April is National Poetry Month. Every once in a long while, even a poetry-dullard like me has a poetic WOW!-moment. Certainly I'm not alone ...
Culling together every spare moment I had over a single day (amazing how much more enlightening mindless chores, endless driving, and running can be with a book stuck in your ears!), I managed to listen to all 9.5 hours of Lorraine Toussaint's honeyed narration of...
Somewhere buried in these almost 300 pages (or just over nine hours if you're listening to the husky voice of actress Daphne Rubin-Vega) is a really good book about the quinceañera – the 15th birthday celebration of a Latina which marks her maturity from little girl...
Sometimes, nothing satisfies like a sweeping family saga: convincing enough to believe the characters truly existed beyond the bound pages, long enough to feel like they've become a part of your lives, inspiring enough to mourn their company once the words are finished. Thus is Julie Orringer's...
May-lee Chai’s second novel is one of those titles to consider reading from the end, in this case with the "Acknowledgements," where the Chinese Caucasian hapa Chai recounts her long personal involvement with the Cambodian American community. At 15, writing for her Midwest hometown newspaper in the...
Perhaps because Beth Hoffman's debut is read so charmingly by Jenna Lamia, who also narrated Kathryn Stockett's bestseller The Help, I couldn't help making endless comparisons ...
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...
'Global village' is one of those overused phrases we hear so often we don't actively think about the meaning anymore ...
From the age of 16 when she took a biology class at a community college (making up for a failed high school freshman year because "she never showed up"), award-winning science writer Rebecca Skloot has seemingly spent the majority of her life preparing to write...
Sometimes my inability to process dialects actually has an upside ...
When the local San Francisco public school denied Mamie Tape admission solely based on her Chinese heritage, her parents sued the city's Board of Education in what became the landmark 1885 case, Tape vs. Hurley. Mamie was seven years old, the American-born child of middle-class Chinese...
Given the sheer number of books that arrive in the mailbox, I rarely pick up a title and start reading immediately. But something about Migritude (debuting from fabulous indie publisher Kaya Press: 'Smokin' Hot Books'!!) demanded 'read me NOW!' Once opened, I could hardly put...
I admit that when one of my favorite friends told me she voluntarily gave up enjoying the blooming delights on a family trip through Death Valley in order to finish The Help, I picked up the book for a second time, determined to find out...
To better appreciate this biography of tennis legend Arthur Ashe – first-ever African American Grand Slam champion, #1 tennis champion in the world – read it backwards. That is, turn to the back and first read the "Author's Note" on the last page. Why? Because author Crystal Hubbard...
Here's a solid piece of history ...
I'm not so sure about my tween son reading this sooner than later (it's part of his English curriculum this school year) ...
Words of warning ...
I rarely ever say this: skip the book, and go see the film version of The Blind Side (which got Sandra Bullock her much-deserved Oscar win). The story of Michael Oher – a massive young man estranged from his addict mother, his dysfunctional siblings, and lost to...
"Playing – as others would call it – in the light left no space, no time for interiority, for reflecting on what they had done. Under the glaring spotlight of whiteness, they played diligently, assiduously; the past, and with it conscience, shrunk to a black...
On this eve of 9/11, I'm in a frustrated funk. Regardless of political, religious, cultural, or ethnic affiliations, I think most Americans are shaking their heads at the state of the world, and definitely not shaking enough hands; not enough of us have been able...
