Friendship Archives - Page 6 of 113

The Good Asian (vol. 2) by Pornsak Pichetshote, illustrated by Alexandre Tefenkgi, colored by Lee Loughridge [in Booklist]

01 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Thai American, Vietnamese, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW To best appreciate this volume, readers must go back to the first book. Pornsak Pichetshote’s exquisite narration is an intricate temporal puzzle, his scenes moving between past and present, revealing just enough partial (scintillating, shocking, shrewd) backstory each time with many threads that require careful...

Hummingbird Heart by Travis Dandro [in Booklist]

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

Travis Dandro made his graphic title debut with award-winning King of King Court (2019), about his complicated 1980s youth. In this follow-up, he’s a Camaro-driving teenager in 1991 in his final year at home before art school. His heroin-addicted birth father has committed suicide and his...

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty [in Shelf Awareness]

25 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost, Short Stories

The dozen stories of Morgan Talty's vivid debut collection, Night of the Living Rez, certainly stand alone – eight of them were previously published in various prestigious journals including the Georgia Review and Narrative magazine, which also awarded him a 2021 Narrative Prize. To discover all 12...

6,000 Miles to Freedom: Two Boys and Their Flight from the Taliban by Stéphane Marchetti, illustrated by Cyrille Pomès, translated by Hannah Chute [in Shelf Awareness]

24 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Afghan, European, Fiction, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW The title 6,000 Miles to Freedom: Two Boys and Their Flight from the Taliban is an apt distillation of the stunning graphic odyssey it entails. Author/director Stéphane Marchetti adapts the striking narrative from his 2017 documentary with Thomas Dandois, Les enfants de la jungle, illuminating the...

The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk [in Booklist]

19 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Canadian, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Actor Hannah Cabell’s stage training clearly gives her a stupendous boost in the recording studio; with a mere dozen credits, she’s already superb – and proves herself an ideal audio enabler for Toronto librarian Eva Jurczyk’s novel debut. Liesl Weiss’ boss, Christopher, is lying...

The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong-Mo, translated by Chi-Young Kim [in Booklist]

17 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

Once upon a time, Hornclaw had a family...

Free Love by Tessa Hadley [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Meet Phyllis Fischer – she prefers Phyl – the latest protagonist of British auteur Tessa Hadley, who so brilliantly writes of familial relationships often facing significant change, possibly collapse. English actor Abigail Thaw, who voiced Hadley’s Late in the Day (2019), delivers another resounding performance;...

Face: A Novel of the Anthropocene by Jaspreet Singh [in Shelf Awareness]

11 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

Jaspreet Singh's third novel, Face, presents a mesmerizing narrative. "In this new epoch most stories rhyme with crime," Singh opens. (Indeed, two murders on two continents will happen by novel's end.) This clever beginning introduces strangers Lucia and Lila ("correct pronunciation: Leela"), who meet in...

Circa by Devi S. Laskar [in Shelf Awareness]

10 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

Devi S. Laskar's sophomore novel, Circa, is an intense meditation on multigenerational grief and loss. Laskar (The Atlas of Reds and Blues) adopts an uncommon second-person narration for Heera, born in New York and raised in Raleigh, N.C., by Indian immigrant parents. She's American by birthright,...

Timeless Tales: APA Creators Draw on Myth and Folklore to Craft Personal, yet Universal Stories [in School Library Journal]

09 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hawaiian, Japanese, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Translation, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

Welcome to one of the more hope-filled, albeit cautious, Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Months in recent history. Plenty remains unsettled, challenging, and tragic, but a glass-half-full outlook extols the news that the world is finally, excitedly opening up from the last two-plus years of...

Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades [in Booklist]

06 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Repost

“We live in the dregs of Queens, New York,” debut Filipina American author Daphne Palasi Andreades introduces her polyphonic Brown Girls, with names like “Khadija, Akanksha, Maribeth, Ximena, Breonna, Cherelle, Thanh, Yoon, Ellen ...

Talking Stories for Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month [in Booklist Reader]

05 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cambodian, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Indian American, Korean American, Lists, Pakistani American, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian American, Southeast Asian American

Short-story collections can be uneven, but readers will be consistently impressed by these extraordinary, resonant, and exhilarating debuts by a dozen diverse writers. Afterparties. By Anthony Veasna So. 2021. Ecco. So’s nine electrifying stories magnificently create an interconnected Cambodian American community. So’s death in December 2020 at just...

Recitatif by Toni Morrison [in Booklist]

04 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW In addition to 11 novels, Novel Prize-winning Toni Morrison wrote this “one and only short story” in 1980, collected in 1983’s Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women, edited by Amiri and Amina Baraka. Posthumously published as a standalone volume, the story is paired...

Our Colors by Gengoroh Tagame, translated by Anne Ishii [in Booklist]

03 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Japanese manga powerhouse Gengoroh Tagame follows the phenomenal success of My Brother’s Husband with another poignant, empowering, gay-centered narrative, again translated by queer manga expert Anne Ishii. Sora and Nao have been neighbors and close friends since early childhood. Now that they’re older, their interactions are...

When We Fell Apart by Soon Wiley [in Shelf Awareness]

02 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean American, Repost

Soon Wiley's searing debut, When We Fell Apart, deftly reveals in alternating chapters an abruptly truncated love story. Min Ford, a biracial Korean American, is a Samsung cultural specialist who has lived for three years in Seoul. Kim Yu-jin is in her final year at...

The Peanutbutter Sisters and Other American Stories by Rumi Hara [in Booklist]

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

Rumi Hara’s sophomore title (after Nori, 2020) is another shorts collection, featuring seven stories predominantly in black-and-white, interrupted by interstitial scenes that when puzzled together form “The Builders,” a nearly wordless narrative drawn on a black background yet bursting with vivid blooms. These eponymous builders...

The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart by Chesil, translated by Takami Nieda [in Shelf Awareness]

28 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Debut author Chesil commemorated the end of her 20s by writing a novel based on her childhood experiences. The result, The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart, is a literary triumph that's both outstanding storytelling and searing societal commentary. "High school was...

The Most Precious Substance on Earth by Shashi Bhat [in Shelf Awareness]

25 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Uncategorized

Shashi Bhat's dedication for her potent second novel, The Most Precious Substance on Earth, speaks volumes: "For the girls who stay quiet." Turn the page to an epigraph from Sophocles: "Silence is a woman's best garment." Bhat's protagonist – a Canadian of Indian background like herself...

I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys [in Booklist]

22 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Eastern European, European, Fiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Edoardo Ballerini is that rare talent who instantly, effortlessly transports listeners into a story. His agile adaptability further enhances Ruta Sepetys’ (The Fountains of Silence, 2019) latest historical fiction as he expertly performs characters’ specific details, empathically channels emotions, and deftly reveals a narrative rife...

People from Bloomington by Budi Darma, translated by Tiffany Tsao [in Shelf Awareness]

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

More than four decades after its Indonesian debut, the fascinating People from Bloomington by Budi Darma (1937-2021), one of Indonesia's most lauded authors, arrives for English-language readers. Darma (Conversations) wrote these seven stories in peripatetic jaunts between 1976 and 1979, when he was a master's and...

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