Mental Illness Archives

Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm by David Mas Masumoto, illustrated by Patricia Miye Wakida [in Shelf Awareness]

19 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Japanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

David Mas Masumoto has built a remarkable career as a third-generation organic peach and grape farmer, which has inspired his award-winning books, including Epitaph for a Peach (1995). What began as "bad poetry" in college after a difficult breakup eventually led to writing a dozen books. Secret...

I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Sehee, translated by Anton Hur [in Booklist]

07 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Korean, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

The cover boasts a recommendation from global phenom BTS’s leader RM. The PR materials tout its “runaway best-seller” status in its native South Korea, where mental illness remains stigmatized in a country with one of the world’s highest suicide rates. As a twentysomething social media director...

When Everything Turned Blue by Alessandro Baronciani, translated by Carla Roncalli di Montorio [in Booklist]

03 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Italian, Nonethnic-specific, Translation, Uncategorized, Young Adult Readers

Marco, Chiara remembers of her close friend, “was not afraid ...

Idol, Burning by Rin Usami, translated by Asa Yoneda [in Shelf Awareness]

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

"Prodigy" comes to mind when examining Rin Usami's brief (thus far) but astounding literary trajectory. Her 2019 debut novel, Kaka, made her the youngest recipient of the prestigious Yukio Mishima Prize. Her intriguing follow-up, Idol, Burning, published in 2020 when Usami was just 21, garnered the...

The Pachinko Parlor by Elisa Shua Dusapin, translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins [in Shelf Awareness]

07 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, French, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Winter in Sokcho, the extraordinary first novel, gorgeously translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins, by French Korean author Elisa Shua Dusapin, won the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature. The two reunite for The Pachinko Parlor, in which Dusapin's remarkably intricate and lean prose reveals...

A Fade of Light by Nate Fakes [in Shelf Awareness]

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

"Ron was a part of almost every major event in my life, whether I liked it or not," writes Nate Fakes – syndicated cartoonist and creator of Break of Day – in A Fade of Light, his tender, intimate graphic memoir about his stepfather. Fakes's mother married...

Hummingbird Heart by Travis Dandro [in Booklist]

27 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Travis Dandro made his graphic title debut with award-winning King of King Court (2019), about his complicated 1980s youth. In this follow-up, he’s a Camaro-driving teenager in 1991 in his final year at home before art school. His heroin-addicted birth father has committed suicide and his...

The Third Person by Emma Grove [in Shelf Awareness]

26 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Debut author Emma Grove's luminous graphic memoir opens with a declaration: "None of the following incidents are made up or invented ...

The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk [in Booklist]

19 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Canadian, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Actor Hannah Cabell’s stage training clearly gives her a stupendous boost in the recording studio; with a mere dozen credits, she’s already superb – and proves herself an ideal audio enabler for Toronto librarian Eva Jurczyk’s novel debut. Liesl Weiss’ boss, Christopher, is lying...

Activities of Daily Living by Lisa Hsiao Chen [in Booklist]

17 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Taiwanese American

More and more, New York-based video editor Alice needs to return to California to manage her chain-smoking, hard-drinking stepfather, who is always referred to as the Father. His “handle on ADLs [activities of daily living] had already been slipping,” and he requires increased levels of...

The Stars Are Not Yet Bells by Hannah Lillith Assadi [in Booklist]

10 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction

Veteran narrator Hillary Huber (soon to hit 700 credits) seems exactly in her element in embodying Hannah Lillith Assadi’s (Sonora, 2017) elegiac second novel of devolving connections, recalled through the scattering memories of an aging woman facing dementia. Once upon a time, Elle was madly in...

Booklist Backlist: Tales of Dementia [in Booklist]

02 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, European, Fiction, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Jewish, Lists, Malaysian American, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Palestinian American, Repost, Spanish, Translation

Gerda Saunders, who wrote Memory’s Last Breath (2017), an exquisitely bittersweet record chronicling her experiences with dementia, is one of my most beloved friends. We have books in common, in that we find great solace and escape in the (well-)written word. Inspired by our last visit...

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward [in Booklist]

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

Catriona Ward’s latest is quite the creepfest addition to psychological thrillers in which houses or buildings star as characters. Veteran Christopher Ragland sounds so appropriately trusting, even as listeners should be well aware: believe no one. The book’s characters couldn’t be more different, but Ragland proves...

Thirty Talks Weird Love by Alessandra Narváez Varela [in Booklist]

29 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

At 13, Anamaria is a beloved daughter, a top-performing student at an elite academy. But she lives in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico on the Texas border in 1999, threatened by looming femicide. And then Anamaria meets Thirty, who insists she’s Anamaria’s 17-years-in-the-future self. Thirty indeed talks...

City of Incurable Women by Maud Casey [in Shelf Awareness]

21 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

At just 128 pages, Maud Casey's compelling City of Incurable Women – ostensibly a historical novel featuring 19th-century French women institutionalized with diagnoses of hysteria – might invite an expeditious single-sitting read. That sparseness obscures its intricate density: hardly straightforward narrative, City of Incurable Women is a...

Committed: Dispatches from a Psychiatrist in Training by Adam Stern [in Booklist]

26 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Jewish, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Adam Stern began his Harvard career feeling like an impostor when he was matched into a Harvard Medical School psychiatry residency impeded, he worried, by his upstate-New York medical degree: “I found myself soaring into one of the most prestigious residency programs in the country,...

Living with Viola by Rosena Fung [in Booklist]

23 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

When new kid Livy enters middle school, she doesn’t yet have friends, but she’s not exactly alone. Viola, her identical blue shadow no one else can see, never leaves her, but she voices every poisonous thought, insisting Livy is a “total disaster” doomed to be...

This Is How I Disappear by Mirion Malle, translated by Aleshia Jensen and Bronwyn Haslam [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Twenty-something Clara could seem content with her life: caring friends, social invitations, cozy apartment, a career in publishing, even a book contract. But French Canadian cartoonist Mirion Malle (The League of Super Feminists) introduces her protagonist with a speech bubble – a disturbing confession revealing...

House of Sticks by Ly Tran [in Booklist]

17 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American

In 1993, 3-year-old Ly Tran arrived in Queens with her parents and three older brothers from South Vietnam. Their new apartment was not the nhà là – “a house made of sticks and dried leaves” – that had been their former home; stability, however, was...

Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost by David Hoon Kim [in Shelf Awareness]

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

In 2007, the New Yorker published "Sweetheart Sorrow," which became the first chapter of David Hoon Kim's enigmatic debut, Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost. The duration of the novel's opening 30ish pages is the only time Fumiko – a Japanese student in Paris who...

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