Friendship Archives - Page 7 of 113

You’ve Changed: Fake Accents, Feminism, and Other Comedies from Myanmar by Pyae Moe Thet War [in Booklist]

*STARRED REVIEW She has two names, Moe Thet War and Pyae Pyae (pronounced “puh-yay, puh-yay”). Both were carefully chosen by her parents. As a Myanmar-born, U.S.- and British-educated, Myanmar-returned resident with a perfect American accent, Pyae Pyae unabashedly explores her “liminality ...

Yonder by Jabari Asim [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Chameleonic writer Jabari Asim’s second novel after Only the Strong (2015) gets historical with a cast of enslaved Black characters – searingly called the Stolen, their white enslavers rightfully are Thieves – who attempt to survive the atrocities of the antebellum South. “All of...

Bitter Orange Tree by Jokha Alharthi, translated by Marilyn Booth [in Booklist]

13 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab, Fiction, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Jokha Alharthi’s third novel is her second to arrive in the U.S., again gorgeously rendered by Oxford professor Marilyn Booth. Their auspicious earlier pairing produced Celestial Bodies (2019), making Alharthi the first female Omani author to be translated into English; the novel became the first...

Are We Ever Our Own by Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes [in Shelf Awareness]

12 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cuban American, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost, Short Stories

The BOA Short Fiction Prize promises "collections [that] are more concerned with the artfulness of writing than the twists and turns of plot." Cuban Irish American author Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes (The Sleeping World) effortlessly displays both craft and narrative in the 11 loosely interlinked stories...

All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd [in Booklist]

11 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW During a rare non-work outing, a colleague asks, “tell me something about you,” but the protagonist “couldn’t think of a single thing ...

Rave by Jessica Campbell [in Shelf Awareness]

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

Canadian artist Jessica Campbell (XTC69) introduces Rave with a provocative epigraph from controversial televangelist Pat Robertson that condemns feminism as "anti-family ...

Walk Me to the Corner by Anneli Furmark, translated by Hanna Strömberg [in Shelf Awareness]

01 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Swedish, Translation

In Walk Me to the Corner, Swedish painter and comic artist Anneli Furmark explores the transformative joy and heartbreaking consequences of unexpectedly falling in love in middle age. "What would you choose?," a group of women friends discuss during dinner. "To be fine all the time...

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li [in Booklist]

28 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Long before the first alarms are triggered here, renowned museums have been legal showcases for artful plunder: Nefertiti’s Bust in Berlin’s Neues Museum, the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum, the Koh-i-Noor in the Tower of London. Grace D. Li’s fascinating albeit uneven debut zeros...

Booklist Backlist: Diverse Debut Story Collections [in Booklist]

21 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Cambodian American, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese American, Fiction, Indian American, Korean American, Laotian American, Latina/o/x, Lists, Mexican American, 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. The most autobiographical is “Human Development,” in...

Smile and Look Pretty by Amanda Pellegrino [in Shelf Awareness]

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

Amanda Pellegrino's Smile and Look Pretty might seem familiar, given its nods to The Devil Wears Prada, The Morning Show, and even She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story that Helped Ignite a Movement. But the New York City television writer and novelist's debut is a sizzling read that adroitly balances...

Time Zone J by Julie Doucet [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Julie Doucet is a legendary alternative comics pioneer, especially in an arena dominated by men. Her fame was further elevated by her frustrated abandonment of the industry in 2006. Her semi-autobiographical Dirty Plotte (quite the double entendre: "plotte" is Québécois slang for the c-word) began as...

Woman Running in the Mountains by Yūko Tsushima, translated by Geraldine Harcourt [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

In Woman Running in the Mountains, the late great Japanese novelist Yūko Tsushima (1947-2016) unflinchingly confronts the judgmental challenges an unwed woman faces when she defiantly chooses single motherhood. Takiko Odaka is 21 and already an independent spirit. As she goes into labor, she leaves...

People Change by Vivek Shraya [in Booklist]

03 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Indian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American

Multi-disciplinary artist and writer Vivek Shraya (The Subtweet, 2020) continues her thoughtful, deliberate self-narrations. Her latest essay collection centers change: “If I were to have anything resembling a higher purpose, I’d now say that it’s to evolve and to model evolution. To demonstrate the beauty...

Booklist Backlist: Tales of Dementia [in Booklist]

02 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, European, Fiction, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Jewish, Lists, Malaysian American, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Palestinian American, Repost, Spanish, Translation

Gerda Saunders, who wrote Memory’s Last Breath (2017), an exquisitely bittersweet record chronicling her experiences with dementia, is one of my most beloved friends. We have books in common, in that we find great solace and escape in the (well-)written word. Inspired by our last visit...

A Tiny Upward Shove by Melissa Chadburn [in Shelf Awareness]

28 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

Melissa Chadburn's electrifying debut novel, A Tiny Upward Shove, opens with gruesome death: "Dying hurts like f*ck-all everything." The description comes from "Aswang," a shape-shifting creature of Filipinx folklore, who knows "about the slow agonies of death" because she reanimates the body of 18-year-old Marina,...

The Every by Dave Eggers [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Dave Eggers’ voice-of-choice Dion Graham again convincingly ciphers the author’s newest white-woman protagonist, Delaney Wells, an employee of The Circle’s (2013) Mae Holland. Here the Circle has exploded into the Every, the world’s most ubiquitous conglomerate, which continues to develop manipulative mechanisms to subtly...

New and Selected Stories by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated by Sarah Booker, Lisa Dillman, Francisca González Arias, Alex Ross, Cristina Rivera Garza [in Shelf Awareness]

25 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latin American, Mexican, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Cristina Rivera Garza, one of Mexico's most important contemporary authors, is progressively gaining renown in the U.S. (where she's lived since 1989) and has won a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship and a 2020 National Book Critics Circle finalist nod in Criticism. Indie press Dorothy's release of New...

Violets by Kyung-sook Shin, translated by Anton Hur [in Booklist]

24 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Mention of Wim Wenders’ Buena Vista Social Club sets this novel in 1999, when Oh San turns 23 that summer. She left her childhood village years ago, haunted by the memory of a best friendship’s wrenching cleaving. After being repeatedly abandoned by her mother,...

Hakim’s Odyssey, Book 2: From Turkey to Greece by Fabien Toulmé, translated by Hannah Chute [in Booklist]

22 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW French graphic creator Fabien Toulmé opens the second of three volumes featuring Syrian refugee Hakim and his extended family with a clever recap of the first entry, facilitated by Toulmé’s young daughter, who asks to accompany him for the next interview: Toulmé lays out...

Maizy Chen’s Last Chance by Lisa Yee [in Shelf Awareness]

21 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Chinese American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Lisa Yee, author of the charming and award-winning Millicent Min, Girl Genius trilogy, combines neglected U.S. history and multi-generational family legends with a thoroughly contemporary story to create the delightful and enlightening Maizy Chen's Last Chance. Three years have passed since 11-year-old Maizy saw her...

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