Mixed-race issues Archives - Page 2 of 10

Monkey Boy by Francisco Goldman [in Shelf Awareness]

11 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Jewish, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW That the protagonist's name is Francisco Goldberg – an amalgam of maternal Guatemalan immigrant and paternal Jewish parentage – presents an irresistible invitation to explore autobiographical overlaps with award-winning creator Francisco Goldman. The parallels are immediate: both are peripatetic journalist/writers with connections to Boston,...

Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho [in Booklist]

26 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean, Korean American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW “In my lifetime, I’ve had at least three mothers,” Grace M. Cho writes. After surviving the Korean War, Cho’s mother worked as a bar girl at a U.S. naval base during the U.S. occupation of South Korea. In 1971, she married Cho’s father, a...

Lies We Bury by Elle Marr [in Booklist]

21 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

Claire Lou is restarting her life in Portland, Oregon, where she’s managed to find a new apartment (never mind the money she still owes on the security deposit) and she’s even gotten herself hired as the Portland Post’s photographer. Her mother is just two hours...

Clues to the Universe by Christina Li [in Booklist]

14 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

Relative newbie Mimi Chang and seasoned Josh Hurley prove well-paired narrating two 12-year-old seventh-graders in 1980s Sacramento who initially seem to share little more than loneliness – and the specter of missing fathers. Ro’s father is dead, killed by a drunk driver. She hasn’t moved houses,...

The Parted Earth by Anjali Enjeti [in Booklist]

08 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

Before partition, the bloody 1947 cleaving that established India and Pakistan, Deepa was a happy teen in Delhi, loved by two parents who ran a medical clinic serving all in need. But hatred, politics, and fire destroyed her life. She left India, seemingly if not...

Speak, Okinawa: A Memoir by Elizabeth Miki Brina [in Shelf Awareness]

10 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Japanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Elizabeth Miki Brina claims her voice with resounding clarity in her memoir, Speak, Okinawa. As the daughter of a U.S. soldier with Jamestown ancestry and an Okinawan immigrant mother, Brina's identity was always a negotiation of race, class, privilege. By opening her stupendous book...

Fifty Words for Rain by Asha Lemmie [in Library Journal]

05 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Japanese, Repost

While Asha Lemmie's debut – about the tribulations of an illegitimate, mixed-race granddaughter of a cousin to the royal Japanese family – might not be perfect, she certainly deserves better than this lazy aural travesty. Floundering, misrepresentative audiobook adaptations have been rerecorded and rereleased –...

Aftershocks: A Memoir by Nadia Owusu [in Shelf Awareness]

14 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Memoir, Repost

A stepmother's unwanted visit, a mother's unexpected phone call, a lover's departure – all happening in a single month – precipitated the breakdown that eventually engendered Whiting Award winner Nadia Owusu's penetrating debut memoir, Aftershocks. Owusu spent her youth navigating multiple continents, a half dozen countries,...

Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha Trethewey [in Booklist]

03 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey makes both her prose and narrating debut with a startling memoir that alchemizes neverending trauma into an exquisite memorial. On June 5, 1985, Trethewey’s mother, Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough, was murdered by former stepfather Joel Grimmett on Atlanta’s Memorial...

Kimiko Does Cancer by Kimiko Tobimatsu, illustrated by Keet Geniza [in Booklist]

30 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Filipina/o American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese American, Memoir, Repost

“I’m not a big fan of the common sentiment, ‘Cancer made me a better person,’” Kimiko Tobimatsu admits in her author’s note. “But then, cancer did make me a better person.” Diagnosed at 25 with “a rare form of breast cancer – mucinous,” Tobimatsu is...

The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta [in School Library Journal]

03 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, British, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW British-born to a Greek Cypriot mother and Jamaican father, Dean Atta established himself as a poet and performer in 2012. Here he gorgeously debuts as both author and narrator of his novel-in-verse in which his fictional stand-in, Michael Angeli, matures from an end-of-the-millennium baby...

Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan [in Booklist]

02 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, European, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Singaporean, Singaporean American

Following the über-success of his three-part Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin Kwan returns with another over-the-top bestseller, this time contemporizing and diversifying E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View. Lydia Look, narrator for previous Kwan titles, ushers the characters through a (practically) royal East/West wedding in Capri, then a...

A World Between by Emily Hashimoto [in Booklist]

25 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian American, Japanese American, Repost

Eleanor and Leena meet in 2004 in a Boston college-dorm elevator. Eleanor is a hapa Californian – her mother is white, her father Japanese American. Leena’s traditionally immigrant Indian American family is a few towns over in Lowell. That fall semester is spent intensely falling,...

Happiness Will Follow by Mike Hawthorne [in Booklist]

23 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Latina/o/x, Memoir, Nonfiction, Puerto Rican, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Born Michael Anthony Hawthorne, his last name was “swiftly pilfered from [his] father” by his Puerto Rican mother “to keep [him] safe in ways she never was.” Yet surviving into adulthood was a near-superhuman feat: his single mother’s fierce love came with horrific stipulations...

When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller [in School Library Journal]

02 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

Keller's narrative can't be faulted – the story is achingly gorgeous. A widowed Korean American mother and her two mixed-race daughters move from California to Washington to live with their glamorous, unconventional Halmoni – grandmother" in Korean. Older sister Sam – suffering from sullen teenagerhood...

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Brit Bennett was widely awarded for The Mothers (2016), and her highly-anticipated sophomore title – regardless of medium – won’t disappoint. With exacting nuance, narrator Shayna Small immediately distinguishes one Vignes twin sister from the other. Desiree, the “fidgety twin...

The Shape of Family by Shilpi Somaya Gowda [in Booklist]

23 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

Once upon a time, the Olander quartet was just about perfect: white American Keith and Indian-born cosmopolitan Jaya fall madly in love in London and eventually settle in northern California to raise their two children. When eight-year-old Prem drowns in the family’s pool, 13-year-old Karina...

Inheritors by Asako Serizawa [in Shelf Awareness]

20 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Japanese American, Repost

Pieces of Asako Serizawa's intriguing novel-in-interlinked-stories, Inheritors, have been published since 2005 and winning awards (O. Henry, Pushcart) since 2013. Her acknowledgements reveal "this book [took] so long to write," but her tenacity is a gift to readers. With 13 stories featuring five generations of...

Turtle Under Ice by Juleah del Rosario [in School Library Journal]

14 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

Juleah del Rosario's sophomore novel-in-verse is a haunting elegy, revealed in the back-and-forth voices of two sisters. Rowena is the star soccer athlete, Ariana the artist who might not graduate. They're students at the same high school, but the older hardly acknowledges the younger; at...

The Madwoman and the Roomba: My Year of Domestic Mayhem by Sandra Tsing Loh [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Despite the "golden years" promised by many, for writer, performer, and University of California, Irvine, professor Sandra Tsing Loh, her "fifty-fifth year was more like living a disorganized twenty-five-year-old's life in a malfunctioning eighty-five-year-old's body." With the same self-deprecating wit and sardonic charm with...

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