Absolutely Maybe by Lisa Yee [in Bloomsbury Review]
Seventeen-year-old Maybelline Mary Katherine Mary Ann Chestnut, aka "Maybe," escapes the clutches of her slimy stepfather-to-be, for whom her ex-beauty queen alcoholic mother insists she'll walk down the aisle a seventh time. Maybe decides it's high time to go find her real father, the one...
Some 15 years after her award-wining literary debut with her bestselling novel,
As horrible as some of the images are in this

Little Wabi Sabi, a lovely kitty living in Kyoto, Japan, has a very special name ...
Eighth-grader Yumi Ruíz-Hirsch, a Japanese/Cuban/Jewish American hapa, has a life as complicated as her heritage. Her no-nonsense mother's got a new boyfriend. Her rock-'n-roll songwriter father hasn't outgrown adolescence. Her friends all seem to be going...
Helen Kimura has survived and thrived by using her irresistable beauty to get exactly what she wants. Steely and independent, she's never succumbed to anyone else's expectations but her own. Her four daughters by four different...
For years, 13-year-old Korean adoptee Lauren has endured the usual racial taunts for looking so different amidst her homogeneous fellow students in suburban Connecticut. Her popular and fearless best friend has done a far better job...
Thank goodness the Pulitzer-winning Jhumpa Lahiri went back to her short story roots: The Namesake was okay, but disappointing after The Interpreter of Maladies which was such a shockingly remarkable debut.
Holy moly, now comes this unforgettable...
"When I got to college I said I was adopted, right off the bat,” says Todd Knowlton, a 33-year-old Korean-American adoptee. “It doesn’t bother me, but once they hear my last name, people always ask uncomfortable...
You can't believe how scary this book can be, especially if you have children of your own. The eponymous boy of many names in


Indian-born, U.S.-, UK-, and now Denmark-domiciled Malladi is a literary chameleon, thanks in part to her changing addresses. Language, which features a young Afghan refugee woman escaping unnamable horrors under the Taliban, is almost like reading a sister text of Khaled Hosseini’s...
Meet Kimberly Keiko Cameron, aka “Skim,” a wannabe witch navigating her angst-filled teenage life in a 1990s Toronto high school. In this book created by cousins Mariko and Jillian, making their fabulous collaborative debut, Skim manages...
This slim volume resonates long after the last page, especially for mothers in today’s overscheduled, harried world.
Hua Wu, a recent Chinese immigrant working a dead-end waitress job in New York's Chinatown, meets stylish Jane Templeton...
The Cultural Revolution was a harrowing decade of Chinese history. Moying Li recalls her life from ages 12 to 22, when she bore witness to brutal atrocities against her family, friends, and entire community – and...
Pakistani dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s sudden death in a mysterious 1988 plane crash remains unsolved. Hanif, once part of the Pakistani air force and now a British expat, cleverly presents a riotous fictional version of how...