Identity Archives - Page 7 of 83

Honor by Thrity Umrigar [in Booklist]

08 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Sneha Mathan returns for her third outstanding collaboration with Thrity Umrigar, their shared Indian heritage again enhancing their author/narrator symbiosis. Accents, genders, ages, backgrounds, and emotions abound, but Mathan embraces diverse characterizations with effortless ease. In a remote Indian village, a young Hindu widow has...

Troublemaker by John Cho [in Booklist]

07 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Korean American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

Sa-i-gu (Korean for 4-2-9 as in April 29, 1992) was a defining moment in Korean American history, when 2,300-plus Korean-owned businesses were destroyed in the Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of Rodney King’s brutal arresting officers. Actor John Cho makes his fiction debut with...

Pina by Titaua Peu, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman [in Booklist]

06 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Southeast Asian, Tahitian, Translation

In Tahiti, Tenaho is one of those “quartiers nobody ever hears about,” but what happened to that family “with too many kids ...

Family Album by Gabriela Alemán, translated by Dick Cluster and Mary Ellen Fieweger [in Shelf Awareness]

03 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories, South American, Translation

Family Album, from award-winning author Gabriela Alemán, is a shrewd, beguiling collection. In eight genre-defying stories, the Brazil-born, Ecuador-based Alemán deftly confronts push-button topics like colonialism, identity, and religion. Dick Cluster, who translated Alemán's novel Poso Wells (2018), returns here with Mary Ellen Fieweger to provide...

The White Girl by Tony Birch [in Booklist]

02 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Australian, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW In 1960s Australia (not so unlike in the U.S.), the laws allow Aboriginal communities to be openly mistreated, their movements restricted, and their humanity denied. Lauded Australian Indigenous writer Tony Birch explores his country’s complex racist history through three generations of brown women, centering...

The Good Asian (vol. 2) by Pornsak Pichetshote, illustrated by Alexandre Tefenkgi, colored by Lee Loughridge [in Booklist]

01 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Thai American, Vietnamese, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW To best appreciate this volume, readers must go back to the first book. Pornsak Pichetshote’s exquisite narration is an intricate temporal puzzle, his scenes moving between past and present, revealing just enough partial (scintillating, shocking, shrewd) backstory each time with many threads that require careful...

Inheritance: A Visual Poem by Elizabeth Acevedo, illustrated by Andrea Pippins [in Shelf Awareness]

31 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Middle Grade Readers, Poetry, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Elizabeth Acevedo, the author of the multi-award-winning The Poet X and Clap When You Land, is also a National Poetry Slam Champion. Inheritance, her most famously performed poem, is here set in print, enhanced with stupendous art by author/illustrator Andrea Pippins (Young, Gifted and Black). Hair – and how...

The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford [in Booklist]

30 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

Jamie Ford (Love and Other Consolation Prizes, 2017) showcases “transgenerational epigenetic inheritance” – inheriting trauma through generations – in another multi-temporal narrative spanning two-and-a-half centuries across the globe. Ford deftly reveals seven women’s lives, beginning with progenitor Afong, “the first Chinese woman to set foot...

The Third Person by Emma Grove [in Shelf Awareness]

26 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Debut author Emma Grove's luminous graphic memoir opens with a declaration: "None of the following incidents are made up or invented ...

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty [in Shelf Awareness]

25 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost, Short Stories

The dozen stories of Morgan Talty's vivid debut collection, Night of the Living Rez, certainly stand alone – eight of them were previously published in various prestigious journals including the Georgia Review and Narrative magazine, which also awarded him a 2021 Narrative Prize. To discover all 12...

Keya Das’s Second Act by Sopan Deb [in Shelf Awareness]

23 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

New York Times journalist Sopan Deb wrote poignantly about family in his memoir, Missed Translations: Meeting the Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me. He turns to fiction in Keya Das's Second Act, further exploring how parents and children can become detached and, perhaps, discover new paths to lasting connections. As...

Nuclear Family by Joseph Han [in Booklist]

16 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Grace, 21, and Jacob, 25, are Korean Hawaiian on their father’s side (three Cho generations are currently islanders); maternally, they are both South and North Korean, with their closest Jeong relatives in Seoul. College senior Grace lives at home and works at their parents’ Cho’s...

Free Love by Tessa Hadley [in Booklist]

12 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Meet Phyllis Fischer – she prefers Phyl – the latest protagonist of British auteur Tessa Hadley, who so brilliantly writes of familial relationships often facing significant change, possibly collapse. English actor Abigail Thaw, who voiced Hadley’s Late in the Day (2019), delivers another resounding performance;...

Face: A Novel of the Anthropocene by Jaspreet Singh [in Shelf Awareness]

11 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

Jaspreet Singh's third novel, Face, presents a mesmerizing narrative. "In this new epoch most stories rhyme with crime," Singh opens. (Indeed, two murders on two continents will happen by novel's end.) This clever beginning introduces strangers Lucia and Lila ("correct pronunciation: Leela"), who meet in...

Circa by Devi S. Laskar [in Shelf Awareness]

10 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

Devi S. Laskar's sophomore novel, Circa, is an intense meditation on multigenerational grief and loss. Laskar (The Atlas of Reds and Blues) adopts an uncommon second-person narration for Heera, born in New York and raised in Raleigh, N.C., by Indian immigrant parents. She's American by birthright,...

Timeless Tales: APA Creators Draw on Myth and Folklore to Craft Personal, yet Universal Stories [in School Library Journal]

09 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hawaiian, Japanese, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Translation, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

Welcome to one of the more hope-filled, albeit cautious, Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Months in recent history. Plenty remains unsettled, challenging, and tragic, but a glass-half-full outlook extols the news that the world is finally, excitedly opening up from the last two-plus years of...

Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades [in Booklist]

06 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Repost

“We live in the dregs of Queens, New York,” debut Filipina American author Daphne Palasi Andreades introduces her polyphonic Brown Girls, with names like “Khadija, Akanksha, Maribeth, Ximena, Breonna, Cherelle, Thanh, Yoon, Ellen ...

Talking Stories for Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month [in Booklist Reader]

05 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cambodian, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Indian American, Korean American, Lists, Pakistani American, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian American, Southeast Asian American

Short-story collections can be uneven, but readers will be consistently impressed by these extraordinary, resonant, and exhilarating debuts by a dozen diverse writers. Afterparties. By Anthony Veasna So. 2021. Ecco. So’s nine electrifying stories magnificently create an interconnected Cambodian American community. So’s death in December 2020 at just...

Recitatif by Toni Morrison [in Booklist]

04 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW In addition to 11 novels, Novel Prize-winning Toni Morrison wrote this “one and only short story” in 1980, collected in 1983’s Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women, edited by Amiri and Amina Baraka. Posthumously published as a standalone volume, the story is paired...

Our Colors by Gengoroh Tagame, translated by Anne Ishii [in Booklist]

03 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Japanese manga powerhouse Gengoroh Tagame follows the phenomenal success of My Brother’s Husband with another poignant, empowering, gay-centered narrative, again translated by queer manga expert Anne Ishii. Sora and Nao have been neighbors and close friends since early childhood. Now that they’re older, their interactions are...

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