Historical Archives - Page 19 of 50

Inheriting the War: Poetry & Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees edited by Laren McClung [in Booklist]

14 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Poetry, Repost, Short Stories, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American

"The language of war turns the other into an object – the language of literature humanizes,” writes Laren McClung in her introduction to a collection featuring 61 contributors (and five translators) – 62 counting Yusef Komunyakaa’s resonating preface – each intimately affected by the Vietnam...

Margarita Engle’s Cuba for Young Readers [in The Booklist Reader]

13 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Children/Picture Books, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Jewish, Latina/o/x, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, Short Stories, Young Adult Readers

President Obama’s historic December 17, 2014 order to “normalize relations” between the United States and Cuba began the restoration of diplomacy after more than half a century of hostile restrictions. His 72-hour visit to Havana in March 2016 – the first made by a sitting...

The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives by Dashka Slater [in Shelf Awareness]

10 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Black/African American, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW On November 4, 2013, two students on their way home overlap by eight minutes while riding the 57 bus across Oakland, Calif. Sasha, a private school senior, has Asperger's syndrome, was assigned male at birth, identifies as agender (neither male nor female), uses the...

Silent Days, Silent Dreams by Allen Say [in Shelf Awareness]

31 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Biography, Children/Picture Books, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Boise, Idaho, is home to the James Castle Collection and Archive, commemorating an internationally renowned local artist who lived most of his 78 years in isolation. The sleek building stands in sharp contrast to the artist's actual lifetime studios: an attic, an abandoned chicken...

The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova [in Library Journal]

19 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Repost

English instructor Alexandra Boyd arrives exhausted in Sofia, Bulgaria, mistakenly takes someone else's bag during a taxi shuffle, and spends the rest of the book trying to return the bag to its owner. With 18-plus hours to go, of course, the needle-in-the-haystack pursuit proves epic...

Miguel’s Brave Knight: Young Cervantes and His Dream of Don Quixote by Margarita Engle, illustrated by Raul Colón [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Biography, Children/Picture Books, Cuban American, European, Latina/o/x, Nonfiction, Poetry, Puerto Rican, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Miguel de Cervantes survived his onerous childhood – his gambler father's imprisonments, his family's constant fleeing from debtors – by losing himself in stories. Inspired by his mother's tales, "dazzling plays," and "storytellers on street corners," Miguel imagines he will someday conjure his own...

Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig [in Library Journal]

12 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Myanmarese (Burmese), Myanmarese (Burmese) American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Fifteen years after her debut, The Good Men, Charmaine Craig returns with an epic based on the lives of her Burmese mother and maternal grandparents. A former actor, Craig is the ideal narrator to voice her family's narrative as she guides readers through the...

Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa, translated by Alison Watts [in Library Journal]

10 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Making and selling dorayaki – a pancake-like pastry filled with the eponymous "sweet bean paste" – was not supposed to define Sentaro's life. His someday-dreams of becoming a writer got waylaid by bad decisions that resulted in a two-year prison sentence. Since getting out, he's...

Celebrate Latinx Heritage Month with Cuban and Cuban American Literature [in The Booklist Reader]

09 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Once upon a time, Cuba was an enigmatic, faraway place that conjured up images of I Love Lucy, history lessons about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and recurring headlines about Guantánamo. As far as books go, two loomed large: Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban, a multi-generational...

Cuba on the Verge: 12 Writers on Continuity and Change in Havana and Across the Country edited by Leila Guerriero [in Booklist]

18 Sep, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Cuban, Latin American, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Since Obama’s 2014 visit reestablishing ties between the U.S. and Cuba, American travelers have had the long-lost opportunity for direct exploration, but there are “no easy answers,” warns Argentinian journalist Leila Guerriero at the start of her anthology of stupendously astute essays. Half are...

The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch [in Library Journal]

17 Sep, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Narrator Xe Sands delivers this Book with control, even detachment: the almost languid tone chillingly amplifies the hideous near-future Yuknavitch exposes in her highly anticipated follow-up to The Small Backs of Children. At 49, Christine is in her “last year until ascension,” an anachronistic term that...

Letters to Memory by Karen Tei Yamashita [in Christian Science Monitor]

13 Sep, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Japanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

'Letters to Memory' tells the story of author Karen Tei Yamashita's World War II internment “I have no formed definition of this project except an intuition that you would listen and be attentive and somehow understand,” Karen Tei Yamashita writes in Letters to Memory, her sagacious follow-up...

Favorite Diverse Children’s Books of 2016 [in Utah Journal of Literacy]

07 Sep, by SIBookDragon in Bangladeshi American, Black/African American, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Caribbean American, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Indian American, Korean American, Latina/o/x, Lists, Middle Grade Readers, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Pan-Asian Pacific American, Persian, Persian American, Repost, South Asian American, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

ABSTRACT These books feature diverse characters who – in a multiplicity of ways – suffer, learn, and generally triumph in their differences. Varying in genre from picture book to poetry, in setting from Kenya to California, and in ethnic focus from Muslim Bangladeshi to Ojibway/Anishinaaabe (Canadian...

Stolen Words by Melanie Florence, illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard [in Shelf Awareness]

06 Sep, by SIBookDragon in Absolute Favorites, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Skipping and dancing home from school, a young girl carries in one hand a dream catcher she's made, and with the other she holds onto her Grandpa. "How do you say grandfather in Cree?" she asks. And suddenly their walk turns somber as Grandpa...

The Door by Magda Szabó, translated by Len Rix [in Library Journal]

28 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Originally published in 1987, The Door is one of the few titles available in English by the late Magda Szabó (1917–2007), considered one of if not the most prominent Hungarian writer. The aural version makes its roundabout debut this year, after two Anglophone translations,...

Room of Shadows by Ronald Kidd [in Shelf Awareness]

22 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Short, skinny, 13-year-old David Cray mostly keeps to himself – until he experiences "a different kind of anger." He's got plenty making him mad: his father's run off with another woman, leaving David and his mother to relocate to a ramshackle old Victorian in downtown...

Beasts Head for Home by Kōbō Abe, translated by Richard F. Calichman [in Booklist]

17 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Japan’s defeat in WWII not only meant decimation at home but also resulted in the postwar repatriation of Japan’s colonial diaspora of more than four million citizens from throughout Asia. Among the dispossessed in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, China’s Manchuria, is Kuki Kyūzō,...

Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, a Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship by Michelle Kuo [in Christian Science Monitor]

10 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Chinese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

'Reading with Patrick' tells of a teacher's extraordinary journey Pontificating with superlatives only halfway through the calendar year might prove short-sighted, but risking humiliated inaccuracy seems to be a negligible consequence for claiming that Reading with Patrick could be the most affecting book you’ll read this...

Ten Works of Contemporary Korean Literature in Translation [in The Booklist Reader]

27 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Lists, Repost, Translation

Despite Maureen Corrigan’s rather nasty NPR review of Korean author Kyung-sook Shin’s 2011 Stateside debut, Please Look After Mom – her phrase “cheap consolations of kimchee-scented Kleenex fiction” caused particular affront – Mom became a major bestseller. In a stroke of well-deserved vindication, Shin became the first woman...

Adua by Igiabo Scego, translated by Jamie Richards [in Christian Science Monitor]

19 Jun, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, European, Fiction, Italian, Repost, Translation

'Adua' explores the relationship between colonizer and colonized Before Igiaba Scego’s novel, Adua, even begins, what’s instantly striking is the “Contents” page, which reveals a trio of chapter titles – “Adua,” “Talking-To,” “Zoppe” – that repeat over 30 chapters. Adua is the daughter, Zoppe the father,...

BookDragon Historical Tag