*STARRED REVIEW British-born of Welsh and Chinese parentage, Peter Ho Davies (The Welsh Girl, 2007) has lived stateside since 1992, but this is his first U.S.-set title. In it he explores the history of his adopted home in four sections. In “Gold,” he links the completion of...
*STARRED REVIEW Once upon a time, Soledad had two sisters and two loving parents. But tragedy can happen to anyone at any time, and suddenly, Sol and her younger sister, Ming, are transplanted to the other side of the world in a run-down apartment in Louisiana,...
“No one said this global journey would be smooth,” writes Baz Dreisinger with controlled understatement. Covering two years and nine countries in her pilgrimage to prisons worldwide, Dreisinger – a self-described “white English professor specializing in African-American cultural studies,” as well as prison educator and criminal justice...
Okay, so I'm warning you right up front: This is just the first of a trilogy. And YES, it's fabulous, stupendous FUN. Which means you're going to immediately want more. Since the first installment just hit shelves last month, who knows when the next will be...
Even as Mercy Wong's father expects that she will marry the herbalist's son and be a "meek" wife, he also insists that she never stop learning because she must "be as smart as the white ghosts." In San Francisco's Chinatown in 1906, 15-year-old Mercy's graduation from...
Canadian writer Sharon E. McKay is no stranger to children and war; her numerous books that have highlighted the horrendous effects of adult conflict on the world's youngest citizens have garnered international attention via lauds and awards. Her latest, "endorsed by Amnesty International Canada," as...
*STARRED REVIEW Credited with revitalizing Korea’s publishing industry, Shin’s 2011 Please Look After Mom (the author’s debut in English) made this international powerhouse the first woman to win the Man Asian Literary Prize. Her latest, arriving stateside 20 years after its Korean publication, is part memoir,...
When Pulitzer-ed MacArthur 'Genius' Katherine Boo's first (and thus far only) book debuted in January 2012, I predicted it would be found alongside the nominees/finalists for all the Very Important Literary Prizes that year – indeed, among many, many honors, Boo won the 2012 National Book Award for Nonfiction. What...
Summer is waning way too quickly, but you still have a final week left to indulge in frothy reads: the over-the-top excesses of Singaporean Manhattanite Kevin Kwan’s novels might be just what you've been looking for as Labor Day looms. If you haven't yet relished Kwan's debut,...
Flood of Fire brings the astounding, exceptional Ibis Trilogy to a close Readers of this review will fall into two categories: (1) Those who are already two-thirds invested in the Ibis Trilogy, and (2) Newbies who might be wondering if continuing the perusal of this review...
"Well, my mama was a hairdresser, but she had this big dream that what she really wanted to be one day was a – an astronomer," 12-year-old Galileo Galilei Barnes explains to her teacher and class on her first day at her new school. Pointing at the...
If you're tuned to celluloid pop culture, you probably heard about the Aloha casting controversy earlier this year, most specifically that casting Emma Stone as a hapa Chinese Hawaiian Swedish character named Allison Ng was probably not the smartest (accurate? effective? politically correct?) choice. Depicting...
Given that gang violence, unfortunately, makes for all-too-familiar headlines, the story of a gang truce is truly noteworthy news to be lauded and emulated. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, New York's Bronx was both a haven for poor ethnic communities pushed out of Manhattan, and...
"I was a typical twelve-year-old girl, far more interested in what I should wear to school than what I might learn there," co-author Caitlin Stoicsitz (as she was named then) introduces her 1997 self. "I assumed most kids, regardless of where they lived, had lives...
"The way our communities were set up was like a circle," an Elder explains to a group of imprisoned men. "In the middle of that circle were children. Around those children were the Elders, who would teach them. Around the Elders were the women. Keeping the...
Found in Translation For a nation of immigrants, our literary preferences surely seem to lean toward xenophobic. Among American presses, translated titles make up a mere 3% of published titles. The statistics aren’t too different in the United Kingdom: “Some call it the two percent problem,...
