Politics Archives - BookDragon

Big Man and the Little Men by Clifford Thompson [in Booklist]

23 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost

Award-winning memoirist, essayist, and visual artist Clifford Thompson gets full-color graphic in his hand-drawn debut that piercingly bares the behind-the-scenes manipulations of a contentious presidential campaign. April Wells is an Oprah-endorsed Black author recognized by autograph-seeking admirers, but as she sits weeping in her therapist’s...

Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed, translated by Deena Mohamed [in Booklist]

20 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Egyptian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Egyptian artist and writer Deena Mohamed deservedly won the Best Graphic Novel and the Grand Prize at the 2017 Cairo Comix Festival for Shubeik Lubeik, the title explained as “a fairy tale rhyme that means ‘your wish is my command’ in Arabic.” Mohamed herself...

Canción by Eduardo Halfon, translated by Lisa Dillman and Daniel Hahn [in Shelf Awareness]

09 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Jewish, Memoir, Repost, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Eduardo Halfon (Mourning; Monastery) has published a dozen books in Spanish; four are currently available in English translations. Seeming to challenge his substantial output, Halfon explained in a 2015 comment to Shelf Awareness, "I'm only writing one book, and everything I publish along the way is just...

An Arrow to the Moon by Emily X.R. Pan [in School Library Journal]

25 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Taiwanese American, Young Adult Readers

Emily X.R. Pan melds east and west in a hybrid fantasy/reality novel inspired by two sets of star-crossed lovers: China’s Houyi and Chang’e (the Archer and the Moon Goddess) and Romeo and Juliet. In 1991, Hunter Yee and Luna Chang are 17-year-old seniors at Fairbridge...

Blood Scion [Blood Scion, Book 1] by Deborah Falaye [in School Library Journal]

22 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in African, Audio, Black/African American, Canadian, Fiction, Nigerian, Nigerian American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Nigerian Canadian author Deborah Falaye’s Yoruban mythology-inspired debut (introducing a planned duology) presents Nagea, a nation brutalized by the genocidal Lucis. Only her grandfather has managed to keep 15-year-old Sloane safe, until she’s drafted into the army. Being a Scion – “a descendent of the...

I Was a Rat! by Philip Pullman [in School Library Journal]

16 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, British, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Philip Pullman’s 1999 fairy-tale-adjacent, murine fable begets a delightful audio adaptation, gloriously dramatized by British actor Robert Glenister, who effortlessly showcases a dazzlingly vast cast. One moonlit night, a little boy in a torn uniform knocks on cobbler Bob and washerwoman Joan’s door announcing,...

Pilar Ramirez and the Escape from Zafa [Pilar Ramirez, Book 1] by Julian Randall [in School Library Journal]

15 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Caribbean American, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

Escaping the Dominican Republic’s murderous Trujillo regime is how Julian Randall’s own family arrived in the United States two generations ago. His debut novel seamlessly combines that history – political and personal – with Dominican mythology for his Pilar Ramirez duology (book two publishes February...

Planes by Peter Baker [in Booklist]

26 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Italian, Moroccan, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Palestinian American Lameece Issaq expertly ciphers debut-novelist Peter C. Baker’s quartet with equal conviction beyond geographies, genders, and backgrounds. In Rome, Amira – born Maria, now a convert to Islam – works in a shop and returns to an empty apartment because her immigrant husband...

The Fervor by Alma Katsu [in Booklist]

24 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost

Historical horror master Alma Katsu augments an already terrifying occurrence – the U.S. imprisonment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent during WWII – by crafting this intricately plotted supernatural-tinged thriller. To underscore the reality, Katsu’s dedication points to her mother “for her stories of childhood...

Cicatrix by Elle [in Booklist]

23 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost

Cicatrix, or scar, encompasses multilayered meanings in queer, Manila-based artist Elle’s U.S. debut. They begin with “a firm bump … just below [their] left ear, about the diameter of a five-peso coin” – and a confession that “every time I get sick, I always think...

After Lambana: Myth and Magic in Manila by Eliza Victoria, illustrated by Mervin Malonzo [in Booklist]

19 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost

Conrad needs help. He’s suffering from a fatal disease, and mitigating the excruciating agony is all he can do. Ignacio seems to be his only hope, navigating him through the Manila streets where humans – and other beings – pass between worlds. Beyond the last...

My Nest of Silence by Matt Faulkner [in Booklist]

17 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW After learning of Europe’s Nazi concentration camps as a child, Matt Faulkner also discovered how Americans of Japanese descent were unjustly imprisoned during WWII, a revelation made more urgent because of family connections: his great-aunt Adeline; her daughter, Mary; and Mary’s children were held...

A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Debut author Belinda Huijuan Tang's immigrant father is a gregarious storyteller, especially about his rural Chinese upbringing, but he has one story he's never been able to finish, about his lost father. Tang empathically transforms that incomplete memory into her exquisite novel, A Map for...

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Bird is 12. Home is a 10th-floor dorm apartment without a working elevator. His Harvard professor father has been demoted to clerical duties at the library. Since his mother, Margaret, left three years ago, Bird is called Noah, anything to disassociate from her since she’s...

The Lemon Tree (Young Readers’ Edition): An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan [in School Library Journal]

31 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Arab, Audio, Biography, Jewish, Middle Eastern, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Palestinian, Repost, Young Adult Readers

“I wanted to write a history book in disguise,” journalist and professor Sandy Tolan announces, “and to make it feel, throughout, like a good novel. Even though the story is true.” Tolan voiced his original; here Rami Medina makes his audiobook debut: his rich, youthful...

Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask: Young Readers Edition by Anton Treuer [in School Library Journal]

29 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Middle Grade Readers, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW “Indians. We are so often imagined, but so infrequently well understood,” Anton Treuer’s opening sentence reads. As a Princeton-educated, Ojibwe professor with “one foot in the wigwam and one in the ivory tower,” Treuer “cannot speak for all Indians,” but he’s ready with “specific...

A Rebel in Auschwitz: The True Story of the Resistance Hero Who Fought the Nazis from Inside the Camp by Jack Fairweather [in School Library Journal]

22 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Biography, European, Jewish, Nonfiction, Polish, Repost, Young Adult Readers

What’s immediately striking here is the casting of a woman to narrate: the titular rebel is the Polish hero – a man – Witold Pilecki. So, too, is the author, Jack Fairweather, who adapted his 2019 award-winning The Volunteer. The reasons for choosing a female...

The Burning (Young Readers Edition): Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 by Tim Madigan, adapted by Hilary Beard [in School Library Journal]

21 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Black/African American, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Two decades after Tim Madigan wrote The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 about “the nation’s worst race war,” award-winning writer Hilary Beard heightens the event’s significance with amplified awareness of social justice, systemic racism, and critical race theory in this young...

Killers of the Flower Moon: Adapted for Young Readers: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann [in School Library Journal]

20 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW David Grann’s adaptation of his 2017 mega-bestselling title of the same name has lost none of the urgency of the astounding original. Once upon a time, “the Osage were considered the wealthiest people per capita in the world,” a result of the oil beneath...

Sisters of the War: Two Remarkable True Stories of Survival and Hope in Syria by Rania Abouzeid [in School Library Journal]

14 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Arab American, Audio, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Young Adult Readers

Adapted from No Turning Back, award-winning Lebanese Australian journalist Rania Abouzeid narrows her focus here to younger characters forced to witness Syria’s decimation under President Bashar Hafez al-Assad. In 2011, Hanin is 8, the middle of three sisters living in the “fringes” of Damascus. Although the...

BookDragon Politics Tag