Sixteen-year-old Tiffany Sly’s mother has just died of cancer when she’s sent from Chicago to Simi Valley, CA, to live with a father she’s never met. At her massive new home, she’s greeted by a white stepmother and four half-sisters because Dr. Anthony Stone’s away...
White, not black, is the color of mourning in Han Kang’s home country of South Korea, as well as other parts of Asia. This latest from Han, whose The Vegetarian was the 2016 Man Booker International Prize winner, is a meditative exploration of the limitless...
Book ’Em Now: Sing, Unburied, Sing’s Audacious Trio Imagine choosing three first-time narrators to voice the next novel from a National Book Award winner. Takes faith! Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones won the 2011 NBA for fiction; six years later, she won her second NBA for...
Inspired by their 7-year-old great-niece's distress over the 2016 elections, Just Us Books’ co-founders Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson created We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices as a contemporary antidote for fear. Recalling their dangerous experiences growing up in the 1950s and...
*STARRED REVIEW So transforming was Fenella Woolgar’s performance of Kate Atkinson’s stupendous Life after Life (2013), the immediate reaction here is joyful relief at hearing Woolgar take aural control of another Atkinson novel. From an inexperienced, untested teenager embarking on her first job, in 1940, to...
*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...
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...
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...
*STARRED REVIEW At 12, Artemisia Gentileschi loses her mother, but not before "Prudentia Montone spent/ the last of her strength/ to burn into [Artemisia's] mind/ the tales of women/ no one else would/ think to tell" – including biblical heroines Susannah and Judith, who thwarted male...
Lauren Groff (Fates and Furies, 2015) lives in Florida and is married with two sons – not unlike five of the protagonists among the 11 stories here. Unlike with her previous titles, Groff narrates, adding a layer of intimacy to further enhance the first-person perspective...
Famous Adopted People by Alice Stephens “Everyone, it seems, is telling our story but us,” observes Lisa Pearl, the Korean-born, Bethesda, Maryland-raised transracial adoptee protagonist in Alice Stephens’ recent October debut. The author, who describes herself as being “among the first generation of transnational, interracial adoptees,”...
'All You Can Ever Know' is a sensitive examination of transracial adoption Here’s a memoir by a transracial adoptee about being a transracial adoptee – and unless you're a transracial adoptee yourself, you're probably thinking, “eh, I'll pass.” And that would surely be a mistake. Because...
'Killing Commendatore' is the latest evasive, magical, utterly unique novel by Murakami A famous painter succumbing to dementia living out his final days in a posh care facility. A wealthy, middle-aged white-haired man who lives alone in a mountainside white mansion. A motherless schoolgirl whose father...
The latest title in Mad Creek’s impressive Latinographix series showcases 80-plus contributions from the flourishing Latinx graphic community. Creators were prompted “to reflect upon the most significant moments of their lives,” rendering seven sections that explore language, coming-of-age, mythology, identity, heritage, self-image, and pop culture. The...
FAMOUS ADOPTED PEOPLE, A Story “In My Bones”: Q&A with Alice Stephens “Everyone, it seems, is telling our story but us,” observes Lisa Pearl, the Korean-born, Bethesda, Maryland-raised transracial adoptee protagonist in Alice Stephens’ debut novel, Famous Adopted People, which hits shelves on October 16. The author, who describes...
American by birth, Syrian by parentage, journalist and civil rights lawyer Alia Malek (A Country Called Amreeka) has the cultural and linguistic fluency to be both insider and outsider in either country. Through four generations of extended family stories – from her wealthy businessman great-grandfather...
*STARRED REVIEW French singer/rapper Gaël Faye transforms his own background into an impressive, searing coming-of-age first novel about a Burundian family's implosion during the 1990s. What seemed like an idyllic, privileged childhood for 10-year-old Gabriel – made memorable by mischievous adventures with close friends – begins...
*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...
Eisner-winning Peter Kuper’s career of “translating Kafka into comics” began in 1995, when his initial collection of nine shorts hit shelves, with Give It Up! He adds another five here, scrambles the previous order, and includes his “Kuperesque” foreword, emphasizing how, since Kafka’s death at...
*STARRED REVIEW “Everyone, it seems, is telling our story but us,” observes Lisa Pearl, the Korean-born, Bethesda, Maryland-raised transracial adoptee protagonist in Alice Stephens’ debut novel. The author, who describes herself as being “among the first generation of transnational, interracial adoptees,” takes charge with a tale...
