Refugees Archives - Page 2 of 8

Asian American #OwnVoices: Artfully Narrated Middle Grade, YA, and Crossover Audiobooks [in School Library Journal]

Welcome to Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month. The year remains somber, as the APA community combats dramatically increasing anti-Asian violence around the country and continues to mourn the eight people, including six women of Asian descent, killed in a Georgia mass shooting. Despite a U.S....

Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen [in Booklist]

28 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Southeast Asian American, Vietnamese American

*STARRED REVIEW While the story arc might sound familiar – other-side-of-the-world refugees who endure challenging lives in the U.S. – Nguyen’s gentle precision nevertheless produces an extraordinary debut with undeniable resonance. As the MFA-ed, prestigiously fellowshipped (Lambda, Tin House) editor-in-chief of diaCRITICS, Nguyen ciphers all that...

Afterlife by Julia Alvarez [in Booklist]

16 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost

“Respected professor emeritus, writer, widow of a beloved doctor,” Antonia is trying to make the best of what should have been a pastoral Vermont retirement had her kind, grounding Sam not suddenly died. To her three sisters – “the Dominican Greek chorus,” she calls them...

The Bad Muslim Discount by Syed M. Masood [in Booklist]

12 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Pakistani, Pakistani American, Repost

YA novelist Syed M. Masood (More than Just a Pretty Face, 2019) makes his adult debut with a seemingly disparate dual narrative headed for collision. Self-described “lapsed lawyer” Anvar is drifting – he’s lost his love-of-his-life-since-childhood Zuha; he consistently embarrasses his devout Muslim Pakistani American family;...

Illegal: A Disappeared Novel by Francisco X. Stork [in School Library Journal]

17 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Mexican American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Narrators Roxana Ortega and Christian Barillas resume the high-octane energy of the Zapata siblings introduced in Francisco X. Stork’s heart-thumping Disappeared. Separated after surviving the treacherous crossing over the U.S. border, former journalist Sara remains imprisoned in the Fort Stockton Detention Center, while teen Emiliano...

Three Keys [Front Desk 2] by Kelly Yang [in Booklist]

14 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

The lively cast of Front Desk returns with narrator Sunny Lu, adding much-appreciated continuity. A relative audiobook newbie, Lu proves her expertise in ciphering middle graders to middle-aged adults. That she’s also an attorney makes the lawyers here – both the pompous and the heroic –...

I Just Wanted to Save My Family: A Memoir by Stéphan Pélissier with Cécile-Agnès Champart, translated by Adriana Hunter [in Shelf Awareness]

23 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, French, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Translation

The title alone is a universally resounding cry for help: I Just Wanted to Save My Family. It also proves to be French legal expert and first-time author Stéphan Pélissier's best defense to challenge a guilty verdict that demands seven years of imprisonment. Co-written with Cécile-Agnès Champart...

We Are Not from Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez [in Booklist]

04 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Jenny Torres Sanchez’s latest doesn’t let up – beatings, rape, murder, and still more violence looms. Marisa Blake may be a relative newbie narrator, but her thoroughly bilingual ability ensures a fluent, heart-thumping listen following three teens on the run from their gang-controlled Guatemalan village...

The Dragons, the Giant, the Women by Wayétu Moore [in Booklist]

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

Wayétu Moore is the first to speak, although only briefly, to share her initial excitement over the possibility of narrating her elegant memoir. That opportunity, alas, became another “casualty of COVID-19,” preventing her from safe studio time, but she adds a personal thanks to narrator...

Welcome to the New World by Jake Halpern, illustrated by Michael Sloan [in Shelf Awareness]

23 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Syrian American, Young Adult Readers

Welcome to the New World made its debut as a biweekly comic strip in the New York Times that "chronicle[d] the arrival and experience of a single [Syrian] family." The author/illustrator team, Jake Halpern and Michael Sloan, went on to win the 2018 Pulitzer Prize...

Somewhere in the Unknown World: A Collective Refugee Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang [in Shelf Awareness]

21 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Black/African American, European, Hmong American, Memoir, Myanmarese (Burmese) American, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian American, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

"The people in this book are people from your lives," Kao Kalia Yang writes to her three sleeping children in the final chapter of her affecting hybrid nonfiction collection, Somewhere in the Unknown World: A Collective Refugee Memoir. Minnesota – where Yang has lived for...

Mañanaland by Pam Muñoz Ryan [in Booklist]

08 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

Readers might need the opening sentence repeated here: “Somewhere in the Américas, many years after once-upon-a-time and long before happily-ever-after, a boy climbed the cobbled steps of an arched bridge in the tiny village of Santa Maria in the country of the same name.” The...

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen [in Booklist]

17 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, South Asian American, Southeast Asian, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW The magic happens here on every page, the perfection personified by debut author/artist Trung Le Nguyen’s autobiographical homage to the infinite power of storytelling. The opening page ingeniously distinguishes three interwoven narratives with three color palettes: red is the urgent now, about young Tiến...

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabelle Allende, translated by Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson [in Booklist]

25 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Latina/o/x, Repost, South American, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW How fitting that what might be Isabel Allende’s best work gets aurally elevated by one of audio’s most gifted narrators. For nearly 10 hours, Edoardo Ballerini embodies the extended Dalmau family, flowing through six decades, multiple countries, two continents, recounting the Spanish Civil War...

Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia + Author Interview [in Bloom]

10 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Chinese, Chinese American, Nonfiction, Repost

“We have to learn from history and stop repeating its mistakes” As the child of two Chinese refugees, Helen Zia can personally speak to the effects of displacement, separation, adaptation, and reinvention. In her memorable career as activist/journalist/writer/Asian American icon, Zia turns inward for the first time in...

Where We Come From by Oscar Cásares [in Booklist]

26 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Repost

With Spanish names, phrases, and whole sentences appearing every few pages, bilingual narrator Yaeli Arizmendi (the voice of Laura Esquivel’s Spanish editions) instinctively settles into Oscar Cásares’s (Amigoland) latest, in which he returns to his Tex-Mex border hometown of Brownsville. Almost-septuagenarian Nina’s life is not her...

North of Dawn by Nuruddin Farah [in Booklist]

08 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Audio, European, Fiction, Repost

Originally from Somalia, Mugdi and Gacalo have now spent the majority of their lives in Norway, where they’ve been productive citizens, raising two children. Their quiet, middle-aged calm is shattered when their son Dhaqaneh commits a suicide bombing in Somalia. Gacalo’s only way forward after the...

Older Brother by Mahir Guven, translated by Tina Kover [in Shelf Awareness]

18 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, French, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Syrian, Translation

Two brothers. Two narrators. Two type fonts: serif for "The Older Brother" chapters; sans serif for "The Younger Brother." Their family has shrunk as Mahir Guven's debut, Older Brother, begins: "...

Silence of the Chagos by Shenaz Patel, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman [in Booklist]

15 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Fiction, Indian African, Repost, South Asian, Translation

Forced expulsions have long been part of man’s history, motivated by politics, prejudice, geography, human-made disasters, and natural forces. Virtually unknown is the full-scale eviction of the Chagossians, a Creole-speaking native ethnic group with African and Asian ancestry, from Diego Garcia, the largest island in...

Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration by Bryan Caplan, illustrated by Zach Weinersmith [in Booklist]

04 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Borders, walls, detention camps, caged children ...

BookDragon Refugees Tag