Immigration Archives - Page 4 of 42

Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo by Jo Koy [in Booklist]

16 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Southeast Asian American

That Jo Koy has created a sold-out, standing-ovation-earning stand-up career making people laugh while mining intimate family stories means no one else could possibly narrate his memoir. His hard-earned superstardom translates seamlessly into an audiobook, giving him a double-debut credit as author and narrator, presenting...

L.A. Weather by María Amparo Escandón [in Booklist]

03 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost

Oscar Alvarado is a multi-generational Angeleno Mexican American; his wife Keila was a high-school exchange student from Mexico City. They lovingly raised three daughters. Thirty-nine years later, their three-year-old twin granddaughters almost drown in their neglected pool. The accident fuels Keila’s marital discontent and emboldens...

Edge Case by YZ Chin [in Booklist]

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

Eighteen days is all it takes for the (d)evolution of a marriage in YZ Chin’s debut novel. Edwina and Marlin are green-card-seeking Malaysian transplants to New York City. She’s a quality-assurance analyst (and only woman) at AInstein, where she works on joke-telling robots. He’s a...

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner [in Booklist]

16 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Michelle Zauner’s mother Chongmi died in 2014 – she was just 56, Zauner 25. Her grief inspired her first album as Japanese Breakfast in 2016. Her viral 2018 New Yorker essay, “Crying in H Mart,” morphed into the first chapter of this, her dual author/narrator...

A Play for the End of the World by Jai Chakrabarti [in Shelf Awareness]

12 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Eastern European, European, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

Time, geographies, and backgrounds all seem to flow effortlessly through Jai Chakrabarti's exquisite debut novel, A Play for the End of the World. At its core is the provenance of a possible love story between two strangers in New York City. Interwoven into this uncertain...

Skinship by Yoon Choi [in Booklist]

09 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW The characters in Yoon Choi’s stories are caught in-between cultures, families, generations, even life and death. Especially stupendous are her Korean immigrant women-in-flux. In “The Church of Abundant Life,” a childless woman recalls how she met her husband through her English tutor in Korea...

Made in China: A Memoir of Love and Labor by Anna Qu [in Shelf Awareness]

06 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

For most of her first seven years, Anna Qu was "the girl without parents; a father dead, a mother who left to start a new life." And yet those years held the "love" Qu names in the subtitle of her bittersweet debut, Made in China:...

Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So [in Booklist]

02 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Cambodian American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories, Southeast Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Nine electrifying stories comprise Anthony Veasna So’s debut, and while many were previously published, when read together their magnificence is enhanced as they create an interconnected Cambodian American community. Most autobiographical is “Human Development,” in which the narrator is also Anthony, a gay, Stanford-degreed...

Let’s Not Talk Anymore by Weng Pixin [in Shelf Awareness]

30 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Repost, Singaporean, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Singaporean creator Weng Pixin's vibrant Let's Not Talk Anymore began with a "big 'f*ck this, f*ck you!' kind of attitude" after one of her "many disputes and disagreements with [her] Mom." The work made her think more deeply about not just her mother, but her...

My Sweet Girl by Amanda Jayatissa [in Booklist]

29 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, South Asian American, Sri Lankan American

Shifting back and forth between present-day San Francisco and a private orphanage in Sri Lanka in 2002, Jayatissa’s debut thriller takes every opportunity to lead readers astray. Paloma Evans was adopted at 12 by wealthy white parents. At 30, she’s living in a grim apartment,...

If I Tell You the Truth by Jasmin Kaur [in School Library Journal]

22 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Indian American, Poetry, Repost, South Asian American, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

Introduced in Jasmin Kaur’s debut, When You Ask Me Where I’m Going, mother Kiran and daughter Sahaara return in this timely hybrid prose/verse novel that deftly addresses the perils of being undocumented and surviving sexual assault. Kiran enters Canada from India on a student visa, already...

Zara Hossain Is Here by Sabina Khan [in School Library Journal]

21 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Indian American, Pakistani American, Repost, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

Making her solo audiobook debut, Richa Moorjani affectingly channels Zara Hossain, a Corpus Christi, TX, high school senior who stands up to Tyler Benson, the school’s football star who’s also a racist bully. After Zara refuses to stay silent while Tyler and his cronies hassle...

The One Thing You’d Save by Linda Sue Park [in School Library Journal]

19 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Korean American, Poetry, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction

*STARRED REVIEW “Imagine that your home is on fire. You’re allowed to save one thing. / Your family and pets are safe … / Your Most Important Thing. Any size.” With that, Ms. Chang challenges her class to name their Most Important Things. “For once we...

A Song Everlasting by Ha Jin [in Shelf Awareness]

12 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

Powerlessness pervades Ha Jin's perceptive A Song Everlasting, as his protagonist leaves fame and familiarity in one country to flee toward ambiguity and adaptation in another. Freedom, Yao Tian reasons, is his driving motive. National Book Award-winner Jin (A Map of Betrayal), notable for empathically crafting...

Red, White, and Whole by Rajani LaRocca [in School Library Journal]

11 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Indian American, Middle Grade Readers, Poetry, Repost, South Asian American, Verse Novel/Nonfiction

“I have two lives. / One that is Indian, / one that is not,” 13-year-old Reha introduces herself. During the week, she “swim[s] in a river of white skin” at school; “on weekends / [she] “float[s] in a sea of brown skin and black hair...

Infinite Country by Patricia Engel [in Booklist]

10 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Repost, South American, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW When 15-year-old Talia is shocked by the inexplicable, brutal murder of a cat, her outraged sense of fairness immediately takes control and she punishes the feline killer with similar torture – landing her in a remote girls’ prison school for youth offenders. She devises...

China Room by Sunjeev Sahota [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, British Asian, Fiction, Indian, Repost, South Asian

China Room, the outstanding third novel by Sunjeev Sahota, ends with a black-and-white image of an older woman holding a crying infant. That photo – displayed in a dining room in China Room – is the dual narrative's pivotal connector: a "great-grandmother ...

We Two Alone: Stories by Jack Wang [in Shelf Awareness]

16 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW The Chinese diaspora is dispersed across continents and decades in Jack Wang's magnificent debut, We Two Alone (selected as one of the CBC's 2020 Best Canadian Fiction and Quill & Quire's 2020 Books of the Year). Wang's seven-story collection traverses North America, Europe, Africa and Asia, pausing...

You People by Nikita Lalwani [in Shelf Awareness]

31 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, British Asian, Fiction, Repost

Nikita Lalwani's alternating narrators in her remarkable third novel, You People, seemingly have little in common beyond a shared place of employment: a London pizzeria with predominantly undocumented staff. Nia, a 19-year-old Welsh transplant escaping an abusive home life, was asked to leave Oxford University, where...

Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung [in Booklist]

18 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Hong Kongese, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Perhaps what is most noticeable upon opening Pik-Shuen Fung’s elegiac debut is all the white space. Paragraphs, phrases, words, even detached letters float across the pages, undoubtedly an ethereal reflection of lost chances, missing time, stolen opportunities, and spaces impossible to fill. For most of...

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