The Painting by Nina Schuyler [in AsianWeek]
03 Dec, by in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Japanese, Repost
First and foremost: This is one of the best books I’ve read this year in spite of the historical improbability laid out at the novel’s end. Ayoshi, a woman artist in 1869 Japan, paints in order...
An interesting departure for Desai, who turns to Mexico to tell the story of a hapless Boston graduate student who accompanies his ambitious girlfriend abroad. While wandering, he discovers a lost part of his...
What begins as an arranged marriage between a legendary beauty and a dashing doctor is anything but a happily-ever-after tale. But it is a sweeping love story that will stay...
Incredibly enough, a British novelist has written my own family’s story – on both the Hong and Yi sides. Novel though it may be, here’s proof that my ancestors were beyond crazy. The first...
One of the more intriguing, original novels I’ve come across in a long time – although I can’t really tell you what happened because I still haven’t figured it out. Presented in...
Jen’s third novel is a bittersweet examination of the Wongs, a complicated Chinese American family with a father named Carnegie (!), a Caucasian mother called Blondie, two Asian adoptee daughters, and one towheaded birthson....
An oddly compelling novella about a lonely man who never quite gets the girl – any girl – but is unwilling to give up trying. Indeed, few writers can do isolation quite like Kawabata, the Nobel-Prize-winning...
This new edition of a bestselling classic biographical novel – should be on every student reading list! – includes a new essay, “Reclaiming Polly Bemis,” and discussion questions. <a href="http://www.mccunn.com/"...
Flying Aloft with Chang-rae Lee
Speaking in superlatives about Chang-rae Lee or his work seems somewhat clichéd these days. All three of his novels, Native Speaker, A Gesture Life, and his latest, Aloft, have been so lavishly...
Written by a British Chinese author, Bridge pulls the reader in bit by bit, almost like unraveling a mystery. At the book’s core is the relationship between a young Chinese student living in London...
A powerful collection of prose and poetry by a talented not-yet-30 Korean American writer, named the poet laureate of Queens, New York. In quick snapshots made of words, Park captures...
Okay, so I've been known to get on a soapbox more often than not about inauthentic voices usurping other people's identities, i.e. white men writing as Asian women, especially sets me off – oh,...
I confess I have no idea what really happened in this wacky novel, but it was nonetheless entertaining, if only because it's so totally indescribably unpredictable. From what I gathered, there's a love story...
Listening to the Voices on the Street: A Profile of Performance Artist & Novelist Heather Woodbury
What would eventually become What Ever: A Living Novel first began as a behemoth dare. In 1994, Heather Woodbury, a performance...
An inventive debut collection of interconnected short stories about one Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (no, not that one), an itinerant actor with a vague resemblance to a criminal whom he once portrayed...
Lyrical collection of semi-autobiographical short stories by one of Asia's most famous authors. The title story is a heartbreaking memory piece of a boy's first years that captures through young,...
Min's second historical novel reinvents the life of Tzu Hsi, China's last empress. Although positioned in the collective Chinese memory as an evil, ruthless ruler, the Empress Orchid in Min's world is a strong,...
This behemoth anthology – the largest collection of its kind – made up of 45 Vietnamese authors of various backgrounds, is divided into five thematic sections that represent five contemporary periods of...
A lyrical debut novel about a young Muslim Indian woman, who returns to her ancestral home to fulfill her destiny of marrying her betrothed. But from the very beginning, the...