Race/Racism Archives - Page 7 of 25

Phantoms by Christian Kiefer [in Booklist]

05 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese American, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Peter Berkrot is not a Japanese speaker – and somehow, he went into the recording studio without pronunciation guidance, an aural detail that unfortunately mars an otherwise stellar presentation of Christian Kiefer’s (Infinite Tides) stunning, slim third novel. With his folksy, inviting delivery, Berkrot magnetically lures...

Very Nice by Marcy Dermansky [in Booklist]

02 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Pakistani, Repost

Satire? Irony? A nine-hour extended joke? Certainly Marcy Dermansky’s latest is rife with almost every stereotype/cliché – the only one she thankfully avoids is the brown man as terrorist. That said, for those who survive the first eight hours and 40 minutes, the final poolside scene...

For Black Girls Like Me by Mariama Lockington [in Booklist]

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

Navigating ages, gender, backgrounds, and race, Imani Parks encompasses the peripatetic Kirkland family of four who relocate from Baltimore to Albuquerque. As bonded as the quartet – two musician parents, teen daughter Eve, and tween daughter Keda – might seem to the outside world, one...

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong [in Booklist]

30 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Korean American, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Title aside, nothing is minor about Cathy Park Hong’s taut, sharp collection. The award-winning poet’s prose debut will elicit comparisons to contemporary race-conscious luminaries – think Claudine Rankine, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Roxane Gay – but Hong’s singular voice expresses both reclamation and declaration: “For...

The Other Americans by Laila Lalami [in Booklist]

20 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab American, Audio, Fiction, Moroccan American, Repost

Laila Lalami’s stupendous fourth title showcases a chorus of nine Rashomon-esque characters dealing with the hit-and-run death of a Moroccan immigrant diner owner in a California Mojave Desert town. That the novel gets a nine-member full cast (with who’s-who credits at recording’s end!), including some...

The Atlas of Reds and Blues by Devi S. Laskar [in Booklist]

15 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

Author Devi S. Laskar knows what it’s like to have a police gun pointed at her. In 2010, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation raided her home when her professor husband was wrongly accused of misusing university funds. They confiscated her laptop, on which was stored...

Two Dead by Van Jensen, illustrated by Nate Powell, color by Erin Tobey [in Shelf Awareness]

10 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Cycles of violence dominate the graphic novel Two Dead – whether at home or on so-called enemy territory. Traumatized by a World War II friendly-fire fatality, Sergeant Gideon Kemp returns stateside, eschews his law degree, and begins his police career in 1946 in his hometown...

Big Familia by Tomas Moniz [in Shelf Awareness]

29 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost

For readers in search of a tautly streamlined, deeply resonating, contemporary family story, Big Familia by Tomas Moniz (Bellies and Buffalos) won't disappoint. In this short novel, Juan Gutiérrez is a longtime Berkeley resident, the amicably divorced father to high school senior Stella and a self-described Chicano...

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me) is one of – potentially the – most sought-after contemporary voice on the politics of race, and his debut fiction could not have been more laudably anticipated. Now sporting Oprah’s seal of approval as her latest Book...

King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender [in Shelf Awareness]

18 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

Kacen Callender, who identifies as queer, trans POC, wrote the Stonewall and Lambda winner Hurricane Child as Kheryn Callender; they debuted their name change in May 2019 with the announcement of the sale of their upcoming transgender YA novel Felix Ever After. Callender's second middle-grade title, King and the...

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Although the cover claims Yu’s (Sorry Please Thank You, 2012) latest is “A Novel” – the description insistently written out in both Chinese and English lettering – his fiction, as always, defies easy labels. This hybrid conflates history, sociology, and ethnography with the timeless...

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead [in Booklist]

30 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Pulitzer Prized, National Book Awarded for The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead moves a century-plus forward to 1960s Florida, where having darker skin remains crime enough (the contemporary irony looms). J.D. Jackson proceeds deliberately, his narration measured and nuanced, avoiding over-performing through even the most...

More to the Story by Hena Khan [in Booklist]

28 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Pakistani American, Repost, South Asian American

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women gets a diverse contemporary makeover in Hena Khan’s (Amina’s Voice) latest middle-grade novel, relocated to Atlanta, featuring the Muslim Pakistani American Mirza family’s four daughters – Maryam, Jameela, Bisma, and Aleeza – with their father working in Abu Dhabi, and...

Count Me In by Varsha Bajaj [in Booklist]

27 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Indian African, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, South Asian American

Karina and Chris are next-door neighbors and attend the same school, but they “have [their] own paths”: Karina – ebulliently voiced by Priya Ayyar, who shares her character’s Indian American ancestry – is drawn to photography and books; Chris – earnestly narrated by Christopher Gebauer...

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi [in Booklist]

23 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW “I used to be a racist most of the time,” insists Ibram X. Kendi, a surprising revelation from 2016’s winner for the National Book Award for Nonfiction (Stamped from the Beginning). “The opposite of ‘racist’ isn’t ‘not racist,’” he explains. “It is ‘antiracist’...

Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen [in Booklist]

18 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

By 2142, “generations of interracial partnerships from the twenty-first century onward [have] rendered [names] meaningless” as markers of ethnicity. Time-traveling Agent Kin is named after quinoa; his fellow agent Markus Fernandez is a pale Brit/northern Californian. Author Mike Chen is Chinese American and channels Idris Elba...

Nosy White Woman by Martha Wilson [in Shelf Awareness]

09 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

Martha Wilson, a U.S. expat who has lived in Canada for more than two decades, adroitly balances characters from both sides of the shared border (and beyond) throughout her exceptional debut of 16 short stories, Nosy White Woman. While first collections might often prove uneven,...

Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary: Selected Works of Kathleen Collins by Kathleen Collins [in Booklist]

03 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Drama/Theater, Fiction, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW In 2014, a quarter-century after the 1988 death of filmmaker/playwright/writer/activist Kathleen Collins at 46 of breast cancer, indie distributor Milestone Films reintroduced her groundbreaking 1982 movie, Losing Ground, one of the first films written and directed by an African American woman, inspiring new interest in the...

A Particular Kind of Black Man by Tope Folarin [in Shelf Awareness]

06 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Growing up in 1980s suburban Utah, Tunde, his younger brother and their immigrant Nigerian parents hardly resemble the local Mormon majority. Tunde's father blames his accented English for his inability – despite his U.S. engineering degree – to find meaningful employment, eventually attempting a...

13 Fall Faves, Speed-Dating Style [in The Booklist Reader]

03 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Cuban, Cuban American, Fiction, Indian American, Iranian, Iranian American, Japanese, Korean, Latina/o/x, Lists, Memoir, Nonfiction, Persian American, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian, South Asian American, Translation, Turkish, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

Oh, good gracious! I can’t stand it: soooo many amazing books and my aging eyeballs just can’t keep up! Last week at ALA Annual, I got to “Read ‘n’ Rave,” but I had such an embarrassingly overflowing list, the buzzer went off (uh-oh!), and I couldn’t...

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