Illness Archives - Page 6 of 15

Graphic Gems: Novels, Biographies, and Memoirs for Younger Readers [in The Booklist Reader]

05 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Japanese American, Lists, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Russian, Russian American, Translation, Turkish, Turkish American, Young Adult Readers

Since I recently shared some utterly satisfying single-volume graphic titles for adults, I figured I should point out a few outstanding titles for middle-grade and YA readers, as well. That said, so-called grown-ups will surely find many of these titles just as satisfying. Equal literary...

Sakura’s Cherry Blossoms by Robert Paul Weston, illustrated by Misa Saburi [in Shelf Awareness]

23 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Japanese, Japanese American, Repost

With a name that means "cherry blossom," Sakura's favorite time of the year is understandably spring, when her namesake blooms. Her grandmother gently nurtures her floral appreciation: "Together they sat/ in the shade of pink petals/...

The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story by Edwidge Danticat [in Library Journal]

11 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Haitian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Compassion goes a long way when writing about death – especially the death of loved ones. Narrating such a book requires a gentleness, a soothing rhythm. That Danticat reads her latest nonfiction – a thoughtful meditation bookended by her mother's fatal cancer diagnosis and Danticat's...

The Emissary by Yoko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani [in Library Journal]

02 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Translation

Japanese-born, Germany-based Tawada (Memoirs of a Polar Bear) writes facilely in both languages and creates incomparable award-winning fiction that defies easy labels. Tawada's latest in translation (smoothly rendered by Mitsutani, who also translated one of Tawada's earliest works, the three-storied The Bridegroom Was a Dog)...

Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo [in Library Journal]

06 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Against a tumultuous backdrop of political, military, and economic turmoil in modern Nigeria comes a portrait of a marriage that begins with idealistic devotion and ardent promise. For Yejide and Akin, love should have been enough, but after four years without children, “even love...

The War Bride’s Scrapbook: A Novel in Pictures by Caroline Preston [in Booklist]

17 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Caroline Preston collaged combinations of vintage photos, drawings, clippings, advertisements, and all manner of 1920s tidbits in The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt (2011), onto which she overlaid the text of her titular heroine’s peripatetic adventures-into-adulthood. In her sophomore scrapbook presentation, Preston displays the left-behind...

Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell [in Library Journal]

03 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Repost, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Samantha Schweblin, who is Buenos Aires-born and now lives in Berlin, makes her English-language novel debut, thanks to McDowell's crisp translation. Worms, migrating souls, unseen toxins, and deformed children punctuate a mysterious dialog between Amanda, a dying woman in an emergency clinic, and David,...

Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa, translated by Alison Watts [in Library Journal]

10 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Making and selling dorayaki – a pancake-like pastry filled with the eponymous "sweet bean paste" – was not supposed to define Sentaro's life. His someday-dreams of becoming a writer got waylaid by bad decisions that resulted in a two-year prison sentence. Since getting out, he's...

The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs [in Library Journal]

05 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

Nina Riggs died February 26, 2017. Cassandra Campbell gently narrates most of the work, until Kirby Heyborne takes over to read the afterword by Riggs’s husband, John, and shatters your heart. For a book about fatal diseases – Riggs was diagnosed at 37 with breast cancer;...

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay [in Library Journal]

29 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Haitian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW For such a vulnerable, raw memoir, no one but the author could voice the breathtaking revelations, brutal truths, and profound knowledge contained here. “Every body has a story and a history,” Roxane Gay (Bad Feminist, Difficult Women) begins. Gay stands 6'3"; at her heaviest, she...

You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir by Sherman Alexie [in Library Journal]

26 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW With his uniquely sing-songy cadence, almost-chuckles, and uncontainable tears, Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) gives a raw, superb performance. No one else could have narrated the stories of his difficult youth, his lifesaving education, his struggles between familial obligations...

The Years, Months, Days by Yan Lianke, translated by Carlos Rojas [in Library Journal]

22 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Set in the fictional Balou Mountains in Yan's home province of Henan (also the setting for Lenin's Kisses), these two compelling novellas both exalt emotional bonds and warn against their fatal consequences. To escape endless drought, an entire village flees in search of sustenance...

Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee [in Library Journal]

29 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Korean American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Ten years ago, Lee was married to her college boyfriend, living in Berkeley, and working as the human resources director at a small company. On New Year’s Eve 2006, Lee suffered a stroke. She was 33. She would spend the better part of a decade...

Beyond Books: Memoirs That Reckon with Death [in The Booklist Reader]

16 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Lists, Memoir, Repost

Being part of the "sandwich generation" caught between aging parents and almost-adult children means that mortality begins to loom heavier as the years pass. Sharing the burden of tragedy with thoughtful, wise, and gentle others through books is certainly one of the most readily-available balms....

What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons [in Booklist]

17 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Zinzi Clemmons’ spectacular debut is written in bursts, from single-sentence pages to sparse paragraphs, and combines photographs, diagrams, charts, articles, and blog posts to amplify an intimate story of personal loss into a larger narrative of identity, family, race, and socioeconomic access. Thandi is the...

The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun, translated by Sora Kim-Russell [in Booklist]

28 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Translation

When Oghi wakes in a hospital room, his world doesn’t align with his last memories. He’s been in a coma after surviving a car accident, but his wife is dead, and he’s completely paralyzed. At 47, Oghi is parentless and childless, with few friends and colleagues...

Inheritance from Mother by Minae Mizumura, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter [in Booklist]

01 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Death brings “excitement ...

The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian [in Library Journal]

14 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Armenian American, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Annalee Ahlberg is missing, but given her history of sleepwalking, her loved ones hold fast to the possibility of her return. While the investigation remains ongoing, the family adheres to some semblance of normalcy: husband Warren retreats to his work as a professor, 21-year-old daughter...

The Harlem Charade by Natasha Tarpley [in Shelf Awareness]

28 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Black/African American, Fiction, Korean American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

Twelve-year-old Jin Yi records "interesting moments and details" in her memory notebook while watching customers shop in her Korean American family's Harlem bodega: "[P]eople will tell you their stories in the way that they move, how their faces look, how they speak." Observing turns to...

White Tears by Hari Kunzru [in Booklist]

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

Two young white men from disparate, dysfunctional family backgrounds meet in college, bond over an obsessive devotion to black music, and create an in-demand production studio in Brooklyn. Their pièce de résistance is a clever hoax: an outdoor recording of a singer that’s remixed to...

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