BookDragon Post-9/11 Tag

The Royal Abduls by Ramiza Shamoun Koya [in Shelf Awareness]

16 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

In her provocative, intense debut novel, The Royal Abduls, Ramiza Shamoun Koya introduces the extended members of a fractured family four years after the horrors of 9/11. Each is attempting to deal with ongoing anti-Muslim challenges, from microaggressions to outright civil rights abuses. Despite a shared...

Audio Picks for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month [in School Library Journal]

08 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Filipina/o, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian, Indian American, Iranian, Iranian American, Korean American, Lists, Middle Grade Readers, Persian, Persian American, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian, South Asian American, Taiwanese American, Young Adult Readers

May is Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month. Why May? The first Japanese people immigrated to the United States on May 7, 1843, and the transcontinental railroad – built mostly with immigrant Chinese labor – was completed on May 10, 1869. In 1977, Congressional legislation...

The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo [in Library Journal]

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

Columbia undergrads Lucy and Gabe meet in a Shakespeare seminar – on 9/11. Their class – including the professor who glibly asks if the pilot was drunk when his TA announces the first tower crash – is as yet unaware of the devastating reverberations to...

Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age by Amani Al-Khatahtbeh [in Library Journal]

25 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab American, Audio, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

On September 11, 2001, 9-year-old Amani Al-Khatahtbeh should have been enjoying Yearbook Day at her New Jersey elementary school. Instead, “[t]hat day has become crystallized in my memory,” Al-Kahatahtbeh writes – and narrates, “not just for how harrowingly scary it [was] – how we didn’t...

14 Cows for America by Carmen Agra Deedy in collaboration with Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah, illustrated by Thomas Gonzalez

31 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in African, Black/African American, Children/Picture Books, Cuban American, Nonfiction

Kimeli, a young Maasai man, returns to his village in Kenya after being away for a long time with “one story [that] has burned a hole in his heart.” He remembers the “[b]uildings so tall they can touch the sky,” he saw the “[f]ires so hot...

Towers Falling by Jewell Parker Rhodes [in School Library Journal]

28 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

The Avalon Family Residence might sound nice, but it's not: "peeling paint, cockroaches…our tiny room." Dèja, her parents, and her two younger siblings are homeless, currently staying in a Brooklyn shelter. Her father can't work, and her exhausted mother is menially employed. As Dèja starts fifth...

The Boat Rocker by Ha Jin [in Library Journal]

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

*STARRED REVIEW When Fen Danlin first landed in New York to join his wife, Yan Haili, she delivered him to a "seedy" Chinatown inn with $500 and instructions to stay – alone – within walking distance of an arranged restaurant job. She returned the next day...

The Lake Shore Limited by Sue Miller

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

Gus – beloved brother, favorite teacher, a vibrant, sunny young man in love – is a victim of 9-11. His presence looms on every page, although his actual words can only be filtered through someone else's memory throughout the novel. Still, he proves to be the pivotal character who brings together...

The Caretaker by A.X. Ahmad

05 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, South Asian, South Asian American

For you DC-area-locals who were wondering, debut novelist A.X. Ahmad is one of us ...

The Submission by Amy Waldman

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

This is one of those spectacular titles that the less you know about it, the better your read. The amazing levels of meaning contained in the title alone makes it worth your utmost attention. Of course, if you haven't been hiding under a rock (like me),...

Netherland by Joseph O’Neill

21 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, European, Fiction, South Asian, Turkish

To reduce this rich, complicated, multi-layered story into a few sentences seems almost disrespectful ...

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

22 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Audio, British, Fiction

Having finished one Chris Cleave novel, I had to immediately start another without even missing a step (literally, as both books were loaded one after the other on the iPod – with Little Bee narrated with careful control by Anne Flosnik – and I was out running...

Incendiary by Chris Cleave

21 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, Fiction

For awhile, before it became an international bestseller, Chris Cleave's debut novel was known not so much for the actual details of its content, but for the fact that the book was generally about a London bombing and that the surreal timing of its publication...

Harbor by Lorraine Adams

17 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Arab, Fiction

According to her official website bio, Lorraine Adams left her Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper career in 2000 "to recount the lost stories of Algerians she knew without the strictures of journalism, and the conventional sentiment of the moment." Even before 9/11, Adams well understood about "ambiguity" and...

One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature edited by Zohra Saed and Sahar Muradi, foreword by Mir Tamim Ansary

27 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Afghan American, Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Short Stories

The title of this diverse anthology is taken from the opening line of Afghan fairy tales, not unlike 'once upon a time.' In this case, afsanah, seesanah – one story, thirty stories...

A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb by Amitava Kumar [in Christian Science Monitor]

17 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Indian, Indian American, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

If Rip Van Winkle were to read A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb upon waking, he would most likely shake his head and dismiss it as farce. Alas, you’ll only find this title in the “non-fiction” section of bookstores and...

Author Interview: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni [in Bloomsbury Review]

10 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

Sharing Humanity: A Talk with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni about Her Latest Novel, One Amazing Thing Over the last decades, tragedies – both human-made and those wrought by an ever-angry Mother Nature – seem to be coming at humankind with fast and furious regularity. The latest oil...

Arab in America by Toufic El Rassi

13 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

If the observations, memories, and pop culture references here weren't so obviously recognizable in our post-9/11 western world, you might have read this graphic memoir as a hack comedy. The black-and-white panels initially seem almost unfinished, as if still in rough-draft mode. The contents might...

One Amazing Thing: A Novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

02 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian American, South Asian American

When the "big one" (for me) hit on October 17, 1989 at 5:04 p.m., I was alone in our house, which sat on Blueberry Hill near the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains. I was barely a few miles from the epicenter of the 7.1...

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie

13 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Afghan, British, British Asian, Fiction, Indian, Japanese, Pakistani, South Asian

Even though it's only April (and the book doesn't even hit stands until next month), I'm announcing with absolute certainty that Burnt Shadows gets my unwavering vote as THE Book of the Year. I'll only be too happy to eat my words because that can only mean...