First an interruption: I learned a very entertaining meaning for a certain common(-ish) word on the first page of Shamsie's second novel: 'bugaboo.' "It's a word that demands to be said out loud," writes Shamsie, "particularly among bilingual Pakistanis who recognize its resemblance to 'baghal...
Playwright Catherine (pronounced Ka-treen) Filloux has built her dramatic reputation on giving voice to lost, overlooked souls. In Lemkin's House, Filloux presents the struggle of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish American lawyer whom she refers to as her "historical soulmate," a man who coined the term "genocide"...
With an enviable literary reputation built on award-winning titles set in China, poet/novelist/short story writer Jin recently debuted his first U.S.-based novel, A Free Life, about the Americanization of a Chinese immigrant family. While the 12 stories in his latest release continue to explore familiar...
Here's a joyful little gift to share with your children over the long weekend ...
So I'm jumping on the Monster bandwagon a little late (which debuted in 1995 in Japan to multiple awards but took another 11 years to arrive Stateside in translation) ...
The "traffic" in Chen's collection revolves around broken love, made even more jarring by a literal jaggedness on the page with the layout of her words. The protagonist, Xiaomei, loses love too many times. In childhood, her first loss is her father who "disappeared into...
In spite of a spare not-quite 100 pages, Ha Jin's first nonfiction – and must-read – title is filled with fascinating, challenging ideas about writers living in countries and creating in languages not originally their own. Best known for his 1999 National Book Award winning novel, Waiting,...
That the book opens with a three-page list of characters seems a bit daunting ...
Born in Los Angeles to a Scotch-Irish American mother, Leonie Gilmour, and a missing Japanese father, the young boy who would grow up to be Isamu Noguchi moved as toddler to Japan to join his estranged father. When Gilmour realized that the older Noguchi already had...
Told in the three alternating voices of a Chinese mother and her two Chinese American daughters, Fan Wu's second novel weaves a family tapestry filled with the multiple layers of intermixed cultures and generations. Mary, once Guo-Mei, now lives comfortably in Silicon Valley with her American-born...
Since Lisa See's latest has been sitting high on all the best bestseller lists for many weeks, presumably many have already read the story of two sisters and their odyssey from China to LA's Chinatown. I probably should have done the same – read the...
Using the same simple metaphor he used in his previous bestselling If the World Were a Village, educational consultant David J. Smith presents America as a village of 100 (a far less intimidating number than the 306 million we’ve become!) to help kids (and anyone...
Every Chinese New Year, Amy’s mother feels particularly homesick for her family living on the other side of the world in China. This year, a package arrives with a letter that tells the story of a remarkable stone found in Uncle Zhong’s fields, that was...
Despite his prestigious college degree which should have guaranteed him a bright future, Azel is unable to find meaningful work in his native Tangier, a city in northern Morocco. Mired in self-absorbed disappointment, he spends his days and nights lost in women, wine, and song,...
Lac Su is a survivor of things so harrowing that just recounting some of those experiences, even from the distance of a keyboard tapping out a review of his memoir, I Love Yous Are for White People, makes the heart wince. As a 5-year-old immigrant to...
Already a many-time-many-variety award-winner in her native Australia, Alice Pung's debut memoir arrives Stateside filled with humor and bittersweet grace. Born one month after her family arrived in Melbourne, Australia, after fleeing the killing fields of Cambodia, Pung's father chooses her name for "a story...
Anju Melvin, used to being first in the classrooms of her hometown of Kumarakom in India's southern state of Kerala, wins herself a scholarship for a year aboard at an elite private high school in Manhattan. But what clinches the award is not her own...
Even though it's only April (and the book doesn't even hit stands until next month), I'm announcing with absolute certainty that Burnt Shadows gets my unwavering vote as THE Book of the Year. I'll only be too happy to eat my words because that can only mean...
Nami Mun’s debut is the disturbing but ultimately hopeful story of runaway Joon, a Korean American teenager whose father abandons the family, whose mother loses her sanity, who must somehow navigate homelessness, drug addiction, and sexual abuse to survive the unprotected streets of 1980s New...
Loosely woven together from revealing vignettes about the interconnected characters that share 12-year-old protagonist Dae Joon Kim's world, Sung Woo's debut novel is a well-measured, carefully laid out storycloth filled with tenderness and great warmth. After five years of separation, Dae Joon (soon to be David), his sister...
