In Full Bloom by Caroline Hwang [in AsianWeek]
A wacky first novel about Korean American Ginger Lee, an English PhD dropout working in the fashion industry and trying to avoid her well-intentioned mother’s attempts to marry her off before she...
A wacky first novel about Korean American Ginger Lee, an English PhD dropout working in the fashion industry and trying to avoid her well-intentioned mother’s attempts to marry her off before she...
Already a bestseller in France, where it was first published, Satrapi’s achievement is capturing her childhood in spare comic book images that speak utter volumes. Satrapi, whose great grandfather was a Persian emperor, recalls her life...
Xinran: The Voice of the Good Women of China
The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices is one of those books you just can’t put down. Part memoir, part history, part tragedy, part social documentary, Good Women...
Touching remembrances of a little girl's mother when she herself was a little girl. And yes, it's one of those books that puts a real lump in the...
Hahn is unflinching in her exploration of life – from murdering mothers to searching daughters to waiting wives, to necrophilia to fairy tales to deformed bodies ….
Review: "New and Notable Books," AsianWeek,...
Already a bestseller in India and Australia, this debut novel by LeHunte (who is hapa of South Asian and British parents) centers around the family of Aakash, a sage and healer who...
When My Name Was Keoko is the first title for young audiences to deal with the Japanese occupation of Korea during the first half of the 20th century, a torturous part of history about which few...
Journey to the East: Katy Robinson's search for her Korean family in A Single Square Picture
BOISIE, IDAHO — In 1977 at the age of 7, Kim Ji-yun left Seoul and arrived in...
Fox Girl takes readers back to post-Korean War “America Town,” where the abandoned, racially mixed children of U.S. soldiers fought for bare survival and Korean women continued to service occupying GIs in order to put food...
Journey to the East
A single Polaroid captures the day that Katy Robinson’s life changed forever. Her mother’s worried face, her grandmother’s stoic grimace, and Katy’s childishly silly smile mark the day that...
Linda Sue Park's Post-Newbery Award Life
Although Linda Sue Park was just 9 when her work was first published – a haiku for a children’s magazine – it would be almost three decades before she attempted her...
With some 30,000 Chinese children, mostly daughters, being raised throughout the West, books addressing transracial adoption are growing rapidly. Wuhu Diary: On Taking My Adopted Daughter Back to Her Hometown in China, by novelist Emily Prager,...
Asian American young-adult king Laurence Yep offers two books with recurring characters: In The Amah, Amy learns to shoulder more family responsibility when her widowed mother takes a time-consuming job, while in Angelfish, Amy's friend Robin...
International Quest: Paisley Rekdal’s Search for Identity
Born to a Chinese mother and a Norwegian father, Paisley Rekdal has traversed the world, in search of her identity,...
As I read Karen Shepard’s debut novel, An Empire of Women, I couldn’t help thinking if the title was some sort of sarcastic joke, if not a blatant mistake, because the utter...
Lost and Found: An Interview with Karin Evans
Just days after the death of her beloved father, Karin Evans and her husband, Mark, experienced one of the most joyful events of...
Kyoko Mori’s Stone Field, True Arrow is a love story – or sorts. An exasperating one, at that, filled with characters emotionally paralyzed to the point of utter immobility. Maya...
My initial reaction – and it does not fade through the course of the book – is utter annoyance at yet another non-Asian exoticizing, objectifying, making inscrutable the Asian culture and its people. But...
A Legacy of Survival
What began as a casual lunch in San Francisco with a then-business acquaintance ended in a cathartic literary accomplishment for journalist Elizabeth Kim. After exchanging life stories, agent Patti...
Mei-Mei sees what she thinks will be the perfect Christmas present for herself and her mother – a giant stuffed bear. She saves money for the expensive gift, even having a cookie sale. The...