Based on the Ching Yeung Russell's own path toward becoming a writer, Tofu Quilt is one delicious free-verse memoir. In the summer before she starts kindergarten, Yeung Ying is a rambunctious young child who cannot sit still, but can effortlessly recite the difficult classical poems...
Thank goodness young Augusta Savage had a supportive mother to balance out her discouraging father who crushed her youthful sculpture beneath his feet to prevent her from wasting time. "You ought to be reading the Bible instead," her preacher father insisted, "cultivating your mind, saving...
A fictionalized biography of a heroic young man born into slavery in 1814 and determined against all odds to be free. With the history of slaveowners abusing their women slaves reflected in his pale face, Henry Bibb could pass for white. Raised together with the...
Guadalupe Rivera Marín grew up inspiring her legendary artist father, the Mexican muralist and sculptor Diego Rivera. Marin chooses some of her favorite works by her father – including a few for which she sat as his model – and shares both memories and lessons of...
The final installment in the three-volume manwha that began with The Color of Earth and The Color of Water, follows Ewha, now a lovely young woman, and her still-young mother, as both wait for their respective missing lovers. Ewha's Duksam flees the wrath of his...
If you see a book cover with the name Dai Sijie on it, read the book. Dai's delightful 2001 debut, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, about two young boys who discover a love for literature while sequestered in a re-education camp during Mao's Cultural Revolution,...
I have to confess that had my teenaged daughter not handed me the book and said, "it's great, I loved it," I probably wouldn't have finished this latest title from Justina Chen Headley whose debut, Nothing But the Truth (and a few white lies), remains...
Born in Los Angeles to a Scotch-Irish American mother, Leonie Gilmour, and a missing Japanese father, the young boy who would grow up to be Isamu Noguchi moved as toddler to Japan to join his estranged father. When Gilmour realized that the older Noguchi already had...
Told in the three alternating voices of a Chinese mother and her two Chinese American daughters, Fan Wu's second novel weaves a family tapestry filled with the multiple layers of intermixed cultures and generations. Mary, once Guo-Mei, now lives comfortably in Silicon Valley with her American-born...
Since Lisa See's latest has been sitting high on all the best bestseller lists for many weeks, presumably many have already read the story of two sisters and their odyssey from China to LA's Chinatown. I probably should have done the same – read the...
With a father in jail and a mother trying hard to keep her family together, San Lee's peripatetic home life is anything but zen. He's entering yet another new school as an outside eighth-grader – and moving from big town Houston to small-town Pennsylvania isn't...
In her reader's guide at book's end, Naseem Rakha explains how in 1996 she was assigned to cover Oregon's first excecution in over three decades. Once finished with the assignment, she continued to ask questions and "by far the most compelling [stories] were those told...
Every Chinese New Year, Amy’s mother feels particularly homesick for her family living on the other side of the world in China. This year, a package arrives with a letter that tells the story of a remarkable stone found in Uncle Zhong’s fields, that was...
Being a so-called 'normal' teenager for hapa Pakistani Londoner Bilqis SanGreal has never been an option. With an overbearing father who happens to be the Templar Master – even if many believe he murdered his beloved wife – Billi's destiny as the newest, youngest Knight is...
Two seemingly disparate stories open this engrossing debut novel. Latha, who enjoys the smaller luxuries of life – bathing with a stolen bar of pink Lux soap – is both servant and best friend to Thara, the only child of the Vithanages with whom the young...
The eponymous Housekeeper's birthdate is February 20, or written out, 220. The said Professor wears a prize watch inscribed with "President's Prize No. 284." Together, 220 and 284 are amicable numbers. And with that coincidence, the Housekeeper and the Professor begin their amicable relationship ...
Through a collection of sparse free verse, Cheng captures a family in crisis. Ann, not yet 15, can't tell her friends that her mother just lost her breasts to cancer. But everyone seems to know already, asking after her mother and bringing chili with beans...
Not only will you be unable to put this down, you'll have to be careful to remember to breathe while reading this unforgettable debut novel written entirely in free verse. By age 10, Matt Pin has already had a harrowing life as a child of...
Just to see what I might find, I went through the books I've included thus far and among almost 400 entries, I couldn't find more than a handful of titles that have an older protagonist. As the over-65 population in the U.S. has been the...
A gorgeously rendered collection of poems that capture the colorful life of Nesta Robert Marley, born in 1945 to a young island girl just 18 and a 63-year-old British white man in a small town in Jamaica. Although his father quickly abandoned the young family,...
