle serious subjects – isolated aging in A Man Called Ove, death and responsibility in My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry, abandonment in Britt-Marie Was Here, dementia in And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer...

No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal [in Library Journal]

16 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

Rakesh Satyal (Blue Boy) brings together two couldn't-be-more-different Indian Americans for friendship, fun, and more (no, not like that). Harit, a department store salesman, has recently lost his sister; his mother, catatonic with grief, only reacts when Harit dons a sari and channels his dead...

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan [in Library Journal]

13 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Lydia and Raj were childhood best friends. Then Carol – who, at 10, was already an established troublemaker – makes Raj a third wheel, at least until she's brutally murdered with her parents. Lydia, in Carol's house that night for a sleepover, survives by hiding...

Three Floors Up by Eshkol Nevo, translated by Sondra Silverston [in Booklist]

11 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Uncategorized

Three residents of a three-floor Tel Aviv apartment building reveal what really goes on behind closed doors. First-floor-domiciled Arnon tells an old army buddy that his young daughter was abused by their neighbor, his marriage is suffering, and the neighbor’s teenage Parisian granddaughter is about...

Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa, translated by Alison Watts [in Library Journal]

10 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Making and selling dorayaki – a pancake-like pastry filled with the eponymous "sweet bean paste" – was not supposed to define Sentaro's life. His someday-dreams of becoming a writer got waylaid by bad decisions that resulted in a two-year prison sentence. Since getting out, he's...

Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout [in Library Journal]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Kimberly Farr, who gracefully, achingly gave voice to the eponymous protagonist in Elizabeth Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton, returns here as Lucy but adds to her repertoire Lucy’s family, neighbors, and long-ago acquaintances who call Amgash, IL, home. When Lucy’s mother unexpectedly arrived...

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay [in Library Journal]

29 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Haitian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW For such a vulnerable, raw memoir, no one but the author could voice the breathtaking revelations, brutal truths, and profound knowledge contained here. “Every body has a story and a history,” Roxane Gay (Bad Feminist, Difficult Women) begins. Gay stands 6'3"; at her heaviest, she...

Rich People Problems [Crazy Rich Asians 3] by Kevin Kwan [in Library Journal]

25 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Hong Kongese, Repost, Singaporean, Singaporean American, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Kevin Kwan’s third volume continues to expose – albeit with plenty of schadenfreudian humor – the outrageous excesses and over-the-top machinations that began with his debut, Crazy Rich Asians (currently in highly anticipated celluloid production). Lydia Look, who voiced book two, China Rich Girlfriend,...

North Station by Bae Suah, translated by Deborah Smith [in Library Journal]

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

One word describes Bae Suah's latest: enigmatic. The seven stories that comprise her first translated-into-English collection (and her third collaboration with prolifically adroit British translator of choice Smith) are more fragments than linear narratives. In the opening "First Snow, First Sight," unreliable memory between two...

Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy by Anne Lamott [in Library Journal]

19 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Most of Anne Lamott’s nonfiction titles are generally variations on a theme: be kind – to yourself, to others – and you’ll make the world a better place. Somehow, though, each book arrives sounding fresh and new – and effective. That Lamott narrates almost all...

The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch [in Library Journal]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Narrator Xe Sands delivers this Book with control, even detachment: the almost languid tone chillingly amplifies the hideous near-future Yuknavitch exposes in her highly anticipated follow-up to The Small Backs of Children. At 49, Christine is in her “last year until ascension,” an anachronistic term that...

Long Black Veil by Jennifer Finney Boylan [in Library Journal]

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

“This was a long time ago,” Jennifer Finney Boylan (She’s Not There) begins – August 1980, more specifically. “[N]one of us now are the people we were then.” Thirty-five years later, the college friends who trespassed into the boarded-up Eastern State Penitentiary are now “ghosts:...

Favorite Diverse Children’s Books of 2016 [in Utah Journal of Literacy]

07 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Bangladeshi American, Black/African American, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Caribbean American, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Indian American, Korean American, Latina/o/x, Lists, Middle Grade Readers, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Pan-Asian Pacific American, Persian, Persian American, Repost, South Asian American, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

ABSTRACT These books feature diverse characters who – in a multiplicity of ways – suffer, learn, and generally triumph in their differences. Varying in genre from picture book to poetry, in setting from Kenya to California, and in ethnic focus from Muslim Bangladeshi to Ojibway/Anishinaaabe (Canadian...

Author Interview: Lisa Ko [in Bloom]

05 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

Q&A with Lisa Ko: Trying and Failing and Trying Again Lisa Ko’s parents often reminded her how lucky she was to grow up in a mostly-white suburb outside NYC. Ko is the daughter of ethnic Chinese parents who were born and raised in the Philippines and...

Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee [in Library Journal]

29 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Korean American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Ten years ago, Lee was married to her college boyfriend, living in Berkeley, and working as the human resources director at a small company. On New Year’s Eve 2006, Lee suffered a stroke. She was 33. She would spend the better part of a decade...

The Door by Magda Szabó, translated by Len Rix [in Library Journal]

28 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Originally published in 1987, The Door is one of the few titles available in English by the late Magda Szabó (1917–2007), considered one of if not the most prominent Hungarian writer. The aural version makes its roundabout debut this year, after two Anglophone translations,...

what did you eat yesterday? (vol. 12) by Fumi Yoshinaga, translated by Jocelyne Allen

25 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers

"[D]ecidedly catholic" tastes aside, The Manga Critic is oh so right: I DOOOOOOOOOOOO "religiously" review every issue of this toothsome series! How could I ever ignore such delicious delights, I tell you! So what's the latest for our favorite Tokyo lovebirds? While Shiro takes his parents...

Room of Shadows by Ronald Kidd [in Shelf Awareness]

22 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Short, skinny, 13-year-old David Cray mostly keeps to himself – until he experiences "a different kind of anger." He's got plenty making him mad: his father's run off with another woman, leaving David and his mother to relocate to a ramshackle old Victorian in downtown...

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