Parent/child relationship Archives - Page 18 of 101

Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto, illustrated by Ann Xu [in Booklist]

*STARRED REVIEW Commonwealth Writers’ Prize-winning Canadian Japanese novelist/poet Hiromi Goto (Half World, 2010) makes her stupendous graphic debut, in splendid artistic synchronization with Ignatz-nominated Ann Xu. “It never felt right here,” Kumiko thinks as she sneaks out of an assisted-living facility her daughters thought would be the...

Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejidé [in Booklist]

02 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

Back in 1977, “Anacostia was still the New World, an isle of blood and desire.” In Washington, DC-native Morowa Yejidé’s (Time of the Locust, 2014) moody, bleak sophomore title, boundaries between the living and the dead are indiscernible. Once upon a time, Nephthys and Osiris...

A Sweet Mess by Jayci Lee [in Booklist]

01 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

Before Jayci Lee’s latest even hit shelves, Lost/Hawaii Five-0 heartthrob Daniel Dae Kim optioned the rom-com as producer and star. Before Kim goes celluloid, narrator Natalie Naudus whets your appetite with this delectably sweet happily-ever-after affair. With his borrowed car broken down in tiny Weldon, California, celebrity food critic...

Trout, Belly Up by Rodrigo Fuentes, translated by Ellen Jones [in Shelf Awareness]

29 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latin American, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Not until the last of this ingenious seven-story collection do readers get the most intimate glimpse of Don Henrik, and even then, only through the lens of his not-quite stepson. Henrik, however, is the single connecting character in Rodrigo Fuentes's U.S. debut, Trout, Belly...

The Parakeet by Espé, translated by Hannah Chute [in Booklist]

28 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Penn State University Press, already a publisher of award-winning graphic titles, launches a new imprint, Graphic Mundi, showcasing comics intent on “drawing our worlds together.” Among its inaugural line-up is French comics artist Espé’s spectacular, autobiographically inspired homage to a childhood haunted by mental...

Dog Flowers by Danielle Geller [in Shelf Awareness]

26 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Memoir, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Repost

That Danielle Geller survived to write Dog Flowers seems miraculous. Her raw debut might need a content warning: abandonment, alcoholism, attempted suicide, domestic violence, parental incarcerations, family deaths – much of which is intrinsically linked to her enigmatic, missing mother. In bearing elegiac witness to...

Parenthesis by Élodie Durand, translated by Edward Gauvin [in Booklist]

22 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

At 24, “in 1994, or maybe 1995 already,” French artist Élodie Durand first began experiencing symptoms – what her family would later call her “spells” – that included abrupt memory loss and erratic behavior, such as baseless rage and violent outbursts. Her diagnosis of epilepsy...

The Adoption by Zidrou, illustrated by Arno Monin, translated by Jeremy Melloul [in Booklist]

19 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW “They wanted to start a family, and now they’ve destroyed one,” Gabriel laments. When that family – including his closest friends – all gathered for a surprise party for his 75th birthday, Gabriel was still a grandfather to beloved Qinaya, adopted by his son,...

The Committed by Việt Thanh Nguyễn [in Booklist]

18 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Vietnamese American

Six years since his first novel, The Sympathizer, won the Carnegie Medal and the Pulitzer Prize, Việt Thanh Nguyễn is back with the much-anticipated second installment in a planned trilogy. Here, the same unreliable narrator adds another few hundred pages to the already 367-page confession he...

Three Keys [Front Desk 2] by Kelly Yang [in Booklist]

14 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

The lively cast of Front Desk returns with narrator Sunny Lu, adding much-appreciated continuity. A relative audiobook newbie, Lu proves her expertise in ciphering middle graders to middle-aged adults. That she’s also an attorney makes the lawyers here – both the pompous and the heroic –...

Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth [in Library Journal]

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

On her 15th birthday, Janey's mother confesses that her thought-to-be-sperm-banked father is actually a real person still living in the southern Iowa town from which her mother escaped by going to New York City to "give her coming daughter a better life." Janey ignores her...

Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi [in Shelf Awareness]

11 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Uncategorized

Youthful romance has made Mary H.K. Choi (Permanent Record; Emergency Contact) a bestselling #OwnVoices author. In Yolk, she effectively pivots toward the familial, focusing the most significant of the book's relationships on two Seoul-born, San Antonio-raised sisters. Devoted audiences need not worry here about missing a love...

Author Interview: Emiko Jean [in Shelf Awareness]

07 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Emiko Jean: Searching for Belonging When Emiko Jean isn't writing, she's reading. Before she became a writer, she was an entomologist, a candlemaker, a florist, and most recently, a teacher. She is the author of Empress of All Seasons and We'll Never Be Apart. In her third novel, Tokyo Ever After (Flatiron...

Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean [in Shelf Awareness]

06 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Japanese, Japanese American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

After finding success with a psychological thriller, then a historical fantasy, Emiko Jean turns to contemporary romance with absolutely delightful aplomb. While the "I'm really a princess" trope is an enduringly popular narrative theme, Jean's effervescent third novel, Tokyo Ever After, is a fresh, funny, emotive,...

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 –...

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy [in Booklist]

30 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Australian, Fiction, Irish, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Seasoned narrator Barrie Kreinik showcases her prowess as a dialect coach as she embodies Charlotte McConaghy’s vast cast around the world from Australia to Ireland to Greenland, traversing quickly emptying terrains and oceans. Making her adult fiction debut, McConaghy introduces Franny Stone, an untethered...

The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar [in Booklist]

28 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Repost, Syrian American

*STARRED REVIEW “Exceptional” is the only word for such a confluence of multiple #OwnVoices as the trifecta of trans Arab artists (author, character, and narrator) gathered to create this audible literary feast. In alternating epistolary chapters set decades apart, trans activist Samy Figaredo (making their audio...

I Just Wanted to Save My Family: A Memoir by Stéphan Pélissier with Cécile-Agnès Champart, translated by Adriana Hunter [in Shelf Awareness]

23 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, French, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Translation

The title alone is a universally resounding cry for help: I Just Wanted to Save My Family. It also proves to be French legal expert and first-time author Stéphan Pélissier's best defense to challenge a guilty verdict that demands seven years of imprisonment. Co-written with Cécile-Agnès Champart...

The Opium Prince by Jasmine Aimaq [in Shelf Awareness]

22 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Afghan, Afghan American, Canadian, Fiction, Repost

In her extraordinary fiction debut, The Opium Prince, Afghan Swedish academic and communications expert Jasmine Aimaq, who lives in Canada, combines elements of literary thriller, sociopolitical exposé, and historical witnessing. The Afghan people lived in relative – albeit tense – balance between the 1973 coup d'etat...

Monogamy by Sue Miller [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Narrating the fourth of her own books, Sue Miller doesn’t so much perform as empathically embody her 13th title – the result is an aural gift to her avid readers. Three decades into Graham and Annie’s marriage, Graham unexpectedly dies in his sleep. He...

BookDragon Parent/child relationship Tag