*STARRED REVIEW After the brutal murder of his father and the wrenching separation from his mother and sister, Yongju must survive a new life of deprivation after his privileged upbringing as the only son of one of North Korea’s power elite. Danny, a misfit immigrant teen...
“Enemy aliens” is an all too familiar label, although just who gets thusly labeled seems to change with the political winds. With such an aggravated election year, these two words won’t be disappearing from the media anytime soon. Beyond our northern border, our Canadian neighbors did...
China's infamous one-child policy lasted just 35 years. Forced sterilizations, gruesome late-term abortions, an overseas adoption boom, and baby trafficking emerged as by-products of the draconian law. What was touted as a "necessary step in [China's] Herculean efforts to lift the population…from abject poverty" resulted in...
“No one said this global journey would be smooth,” writes Baz Dreisinger with controlled understatement. Covering two years and nine countries in her pilgrimage to prisons worldwide, Dreisinger – a self-described “white English professor specializing in African-American cultural studies,” as well as prison educator and criminal justice...
*STARRED REVIEW For the rest of his life, Ajie would be known as the last person to have seen Paul, the family’s exemplary, exceptional firstborn. On a Monday afternoon during Nigeria’s 1995 rainy season, 17-year-old Paul announces he’s visiting a friend in the next compound; he...
Seneca Village is real. Or was real. Bordered by West 82nd and 89th streets, and between Seventh and Eighth avenues in New York City's Upper West Side, "Seneca Village was Manhattan's first significant community of African American property owners." Founded in 1825, the community – which...
'The Translation of Love' seeks meaning amid the heartache of post-war Tokyo World War II is over, but the struggle to survive remains a daily battle for too many residents of 1947 Tokyo. Debut novelist Lynne Kutsukake gathers a remarkable cast from three countries in The...
Although JFK’s tenure was only 1,036 days, his legacy hasn’t tarnished much. In this volume of the Presidential Powerhouses series, Rowell diverges from too many children’s titles that lionize the youngest-ever POTUS to offer a finely balanced biographical overview. While JFK’s achievements are many – the...
Zomorod Yousefzadeh hasn't "met anyone who has moved so many times before sixth grade." Her peripatetic upbringing has already encompassed long distances – not just in miles, but across cultural, social and political divides, as well. Originally from Abadan, Iran, her family moved to Compton,...
*STARRED REVIEW On an afternoon in November 1999, the 50,000-strong disruption of the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle imploded with tear gas and violence. Sunil Yapa’s debut pivots around teenage runaway Victor, whose initial plans to sell marijuana for profit morphs into tenacious participation with...
Alternate histories have been "a thing" for decades. Lauded titles are many, but World War II-related novels in which the so-called good guys don't win seem to have yielded quite a few bestsellers through the decades, including The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, Fatherland...
At age 6, Özge Samanci was desperate to be "on the other side of the binoculars" – that is, to be at school, being watched by her mother from across the street, just as she and her mother occasionally spotted and waved at her older sister Pelin,...
Exactly a year ago today, POTUS and Cuba's President Raúl Castro announced a joint agreement reestablishing relations between two countries that have maintained a complicated half-century plus of separation. Released December 17, 2014, the official Cuba Policy Changes have made the island nation quite the destination of...
To become a writer, Yiyun Li left behind everything familiar: her birth country (China), her first language (Mandarin), her family (parents and sister), her scientific training (immunology), and her PhD degree (University of Iowa). On the other side of the world, she switched into the...
By 2, he knew he was "perfect." The toddler Riad with his "[l]ong, thick, silky, platinum-blonde hair," might have been "awake for only a few hours a day, but it was enough: when it came to living, [he] was a natural." And so begins the first...
Canadian writer Sharon E. McKay is no stranger to children and war; her numerous books that have highlighted the horrendous effects of adult conflict on the world's youngest citizens have garnered international attention via lauds and awards. Her latest, "endorsed by Amnesty International Canada," as...
*STARRED REVIEW Credited with revitalizing Korea’s publishing industry, Shin’s 2011 Please Look After Mom (the author’s debut in English) made this international powerhouse the first woman to win the Man Asian Literary Prize. Her latest, arriving stateside 20 years after its Korean publication, is part memoir,...
When Pulitzer-ed MacArthur 'Genius' Katherine Boo's first (and thus far only) book debuted in January 2012, I predicted it would be found alongside the nominees/finalists for all the Very Important Literary Prizes that year – indeed, among many, many honors, Boo won the 2012 National Book Award for Nonfiction. What...
