Historical Archives - Page 15 of 50

Stonewall: A Building. An Uprising. A Revolution. by Rob Sanders, illustrated by Jamey Christoph [in Shelf Awareness]

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

Two side-by-side 1840s stable houses in New York City's Greenwich Village initially boarded "the horses of the affluent." In the century-plus since, the neighborhood welcomed immigrants from around the world, and matured into "the creative center of New York City." In 1930, the double buildings...

The Last Word: Audios of Posthumously Published Books [in Booklist]

01 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, British, European, Fiction, Indian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American

The one thing in life that’s guaranteed is, well, death. But books are certainly a lasting legacy. And sometimes, when we get the books after their creator has passed on, an audiobook can breathe life into the text, animating from beyond. Here, we have a handful...

The Parisian by Isabella Hammad [in Booklist]

08 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Palestinian, Palestinian American, Repost

Born to a Cairo-based merchant father, raised by his paternal grandmother in Nablus, educated in a Constantinople boarding school, Midhat Kamal is already a peripatetic polyglot when he arrives in France. While he studies medicine at the University of Montpellier, he lives with a doctor...

The House of the Pain of Others: Chronicle of a Small Genocide by Julián Herbert, translated by Christina MacSweeney [in Booklist]

26 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Memoir, Mexican, Mexican American, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

The “largest mass slaughter of Asians on the American continent” claimed the lives of over 300 Chinese immigrants in May 1911 in Torreón, in the Mexican state of Coahuila. Despite its magnitude, the massacre remains a “buried episode,” obscured by substantial erroneous coverage, that writer,...

Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani [in School Library Journal]

14 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Fiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In Robin Miles’s rich, rhythmic narration, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s (I Do Not Come to You By Chance) latest – written in chapters that are sometimes just a few lines – sounds like verse poetry. The story is hardly soothing, based on interviews with 2014 Boko...

Notes on a Shipwreck: A Story of Refugees, Borders, and Hope by Davide Enia, translated by Antony Shugaar [in Christian Science Monitor]

08 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, European, Italian, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

Whom to save, whom to let perish? The rescuers of refugees washing up on the Italian island of Lampedusa face an impossible choice, as memoirist and playwright Davide Enia describes in Notes on a Shipwreck: A Story of Refugees, Borders, and Hope “Calculate. It’s all you can...

Dream Country by Shannon Gibney [in Booklist]

07 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in African, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Undoubtedly, Bahni Turpin is one of few narrators able to convincingly crisscross the gender spectrum with consistent agility. Here she begins as untethered Kollie, a Liberian immigrant teen in 2008, alternately dismissed and provoked by both white and African American peers at his Minnesota high school, until rage, violence,...

Piero by Edmond Baudoin, translated by Matt Madden [in Booklist]

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

Twenty years since its original French publication, Edmond Baudoin’s autobiographical homage to his older brother, Piero, and their shared childhood makes its English-language debut, admiringly translated by cartoonist Matt Madden. Growing up between Nice, where their father worked, and Villars-sur-Var (“our Mom’s village, our village”),...

When Spring Comes to the DMZ by Uk-Bae Lee, translated by Chungyon Won and Aileen Won [in Shelf Awareness]

30 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

When the Korean peninsula was divided into North and South in 1953, the consequences were especially tragic for separated families. In the six-plus decades since the ceasefire, reunion – politically and personally – has proven virtually impossible. On either side of the Military Demarcation Line,...

That Time I Loved You: Stories by Carrianne Leung [in Library Journal]

29 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Toronto’s suburban Scarborough becomes home to diverse families ready to build a neighborhood together. Initially, everyone invited everyone else to “planned things like fireworks and barbecues,” observes 11-year-old June – the only daughter of Hong Kong Chinese immigrants – until “people decided who their...

Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao’s Revolution by Helen Zia [in Christian Science Monitor]

24 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Nonfiction, Repost

Last Boat Out of Shanghai has four stories at once personal and universal As the child of two refugees, Helen Zia can speak to the effects of displacement, separation, and the personal costs of survival, adaptation, and reinvention. As an advocate for Asian American and other minority communities,...

Librarians Unite! 12 Tales of Librarian Badassery [in The Booklist Reader]

18 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Arab, British, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Korean, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

In just over a week, Seattle’s population will temporarily expand with tens of thousands of librarians (and other literary obsessives). Talk about a convergence of brains, guts, dedication, faith – and unconditional love of knowledge! Because that’s what it takes to be a librarian in...

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See [in Booklist]

14 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Korean, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW They meet at age 7. Young-sook and her mother are working their garden; Mi-ja crouches among the sweet-potato plants, desperate to eat. They are on Korea’s Jeju Island, “known for its Three Abundances of wind, stones, and women, it was also acknowledged for lacking...

Five More to Go: Chigozie Obioma’s An Orchestra of Minorities [in The Booklist Reader]

08 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Fiction, Lists, Repost, Young Adult Readers

An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma With the 2015 debut of The Fisherman, The New York Times rejoiced: “Chigozie Obioma truly is the heir to Chinua Achebe.” Almost four years later, his sophomore title – hitting shelves today – doesn’t disappoint. The story seems familiarly simple: a man...

The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe, translated by Lilit Thwaites

26 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Jewish, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Spanish novelist Arturo Iturbe transforms real-life Holocaust survivor Dita Kraus into 14-year-old Edita Adler, forcibly sent to Auschwitz with her parents. She’s assigned to Block 31, a wooden hut where the children of the ignominiously named “family camp” are sent to be “entertained” while parents...

Five More (Audiobooks) to Go: Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, read by Dion Graham [in The Booklist Reader]

21 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Black/African American, Canadian, Caribbean, Fiction, Repost

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan and read by Dion Graham George Washington Black – called "Wash" for short – is an enslaved 10- or 11-year-old (he "cannot say for certain") on Faith Plantation in 1830s Barbados. He is first owned by one brother, then stolen by another....

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan [in Booklist]

18 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Canadian, Caribbean, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW The deeply empathetic, decisively chameleonic Dion Graham proves himself to be an ideal aural collaborator for Esi Edugyan’s (Half-Blood Blues, 2012) stupendous novel, shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and Man Booker Prize. George Washington Black, called “Wash,” is a young slave on Faith Plantation...

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...

The Labyrinth of the Spirits [The Cemetery of Forgotten Books finale] by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, translated by Lucia Graves [in Booklist]

05 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Repost, Spanish, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Casting a male narrator for a female-protagonist-driven novel might seem initially ill-fitting, but Daniel Weyman, who also narrated Zafón’s Marina (2015), makes sure Alicia Gris gets well heard in the stupendous, well-worth-the-long-wait finale of Zafón’s Cemetery of Forgotten Books tetralogy plus short story. Anglicized by...

Sacred Cesium Ground and Isa’s Deluge: Two Novellas of Japan’s 3/11 Disaster by Kimura Yūsuke, translated by Doug Slaymaker [in Booklist]

04 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Kimura Yūsuke makes his Anglophoned debut with two haunting novellas that are slight in length yet dense with meaning, enhancing the growing genre of post-3/11 literature in response to the catastrophic March 11, 2011, Tōhoku earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear meltdown. Translator Doug Slaymaker augments...

BookDragon Historical Tag