Politics Archives - Page 2 of 34

Take No Names by Daniel Nieh [in Shelf Awareness]

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

Daniel Nieh, a former international model and Chinese-English translator, introduced his protagonist Victor Li in the gripping Beijing Payback, published in 2019. Nieh's sophomore thriller, Take No Names, heightens the gasp-inducing wild ride of Victor's debut. Although both titles are easily consumable as stand-alone novels – Nieh...

The Carnegie Medal Interview: Hanif Abdurraqib [in Booklist]

23 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Black/African American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

Terry Hong, Booklist Contributing Reviewer and chair of the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence selection committee, had questions for Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance, winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Here is their exchange: A Little Devil...

Brother Alive by Zain Khalid [in Booklist]

09 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab American, Fiction, Repost

Three boys – Youssef, Iseul, Dayo – are born in Saudi Arabia in 1990. Their distant fathers – from Pakistan, Korea, Nigeria – are Muslim students at the University of Markab, where they meet Salim, who will become the boys’ adoptive father. Salim flees Saudi...

The Trees by Percival Everett [in Booklist]

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

Murder is rarely something to laugh about, and yet prolific Percival Everett’s (Telephone, 2020) latest will inspire at least a smirk, if not an out-loud snort (or many) as narrator Bill Andrew Quinn deftly evokes characters living and dead. Welcome to Money, Mississippi, where corpses...

Nuclear Family by Joseph Han [in Booklist]

16 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Grace, 21, and Jacob, 25, are Korean Hawaiian on their father’s side (three Cho generations are currently islanders); maternally, they are both South and North Korean, with their closest Jeong relatives in Seoul. College senior Grace lives at home and works at their parents’ Cho’s...

I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys [in Booklist]

22 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Eastern European, European, Fiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Edoardo Ballerini is that rare talent who instantly, effortlessly transports listeners into a story. His agile adaptability further enhances Ruta Sepetys’ (The Fountains of Silence, 2019) latest historical fiction as he expertly performs characters’ specific details, empathically channels emotions, and deftly reveals a narrative rife...

Where Butterflies Fill the Sky: A Story of Immigration, Family, and Finding Home by Zahra Marwan [in Shelf Awareness]

29 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Arab American, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Memoir, Middle Eastern, Repost

Debut author/illustrator Zahra Marwan's inviting, evocative picture book, Where Butterflies Fill the Sky, presents her family's relocation from one desert to another on the opposite side of the world. Her poignant opening dedication, "To my parents, who should have never had to leave," immediately foreshadows...

Bibliolepsy by Gina Apostol [in Booklist]

21 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Repost

Philippines-born Gina Apostol has earned significant recognition for Insurrecto (2018) and The Gun Dealers’ Daughter (2012). Such success often inspires resurrection of older works, in this case, Apostol’s debut, which she began writing in 1983 at 19 and which won the 1997 Philippine National Book Award. “I changed nothing...

Incense and Sensibility [The Rajes series, Book 3] by Sonali Dev [in Booklist]

27 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

Sonali Dev continues to channel Jane Austen via the Raje family with her third in the series, familiarly, gratefully voiced by Indian American favorite Soneela Nankani. Dev opens with a literal bang: California gubernatorial candidate Yash Raje is shot during a rally. His physical recovery...

Admit This to No One: Collected Stories by Leslie Pietrzyk [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Fourteen exquisite, interlinked stories, set mostly in Washington, D.C., comprise Leslie Pietrzyk's shrewd Admit This to No One. Pietrzyk (Silver Girl) humanizes Beltway insiders (and wannabe outsiders), even as she skewers their hypocrisies, weaknesses, and dreams. In a city where "so, what do you...

The Days of Afrekete by Asali Solomon [in Shelf Awareness]

05 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Uncategorized

What happens in The Days of Afrekete, the second novel by Asali Solomon (Disgruntled), takes just an evening: Liselle Belmont prepares for and hosts a dinner party to thank her husband Winn's loyal supporters, despite a failed political campaign. But Solomon deftly expands the defining event...

The Rooftop by Fernanda Trías, translated by Annie McDermott [in Shelf Awareness]

30 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, South American, Translation, Uruguayan

In the chilling, spare-but-oh-so-dense novel The Rooftop, Uruguyan writer Fernanda Trías introduces Clara – her name a sharp contrast to her uncertainty, her unknowing – as she recounts the life that she announces on the opening page "came to an end today." Once upon a time,...

Songs for the Flames by Juan Gabriel Vásquez, translated by Anne McLean [in Booklist]

11 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Colombian, Fiction, Short Stories, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Prodigious author, journalist, and translator Juan Gabriel Vásquez (Reputations, 2016), one of South America’s most important writers, is once again deftly translated by award-winning Canadian Anne McLean. Four stories provokingly manipulate time. In “Woman on the Riverbank,” a war photographer briefly encounters a politician’s assistant...

Author Interview: Maxine Beneba Clarke [in Shelf Awareness]

27 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Australian, Author Interview/Profile, Children/Picture Books, Repost

Maxine Beneba Clarke: Uplifting Black Lives Matter Around the World Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Afro-Caribbean Australian author/artist who creates across genres and audiences: adult fiction, nonfiction, memoir and children's books. Her award-winning titles are steadily migrating to the United States, including her second picture book...

A Song Everlasting by Ha Jin [in Shelf Awareness]

12 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

Powerlessness pervades Ha Jin's perceptive A Song Everlasting, as his protagonist leaves fame and familiarity in one country to flee toward ambiguity and adaptation in another. Freedom, Yao Tian reasons, is his driving motive. National Book Award-winner Jin (A Map of Betrayal), notable for empathically crafting...

Battles in the Desert by José Emilio Pacheco, translated by Katherine Silver, afterword by Fernanda Melchor [in Shelf Awareness]

05 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latin American, Mexican, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Mexican poet, writer, and essayist José Emilio Pacheco's novella Battles in the Desert returns in a glorious 40th-anniversary edition, re-translated by Katherine Silver from her own decades-old original. Award-winning author Fernanda Melchor appends an illuminating afterword that contextualizes the coming-of-age classic in the Mexican canon. Carlos, still...

Hard Like Water by Yan Lianke, translated by Carlos Rojas [in Booklist]

10 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Fiction, Repost, Translation

In China, notes Yan Lianke’s Anglophone enabler-of-choice Carlos Rojas, there exists “a literary subgenre known as ‘revolution plus love,’ which was popular ...

You People by Nikita Lalwani [in Shelf Awareness]

31 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, British Asian, Fiction, Repost

Nikita Lalwani's alternating narrators in her remarkable third novel, You People, seemingly have little in common beyond a shared place of employment: a London pizzeria with predominantly undocumented staff. Nia, a 19-year-old Welsh transplant escaping an abusive home life, was asked to leave Oxford University, where...

Author Interview: Silvia Moreno-Garcia [in Shelf Awareness]

20 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Canadian, Fiction, Latin American, Mexican, Repost

Silvia Moreno-Garcia: On Publishing, Racism, and a "Real Horror Story" Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a literary chameleon, successfully writing across genres, including speculative short fiction (This Strange Way of Dying), historical fantasy (The Beautiful Ones), magical realism (Gods of Jade and Snow) and horror (Mexican Gothic). She's also edited several anthologies, is the publisher of micro-indie...

Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia [in Shelf Awareness]

19 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Latin American, Mexican, Repost

Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mexican Gothic) opens Velvet Was the Night with an epigraph quoting a June 1971 U.S. Department of State telegram about the Hawks, a murderous Mexican government-trained "shock group" supported by the CIA. She ends with this final sentence in her afterword: "My novel is noir,...

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