Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
01 Feb, by in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers
Today begins Black History Month ...
BookDragon Race/Racism Tag
Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary by Elizabeth Partridge
22 Jan, by in Black/African American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction
Once upon a time not so long ago, Americans were willing to risk their very lives for the privilege to cast their votes. Since the 1970s, just over half of U.S. citizens eligible to vote have turned out for Presidential elections (with the exception of...
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
05 Jan, by in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, African, Cambodian, Chinese American, Indian, Middle Eastern, Nonfiction, Southeast Asian
Half the Sky is a remarkable, life-changing book. It should be required reading for all adults (and more mature young adults), but especially for us overprivileged, lucky-solely-by-chance-of-birth citizens of the West. If there is ONE book you read this new year, let it be this...
Not Quite Paradise: An American Sojourn in Sri Lanka by Adele Barker [in Christian Science Monitor]
30 Dec, by in Adult Readers, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Sri Lankan
Three weeks after 9/11, University of Arizona professor Adele Barker arrived in Sri Lanka as a senior Fulbright Scholar to teach Russian literature, feminist literary theory, and American literature to select students at the University of Peradeniya. But her own education about the history and...
Surviving the Angel of Death: The Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz by Eva Mozes Kor and Lisa Rojany Buccieri
08 Dec, by in European, Jewish, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers
Eva Mozes Kor survived the Holocaust because she was an identical twin. After a grueling journey from her native Romania which eventually ended at the infamous Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, Eva and her twin Miriam were immediately separated from their parents and two older sisters....
Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang, foreword by Frank Rich
02 Dec, by in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Chinese American, Drama/Theater
Surely, I have never been part of a more raucous audience than when I saw David Henry Hwang's latest play, Yellow Face, at New York's Public Theater in December 2007. The man at the end of the row in front of us LITERALLY FELL OUT...
Leaving Yesler by Peter Bacho + Author Interview
20 Nov, by in Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Southeast Asian American, Young Adult Readers
On Old-Timers, Boxing, and Lots of Sex (mostly off the page ...
Blended Nation: Portraits and Interviews of Mixed-Race America, photographs and interviews by Mike Tauber, co-produced by Pamela Singh, foreword by Ann Curry, introduction by Rebecca Walker
19 Nov, by in Adult Readers, Hapa/Mixed-race, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers
Stupendous and spectacular come immediately to mind when you look at this book. Not to mention a bit of "oof!" over its hefty size and weight – it's full of gravitas, after all! Mike Tauber's photographs are breathtaking, laid out simply to let the gorgeous...
Waltz with Bashir: A Lebanon War Story by Ari Folman and David Polonsky
10 Nov, by in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Israeli, Jewish, Lebanese, Memoir, Palestinian, Young Adult Readers
No, I have not seen the film version of this title. The book is brutal enough on flat pages. I think moving pictures just might send me over the edge. That said, this riveting, nightmarish title should be required reading for anyone contemplating going to...
The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak
28 Oct, by in Adult Readers, Armenian American, Audio, Fiction, Turkish
Even before this book hit U.S. shelves, French-born Turkish author Elif Shafak was charged with insulting "Turkishness" in violation of Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code because one of her characters refers to the large-scale massacre of Armenians that began in 1915 in Turkey as...
The German Mujahid by Boualem Sansal, translated by Frank Wynne
26 Oct, by in Adult Readers, African, European, Fiction, Translation
Prominently noted on the cover as "The first Arab novel to confront the Holocaust" and banned in the author's native Algeria, The German Mujahid is also based on a true story, making it an even more disturbing, striking read. To add to its authenticity, the novel...
Salt and Saffron by Kamila Shamsie
23 Oct, by in Adult Readers, British Asian, Fiction, Pakistani, South Asian
First an interruption: I learned a very entertaining meaning for a certain common(-ish) word on the first page of Shamsie's second novel: 'bugaboo.' "It's a word that demands to be said out loud," writes Shamsie, "particularly among bilingual Pakistanis who recognize its resemblance to 'baghal...
The Silence of God and Other Plays by Catherine Filloux
23 Oct, by in Adult Readers, Cambodian, Drama/Theater, Jewish, Nonethnic-specific, Southeast Asian, Turkish
Playwright Catherine (pronounced Ka-treen) Filloux has built her dramatic reputation on giving voice to lost, overlooked souls. In Lemkin's House, Filloux presents the struggle of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish American lawyer whom she refers to as her "historical soulmate," a man who coined the term "genocide"...
Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka 005 by Naoki Urasawa and Osamu Tezuka, co-authored by Takashi Nagasaki, supervised by Macoto Tezka
03 Oct, by in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers
As this volume is currently the last one available in English, I DID try and save and savor it ...
Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka 004 by Naoki Urasawa and Osamu Tezuka, co-authored by Takashi Nagasaki, supervised by Macoto Tezka
03 Oct, by in Adult Readers, Japanese, Translation, Young Adult Readers
Atom's protector, Professor Ochanomizu, is under police protection, but that doesn't stop the dangerously unpredictable Goji, who created the Persian Kingdom's robot army for the Central Asian War, from making his way into the good professor's home and threatening the safety of his daughter and...
My Name is Phillis Wheatley: A Story of Slavery and Freedom by Afua Cooper
02 Sep, by in Biography, Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Young Adult Readers
At just age 19, in the year 1773, the American slave Phillis Wheatley made her literary debut to a welcoming London audience waiting to hear from her upcoming poetry collection. Born free in Senegal, the young poet – originally named Penda Wane – was captured...
My Name is Henry Bibb: A Story of Slavery and Freedom by Afua Cooper
02 Sep, by in Biography, Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Young Adult Readers
A fictionalized biography of a heroic young man born into slavery in 1814 and determined against all odds to be free. With the history of slaveowners abusing their women slaves reflected in his pale face, Henry Bibb could pass for white. Raised together with the...
The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe
28 Aug, by in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Nonfiction
That the book opens with a three-page list of characters seems a bit daunting ...
If America Were a Village: A Book about the People of the United States by David J. Smith, illustrated by Shelagh Armstrong
02 Jul, by in Children/Picture Books, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction
Using the same simple metaphor he used in his previous bestselling If the World Were a Village, educational consultant David J. Smith presents America as a village of 100 (a far less intimidating number than the 306 million we’ve become!) to help kids (and anyone...
I and I: Bob Marley by Tony Medina, illustrated by Jesse Joshua Watson
05 Jun, by in Biography, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Children/Picture Books, Nonfiction, Poetry
A gorgeously rendered collection of poems that capture the colorful life of Nesta Robert Marley, born in 1945 to a young island girl just 18 and a 63-year-old British white man in a small town in Jamaica. Although his father quickly abandoned the young family,...