Haves vs. have-nots Archives - Page 8 of 22

Cicada by Shaun Tan [in Shelf Awareness]

12 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Australian, Australian Asian, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In 2011, author/artist/filmmaker Shaun Tan won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and received an Oscar for the animated adaptation of his book The Lost Thing. What initially brought him to international acclaim was the publication of The Arrival in 2006 (2007 in the U.S.). A...

Not Our Kind by Kitty Zeldis [in Booklist]

07 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Jewish, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Class, gender, and religious differences in post-WWII Manhattan drive this debut novel from the pseudonymous Zeldis in which two worlds literally collide in the opening chapter. Caught in a fender bender, Eleanor Moskowitz and Patricia Bellamy emerge from their respective taxis in a rare chance...

This Is Cuba: An American Journalist under Castro’s Shadow by David Ariosto [in Booklist]

27 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cuban, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

For a self-described “young American photojournalist who then boasted only pidgin Spanish,” David Ariosto’s arrival in Havana in 2009 on assignment for CNN was “the chance of a lifetime.” Determined to be “somehow different from those pink-faced tourists,” he’s quickly reduced to an epithet, yuma – street...

An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma [in Booklist]

21 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW The story seems familiarly simple. A man and a woman fall in love, but their happy-ever-after is fraught with obstacles. Yet nothing is quite that straightforward in Chigozie Obioma’s (The Fishermen, 2015) latest, starting with his narrator, who happens to be a 700-year-old chi...

Five More to Go: Gina Apostol’s Insurrecto [in The Booklist Reader]

19 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Lists, Repost, Short Stories, Young Adult Readers

Insurrecto by Gina Apostol With shrewd insight, inventive plotting, and stinging history lessons, Gina Apostol, who received the PEN Open Book Award for Gun Dealers’ Daughter (2012), puts the “unremembered” Philippine-American War on literary display. Adjectives such as humorous, playful, and ingenious seem almost disrespectful when describing a book anchored...

The Tale of Cho Ung: A Classic of Vengeance, Loyalty, and Romance translated by Sookja Cho [in Christian Science Monitor]

16 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Translation, Young Adult Readers

The Tale of Cho Ung introduces Korean classic tale to English speakers Despite being “the best-selling fictional narrative during the late Chosŏn period” (1392-1910) of pre-modern Korea, little is known about the provenance of The Tale of Cho Ung. The author remains unknown and its initial composition...

Five More to Go: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Friday Black [in The Booklist Reader]

09 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Caribbean, Caribbean American, Chinese American, Fiction, Lists, Repost, Short Stories

Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s dozen stories are disturbingly spectacular, made even more so by how he magnifies and exposes the truth. On first reading, the collection might register as speculative fiction, but current headlines about racism, injustice, consumerism, and senseless violence prove...

One Part Woman by Perumal Murugan, translated by Aniruddhan Vasedevan [in Library Journal]

05 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Repost, South Asian, Translation

In many ways, Kali and Ponna's lives couldn't be more fertile. Their fields and their cows keep them well nourished. Their playfulness and passion feed their souls. But after 12 years of marriage, they remain childless, leaving the couple helpless against the disdain disguised as...

Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston [in Library Journal]

30 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Biography, Black/African American, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Versatile, seasoned narrator Robin Miles is as comfortable narrating literary historic context as she is effortlessly adopting the vernacular patois of an octogenarian former slave. Published almost 90 years after its completion, Zora Neale Hurston’s (Their Eyes Were Watching God) presentation of Oluale Kossula,...

The Secrets Between Us by Thrity Umrigar [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Chameleonic narrator Sneha Mathan amplifies Thrity Umrigar’s already spectacular new novel, the long-awaited sequel to the best-selling The Space Between Us (2005). While Umrigar focused on the complicated relationship between employer Sera and servant Bhima in Space, Secrets Between Us shifts from Mumbai’s haves...

The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani [in School Library Journal]

22 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW On her 12th birthday, Nisha receives her first diary from Kazi, the family’s cook, presented with prescient words: “he said it was time to start writing things down … someone needs to make a record of the things that will happen because the grown-ups...

Insurrecto by Gina Apostol [in Booklist]

18 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Adjectives like humorous, playful, and ingenious seem almost disrespectful when describing a book anchored by “the worst massacre of [U.S.] Army soldiers in the decades after Custer’s defeat.” The little-known 1901 Balangiga massacre in Samar, Philippines, during the Philippine-American War resulted in the deaths...

City of Ash and Red by Hye-Young Pyun, translated by Sora Kim-Russell [in Booklist]

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

The first collaboration between Hye-Young Pyun and translator Sora Kim-Russell, The Hole (2017), introduced one of Korea’s most lauded writers to Anglophone readers. Kim-Russell’s ability to replicate Pyun’s stifling terror repeats here as he presents a nameless anti-hero, known only as “the man.” Leaving behind envious...

Che: A Revolutionary Life | A Graphic Biography by Jon Lee Anderson, illustrated by José Hernández [in Booklist]

12 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Latin American, Repost, South American, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Jon Lee Anderson’s Che: A Revolutionary Life (1997) is superbly realized in graphic form by Mexican artist José Hernández, who distills Anderson’s lauded, 812-page original into just more than 400 pages of spectacularly illustrated narrative. Since his 1967 death at 39, Che “has become the most...

Undocumented: A Worker’s Fight by Duncan Tonatiuh [in Booklist]

19 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Mexican American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Surviving a life-threatening journey from Mexico to a “strange city” in the U.S., Juan joins his uncle and three cousins. He owes his low-wage, 12-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week restaurant job to a boss who insists he’s “doing [Juan] a favor because [he] had no papers.” Although he’s...

Our Woman in Havana: Reporting Castro’s Cuba by Sarah Rainsford [in Booklist]

14 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, Cuban, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Two timely books titled Our Woman in Havana hit shelves this year: a memoir by U.S. diplomat Vicki Huddleston and this account by former BBC Cuba correspondent (2011-2014) Rainsford, who was “guided by the writing of another English visitor seduced by Havana,” novelist Graham Greene. A...

Friday Black: Stories by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah [in Booklist]

11 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Adjei-Brenyah’s dozen stories are disturbingly spectacular, made even more so for what he does with magnifying and exposing the truth. At first read, the collection might register as speculative fiction, but current headlines unmasking racism, injustice, consumerism, and senseless violence prove to be clear...

Five More to Go: Crystal Hana Kim’s If You Leave Me [in The Booklist Reader]

30 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Lists, Repost, Translation

I got to get this started for The Booklist Reader ...

Leftover in China: The Women Shaping the World’s Next Superpower by Roseann Lake [in Library Journal]

08 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

With a superb blend of historical, cultural, socioeconomic reportage, and plenty of engaging real-life stories, The Economist’s Cuba correspondent Roseann Lake alchemizes her five years in Beijing into a lively first book about the fate and future of China’s accomplished, independent, powerful – and unmarried – women. Over the last...

There There by Tommy Orange [in Library Journal]

06 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW “[B]eing able to understand where we came from, what happened to our people, and how to honor them by living right, by telling our stories” could be goals for any community – but the words are especially resonant for debut novelist Tommy Orange’s sprawling Native American cast: “the world is...

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