Historical Archives - BookDragon

The Hard Road Out: One Woman’s Escape from North Korea by Jihyun Park and Seh-lynn Chai, translated by Sarah Baldwin-Beneich [in Booklist]

24 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Korean, Memoir, Nonfiction, North Korean, Repost, Translation

Jihyun Park is a twice-escaped defector. Seh-lynn Chai is initially her hired English translator, then her friend, even sister. “Jihyun is from the North and I am from the South,” Chai writes, “but we share a single identity: we’re both Korean.” At their 2014 first...

Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm by David Mas Masumoto, illustrated by Patricia Miye Wakida [in Shelf Awareness]

19 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Japanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

David Mas Masumoto has built a remarkable career as a third-generation organic peach and grape farmer, which has inspired his award-winning books, including Epitaph for a Peach (1995). What began as "bad poetry" in college after a difficult breakup eventually led to writing a dozen books. Secret...

Moth by Melody Raza [in Booklist]

06 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British Asian, Fiction, Indian, Repost, South Asian

In 1947, as Britain withdrew from India, it left in its wake a trail of vicious slaughter. British Iranian debut novelist Melody Razak introduces the (mostly) Brahmin residents of Delhi’s Pushp Vihar – “the House of Flowers” – whose lives become the tragic microcosm of...

Mother of Strangers by Suad Amiry [in Booklist]

05 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Palestinian, Palestinian American, Repost

Egyptian American actor Amin El Gamal and Palestinian American actor/writer/director Lameece Issaq reunite here as hopeful lovers: 15-year-old Subhi, a prodigious mechanic, and 13-year-old village girl Shams. Palestinian writer/architect Suad Amiry, acclaimed for her memoirs and other nonfiction, debuts her first novel, inspired by the...

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia [in Booklist]

04 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Mexican American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW After voicing Velvet Was the Night (2021), Gisela Chípe returns to read Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “loosely inspired” adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau. In Yaxaktun, a remote late-19th-century ranch in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, French expat Dr. Moreau lives with his 14-year-old daughter,...

Woven of the World by Katey Howes, illustrated by Dinara Mirtalipova [in Shelf Awareness]

27 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

Woven of the World is a splendid mosaic of a picture book, lyrically written by Katey Howes (Rissy No Kissies) and lushly illustrated by Dinara Mirtalipova (Russian Tales). "I listen, as I'm weaving, / to the rhythm of the loom," Howes writes. "I imagine skeins of...

Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story: The Graphic Novel by Edmund White, adapted by Brian Alessandro and Michael Carroll, illustrated by Igor Karash [in Shelf Awareness]

16 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Edmund White, arguably the godfather of gay literature, has published dozens of lauded titles over the last half-century. His autobiographical trilogy of gay identity – A Boy's Own Story (1982), The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988), and The Farewell Symphony (1997) – remains a classic. With this volume, the...

Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s Photographs Reveal about the Japanese American Incarceration by Elizabeth Partridge, illustrated by Lauren Tamaki [in Booklist]

08 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, he authorized the removal and imprisonment of over 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. Three photographers – two white and free; one Japanese and imprisoned, relying on contraband...

All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End: The Cartoons of Charles Johnson by Charles Johnson [in Booklist]

04 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Prodigious National Book Award-winning, 1998 MacArthur “Genius” Charles Johnson is now in his 70s, having been repeatedly lauded in multiple genres. Perhaps not as well known is that Johnson began his literary career as a cartoonist (in high school!) – and never stopped drawing,...

Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! by Art Spiegelman [in Booklist]

02 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Jewish, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Among the perennially relevant, permanently indisputable pioneers of the graphic genre is Art Spiegelman, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus remains a groundbreaking masterpiece. The provenance for that achievement is a 1972 three-page strip, included in this celebrated historical compilation, which was first published in 1978...

The Scent of Burnt Flowers by Blitz Bazawule [in Booklist]

27 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Fiction, Ghanaian, Ghanaian American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW A faux pastor with a costume-shop collar and his not-yet wife; a mermaid with a silver guitar; a pill-popping, weak-hearted FBI agent who withstands gruesome torture; Sidney Poitier signing autographs for Russian soldiers ...

Let Me Be Frank: A Book about Women Who Dressed like Men to Do Shit They Weren’t Supposed to Do by Tracy Dawson [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Both debut author Tracy Dawson and Kendra Hoffman, a narrator we need to hear more from, share notable improv experience, making them a superb pairing to inform and delight. Dawson highlights dozens of trailblazing women who dressed as men to gain access and opportunity. She...

Canción by Eduardo Halfon, translated by Lisa Dillman and Daniel Hahn [in Shelf Awareness]

09 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Jewish, Memoir, Repost, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Eduardo Halfon (Mourning; Monastery) has published a dozen books in Spanish; four are currently available in English translations. Seeming to challenge his substantial output, Halfon explained in a 2015 comment to Shelf Awareness, "I'm only writing one book, and everything I publish along the way is just...

Cinder & Glass by Melissa de la Cruz [in School Library Journal]

20 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, European, Fiction, Filipina/o American, French, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Bestselling author Melissa de la Cruz remarkably has two 2022 Cinderella adaptations: The Stolen Slippers, introducing not-evil stepsisters, and this, in which “Cendrillon” is a Lady in King Louis XIV’s Versailles Court. So much of de la Cruz’s exceptional retelling – with even a nod to...

Pilar Ramirez and the Escape from Zafa [Pilar Ramirez, Book 1] by Julian Randall [in School Library Journal]

15 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Caribbean American, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

Escaping the Dominican Republic’s murderous Trujillo regime is how Julian Randall’s own family arrived in the United States two generations ago. His debut novel seamlessly combines that history – political and personal – with Dominican mythology for his Pilar Ramirez duology (book two publishes February...

The Last Mapmaker by Christina Soontornvat [in School Library Journal]

15 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Thai American

*STARRED REVIEW Thai American and double Newbery Honoree Christina Soontornvat gets culturally and linguistically matched with Thai-fluent, (self-described) “blended” Asian American (of Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese heritage) Sura Siu for engrossing high-seas exploits in search of mythical lands. For 12-year-old Sai, being Master Mapmaker Paiyoon’s assistant means...

Daughters of the New Year by E.M. Tran [in Shelf Awareness]

13 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American

E.M. Tran's author's note about the provenance of her absorbing debut novel begins with her mother's beauty pageant trophy, which always graced the top of the family piano. "How did it get there, through the chaos and danger of Saigon's collapse?" Tran asks. For refugees...

The Lost Ryū by Emi Watanabe Cohen [in School Library Journal]

09 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese American, Jewish, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW A sigh of relief is almost immediate as Kurt Kanazawa effortlessly pronounces “ryū” – with exacting attention to that diacritical – then “Hiroshima” just so. The Julliard-trained actor displays his Japanese fluency, adroitly enhancing Emi Watanabe Cohen’s poignant first novel in which dragons –...

Tamarind and the Star of Ishta by Jasbinder Bilan [in School Library Journal]

08 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, British Asian, Fiction, Indian, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, South Asian

British actor Seema Bowri makes her narrating debut, her crisp, youthful voice an ideal match for 11-year-old Tamarind, a Bristol, England-raised girl meeting her late mother’s family for the first time. Her father, recently remarried and on his way to his honeymoon, arranges to leave...

Siren Queen by Nghi Vo [in Booklist]

07 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American

Nghi Vo’s stupendous debut, The Chosen and the Beautiful, alchemized (and improved) The Great Gatsby by shifting narrative control to supporting character Jordan Baker. Vo dramatically gifts similarly transformative autonomy to her latest protagonist, Luli Wei, who is clearly a revisionist stand-in for legendary Asian American film...

BookDragon Historical Tag