Illness Archives - Page 5 of 15

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, adapted and illustrated by Kristina Gehrmann, translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger [in Shelf Awareness]

27 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Despite the gruesome images depicting the workings of Chicago slaughterhouses and meatpacking factories in the late 19th century and into the early 20th century, Kristina Gehrmann's graphic adaptation is a surprisingly gentler, kinder read than Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel. Credited with inciting the public outcry...

Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad [in Booklist]

16 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Repost, Southeast Asian, Southeast Asian American, Thai, Thai American

Slightly gravelly voiced Scottish actor Euan Morton takes immediate command here, crisply enunciating Bangkok-native, New-York based Pitchaya Sudbanthad’s ambitious debut. What initially reads like unrelated short stories reveals a broader overview of a city in constant flux, its past, present, and future represented by a...

The Last Word: Audios of Posthumously Published Books – Part 2 [in Booklist]

04 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab American, Audio, Australian, Black/African American, European, Lebanese American, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American, Translation, Vietnamese American

The one thing in life that’s guaranteed is, well, death. But books are certainly a lasting legacy. And sometimes, when we get the books after their creator has passed on, an audiobook can breathe new life into the text, animating from beyond. A bittersweet legacy, indeed, but...

Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary: Selected Works of Kathleen Collins by Kathleen Collins [in Booklist]

03 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Drama/Theater, Fiction, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW In 2014, a quarter-century after the 1988 death of filmmaker/playwright/writer/activist Kathleen Collins at 46 of breast cancer, indie distributor Milestone Films reintroduced her groundbreaking 1982 movie, Losing Ground, one of the first films written and directed by an African American woman, inspiring new interest in the...

Dying by Cory Taylor [in Booklist]

31 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Australian, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

“I am making dying bearable for myself,” Cory Taylor reveals in her final book, originally published in her native Australia just months after she passed away in 2016 from melanoma-related brain cancer at 61. A euthanasia drug she bought online allowed Taylor some semblance of...

The Caregiver [audio] by Samuel Park [in Booklist]

25 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Korean American, Repost, South American

In April 2017, 41-year-old Park died of stomach cancer. His sophomore title was published 17 months later, aided by a close friend for over two decades, the novelist Curtis Sittenfeld, who played a significant role in deciphering Park’s final handwritten notes in order to get...

Glory and Its Litany of Horrors by Fernanda Torres, translated by Eric M.B. Becker [in Shelf Awareness]

22 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, South American, Translation

Once upon a time, Mario Cardoso was "a god beneath the spotlight, a counterculture sex symbol, archetype of the ideal man, Dionysus reborn." With no lack of youthful passion, he quits his architecture studies to join the chorus of a raucous production of Hair and...

Family Trust by Kathy Wang [in Booklist]

14 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

Septuagenarian Stanley Huang declares he’ll start a foundation to give his name the longevity his body can’t. His second wife Mary has made his comfort her top priority. His first wife Linda Liang left him financially sound, obscuring his inadequacies in exchange for her freedom. Harvard...

The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After by Julie Yip-Williams [in Booklist]

12 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American, Vietnamese American

The miracles were many: “born poor and blind in Vietnam on the losing side of a bloody civil war,” Julie Yip-Williams survived her grandmother’s demand to have her killed, escaped on a leaky boat with her family to Hong Kong, arrived as a refugee in...

Marie Curie: A Life of Discovery by Alice Milani, translated by Kerstin Schwandt [in Booklist]

02 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Biography, European, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In Milani’s graphic biography of the iconic Marie Curie, soon-to-be Nobel winner Ernest Rutherford explains the theory of transmutation in less than a dozen panels to Marie Curie’s “interested in science” daughter, Irène – so young, she calls it “tramputation.” That transparent accessibility repeats throughout,...

Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat [in Booklist]

19 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Caribbean, Caribbean American, Fiction, Haitian, Haitian American, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Following The Art of Death (2017), a reflection on her mother’s passing and writing, Edwidge Danticat focuses this haunting eight-story collection on, well, death. Looming death becomes a bargaining chip in “Dosas,” when an ex-husband begs his ex-wife to help save her kidnapped replacement, and in “In the Old...

The Last Word: Audios of Posthumously Published Books [in Booklist]

01 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, British, European, Fiction, Indian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American

The one thing in life that’s guaranteed is, well, death. But books are certainly a lasting legacy. And sometimes, when we get the books after their creator has passed on, an audiobook can breathe life into the text, animating from beyond. Here, we have a handful...

Waiting for Eden by Elliot Ackerman [in Library Journal]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Elliot Ackerman’s (2017 National Book Award finalist for Dark at the Crossing) latest might be just three-and-a-half hours long, but the dramatic effects will surely last longer. MacLeod Andrews – his voice slightly growly, controlled enough as if control is necessary – narrates from...

The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, translated by Philip Gabriel [in Booklist]

21 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW For those of us in need of a few hours of joyful catharsis, listen up. Despite a narrative driven by impending separation, the gratifying delight is well worth the tears. Narrator George Blagden effortlessly embodies this charming man-and-beast love story, so guilelessly gentle as...

The Caregiver by Samuel Park [in Booklist]

13 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Latin American, Repost

At 26, Mara is the titular caregiver for a lonely woman in her early 40s with stomach cancer, who insists she’ll bequeath Mara her exclusive Bel Air home upon her impending death. Mara is already too familiar with loss, having grown up in Rio de...

I Am I Am I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell [in Library Journal]

03 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Irish, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Cats may have nine lives, but Maggie O’Farrell, who won the Costa Book Award for The Hand That First Held Mine, has had 17, as revealed in this stupendous collection of essays named for various body parts that have caused her near demise. Her...

The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea [in Library Journal]

30 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Despite the title, the Angels here are more damaged than broken, with even a promise of salvation – more than less – by title's end. Narrated by Luis Alberto Urrea (The Water Museum), who has magnificently recorded most of his audio adaptations, this House...

If You Leave Me by Crystal Hana Kim [in Booklist]

09 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Hunger, both physical and emotional, haunts the lives of the extended Lee-Yun family during the tumultuous, violent decades that define modern South Korea in the latter-20th century. Haemi and Kyunghwan are childhood playmates in the final years of Japan’s brutal colonization, then become desperate,...

The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Casssara [in Library Journal]

14 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost

Emulating the larger-than-life characters in Joseph Cassara's debut novel, narrator Christian Barillas’s gender-defying performance vacillates smoothly from sass to introspection, rage to desperation, elation to detachment. During the 1980s New York City ball scene, the House of Xtravaganza was the first Latinx house, later made...

Severance by Ling Ma [in Library Journal]

25 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

Candace Chen arrives in New York City post-college because "it seemed like the inevitable, default place to go." After a summer of wandering Manhattan wearing her dead mother's dresses – taking pictures and getting picked up – she unexpectedly falls into a publishing job. She...

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