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BookDragon Race/Racism Tag

Jackal by Erin E. Adams [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW On the opening page, debut author Erin E. Adams affectingly invokes Alice Walker – the Black writer of a banned book exposing racist hate – although here, this Alice is just a girl playing in the woods of 1985 Johnstown, Pennsylvania ...

All That’s Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien [in Booklist]

11 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Australian, Australian Asian, Fiction, Repost, Southeast Asian

Denny died at the Lucky 8 restaurant after his high school formal, his “Most Likely to Succeed”-sash still tucked into his borrowed suit. In 1996 small-town Cabramatta, populated by children of Southeast Asian refugees coming of age amidst drug-related violence, Denny was that perfect kid:...

The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid [in Booklist]

30 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Pakistani, Pakistani American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Twice Booker-shortlisted author Mohsin Hamid’s opening sentence immediately recalls one of western literature’s most notable first lines: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” Hamid’s transformer here is Anders, “a white...

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...

Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s Photographs Reveal about the Japanese American Incarceration by Elizabeth Partridge, illustrated by Lauren Tamaki [in Booklist]

08 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, he authorized the removal and imprisonment of over 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. Three photographers – two white and free; one Japanese and imprisoned, relying on contraband...

All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End: The Cartoons of Charles Johnson by Charles Johnson [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Prodigious National Book Award-winning, 1998 MacArthur “Genius” Charles Johnson is now in his 70s, having been repeatedly lauded in multiple genres. Perhaps not as well known is that Johnson began his literary career as a cartoonist (in high school!) – and never stopped drawing,...

The Sense of Wonder by Matthew Salesses [in Shelf Awareness]

28 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

PEN/Faulkner finalist Matthew Salesses, a transracial Korean adoptee, again distills his own experiences with race and (e)masculinity for laudable literary inspiration in The Sense of Wonder. His intricate novel spotlights three basketball players at different points of their careers – starting out, at the pinnacle,...

The Scent of Burnt Flowers by Blitz Bazawule [in Booklist]

27 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Audio, Fiction, Ghanaian, Ghanaian American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW A faux pastor with a costume-shop collar and his not-yet wife; a mermaid with a silver guitar; a pill-popping, weak-hearted FBI agent who withstands gruesome torture; Sidney Poitier signing autographs for Russian soldiers ...

Frizzy by Claribel A. Ortega, illustrated by Rose Bousamra [in Shelf Awareness]

18 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Caribbean American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Claribel A. Ortega (Witchlings) writes buoying books inspired by her Dominican heritage. She empathically takes on the timeless challenges of "good" and "bad" hair in Frizzy, gloriously depicted by debut illustrator Rose Bousamra. Going to the salon every Sunday is "without fail" the "worst part of the week"...

Siren Queen by Nghi Vo [in Booklist]

07 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American

Nghi Vo’s stupendous debut, The Chosen and the Beautiful, alchemized (and improved) The Great Gatsby by shifting narrative control to supporting character Jordan Baker. Vo dramatically gifts similarly transformative autonomy to her latest protagonist, Luli Wei, who is clearly a revisionist stand-in for legendary Asian American film...

Which Side Are You On by Ryan Lee Wong [in Booklist]

01 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In the short opening paragraph introducing a young man watching his mother approach the LAX curb in her new Prius, debut novelist Ryan Lee Wong manages to pack in generation gaps, climate change, brutal colonialism, and “let[ting] go of that ancestral sh*t sooner or later.” Columbia...

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...

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...

Such Big Dreams by Reema Patel [in Booklist]

16 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Novelist Reema Patel and narrator Lavanya Gandhi prove ideally paired, symbiotically making their debuts. Patel, a Toronto lawyer with experience in Mumbai’s human-rights legal sector, draws on her experiences to create Rakhi, a 23-year-old office assistant at Justice for All. Rakhi caught the attention of...

Mika in Real Life by Emiko Jean [in Shelf Awareness]

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

Author Emiko Jean transfers the effusive charm of her YA novels (Tokyo Ever After; Tokyo Dreaming) into her first adult fiction, Mika in Real Life. At age 35, Japanese American Mika is once again jobless. Her career's been inarguably erratic, serially fired from a donut shop, nannying, writing ...

Notes from a Young Black Chef (Adapted for Young Adults) by Kwame Onwuachi with Joshua David Stein [in School Library Journal]

06 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Black/African American, Memoir, Nigerian American, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Narrator Malik Rashad isn’t quite Kwame Onwuachi, who ideally narrated his original 2019 memoir – but here, that’s not necessarily a liability for younger audiences who might need a smidge more animation. Rashad affectingly channels Onwuachi, the self-described “black kid from the Bronx ...

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...

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...

How to Read Now: Essays by Elaine Castillo [in Christian Science Monitor]

27 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Filipina/o American, Nonfiction, Repost

Bracing cultural criticism flows from the pen of Elaine Castillo Provocative and pointed literary criticism in How to Read Now: Essays challenges people to become better, smarter readers. Boundless erudition and eloquent exasperation define Elaine Castillo’s debut nonfiction, How to Read Now, an incandescent collection of essays...

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Smithsonian Institution
Asian Pacific American Center

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600 Maryland Avenue, SW
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202.633.2691 | APAC@si.edu

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About BookDragon

Welcome to BookDragon, filled with titles for the diverse reader. BookDragon is a new media initiative of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (APAC), and serves as a forum for those interested in learning more about the Asian Pacific American experience through literature. BookDragon is inhabited by Terry Hong.

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