So indulge me for a reductive semantic moment: 'serious' comic books are graphic novels (say, Archie vs. Will Eisner's A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories); in Japanese terms, 'serious' manga is also known as gekiga. If you're interested (otherwise skip to next paragraph), here's...
A fictionalized biography of a heroic young man born into slavery in 1814 and determined against all odds to be free. With the history of slaveowners abusing their women slaves reflected in his pale face, Henry Bibb could pass for white. Raised together with the...
Since the 1980s, Chinese writers determined to bear witness to the atrocities of Mao’s Communist regime have bypassed censorship by writing “documentary literature,” blurring the lines between fiction and nonfiction. Drawing on 100-plus interviews, Xianhui Yang’s 13 thinly disguised stories chronicle the brutality of the Jiabiangou...
If you see a book cover with the name Dai Sijie on it, read the book. Dai's delightful 2001 debut, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, about two young boys who discover a love for literature while sequestered in a re-education camp during Mao's Cultural Revolution,...
The Vietnam War undoubtedly remains one of the most confusing, hotly-debated events of world history. Decades later, the war's legacy cannot be accurately measured, much less fully understood. Just in time for back-to-school, the first-ever graphic version – 140 pages of black-and-white-drawings – of the complicated war...
Since Lisa See's latest has been sitting high on all the best bestseller lists for many weeks, presumably many have already read the story of two sisters and their odyssey from China to LA's Chinatown. I probably should have done the same – read the...
A fabulous biography for the youngest readers about the first-ever bonafide Asian American superstar. And what a figure she was ...
Even prison did not stop William Smith from his tenacious decades-long journey to create a map that clearly captured in one colorful creation what was buried under England's rolling hills and valleys. Prison is where Simon Winchester, a remarkable chronicler of obscure and near-forgotten but terribly important lives...
If such things are possible, this is actually (almost) a happy book about the Japanese American internment experience, as improbable as that sounds. Yes, the unfortunate Americans of Japanese descent who lived on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound across from Seattle, Washington – who made up a...
When he deliberately decides he is his own man at age 13, Chinese American Henry Lee pledges to wait forever for Japanese American Keiko Okabe, who is one of the 120,000 innocent Americans of Japanese ancestry imprisoned during World War II. Beyond U.S. borders, war...
Amazingly, the War Relocation Authority (WRA), managed to generate some 17,000 photos of Americans of Japanese ancestry who spent the majority of the duration of World War II in prison camps for little more than looking like the enemy. Of these photos, Hirabayashi looks at the...
The SI boys gather some of the top names in Asian American pop culture to present a unique anthology of the Asian American experience – complete with masked crusaders, caped champions, and even everyday heroes. Together, they’re making our ever-morphing, multi-culti American future a safer,...
Full disclosure: this is one of the most heartbreaking books you’ll probably ever read. But read it you should. A young woman – a political victim of post-Mao China – is about to die. While her voice remains missing throughout the novel, the many residents of...
An informative look – underscored with lively photographs – at the history and future of Mount Everest, a sacred place for the locals, overtaken by adventurous tourism, and currently suffering the high price of so-called modern progress. Review: "In Celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month:...
At 12, Love Liu lives with his architect parents in the village of Ürümchi in the Xinjiang region of northeast China. Growing up during the Cultural Revolution means he is surrounded by discontent and fear – his parents, his friends, their parents must always be diligently...
Since the 2002 best-seller The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices, Beijing-born London journalist Xinran has emerged as an international dynamo reclaiming the voices of neglected citizens throughout her homeland. Her subsequent titles – Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet, What the Chinese Don't Eat, Miss Chopsticks, and even her...
Something about Janice Y.K. Lee’s debut novel, The Piano Teacher, whispers, “Watch me.” Populated with a cast of “wandering global voyagers,” Lee unfurls her story, set in Hong Kong during and after World War II, layer by layer and in cinematic snippets. Captured in clipped, almost abbreviated...
In graphic novel format just right for younger readers, Little Rock Nine deftly captures one of the most important moments in U.S. history when nine brave African American teens integrated all-white Central High School in...
Already an established nonfiction writer and poet, David Mura presents his debut novel, about a not-so-young Japanese American self-proclaimed itinerant historian who must delve into his own family's past – populated by both a...
Of course, there's no simple answer for who really discovered America. With lively humor and cartoon fun, Wyatt examines all the other explorers – Portuguese, Chinese, Norse, maybe even the Irish! – who reached American...
