This is not a spoiler: If you take a good look at the cover of the recent memoir Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds, you know the pages will deliver a happy ending ...
A busy Seattle hospital. Hip, young doctors. Desperate patients. Administrative hierarchies. Sound familiar? I heard the latest Carol Cassella title (Healing) even has a character named Addison! I started (because of an alma mater connection), then stopped watching Grey's Anatomy after the first season (although I've had to revisit...
Shimura Takako, a well-established manga artist recognized for her LGBT focus, continues her gender-bender series with sensitive honesty. That said, don't let the sweet, fuzzy cover fool you: Shimura knows well that protecting her two wide-eyed protagonists from their less-than-understanding peers will become less and...
Life along the Silk Road – 19th-century style, imagined by and translated from a 21st-century Japanese original – moves onward west, meticulously detailed in creator Kaoru Mori's breathtaking manga. To catch up, make sure to read the first three installments; you definitely need the back story of young...
As the mother of three young girls, Ellen Oh is constantly on the lookout for good books that showcase female empowerment. She's found a few here and there – say, The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, The Girl of Fire and Thorns trilogy by Rae Carson, The Hero and the...
Thus far, mega-award winning Junot Díaz (also recently bestowed the "Genius" moniker by the MacArthur Foundation) hasn't written a book without his sort-of autobiographical stand-in Yunior de las Casas. Díaz's 1996 fiction debut, Drown, introduced Yunior through interlinked short stories; a decade-plus later, Díaz turned over full narrative control to his...
"Based on the life of Princess Pari Khan Khanoom" seems to be the dominant short-hand description (even on its own back cover) of Anita Amirrezvani's historical novel set in 16th-century Persia, now modern Iran. Some might find that description misleading, and expect this to be...
Awww ...
When Mimi and her little sister Nakkissi go to fetch the family's water from the stream one hot day, Mimi does something she knows she shouldn't: she realizes that tired Nakkissi can't walk all the way home without a drink, so she gives her "two handfuls...
"Just yesterday a white guy asked me if I was a real Indian. No, I said, Columbus made a mistake. The Indians are in India." Presented as humor during a community festival, the deep irony remains striking throughout Louise Erdrich's award-winning, bestselling books that explore...
For someone who eschews horror films, I sure am addicted to (certain) scary manga. Devoted groupie that I am for the Kurosagi team, I just hope the series isn't ending anytime soon! For anyone new to the series, rather than starting at (unlucky) #13, might...
Only when Louise Erdrich won this year's National Book Award for The Round House, did I learn that House is the middle of a planned trilogy that begins with The Plague of Doves which, most serendipitously, was already loaded on my iPod. A bit of...
OMG. Think gruesome wreck you can't turn away from and you probably won't even get close to the horrors of Gillian Flynn's debut novel, which pubbed six years before her mega-breakout Gone Girl, which is currently turning up on new major 'best-of' lists daily. So freaked out...
In the genre of memoirs (which includes based-on-a-true-story, autobiographical novels), I've noticed two distinct categories: the titles you read for the importance of the story, and the memoirs that also turn out to be fabulous examples of great literature. Psychologist Rahimeh Andalibian's writing debut represents the former;...
If you feel a vague sense of déjà vu reading this novel, that may be because, like me, you're strongly reminded of another dual-timed story featuring a bold Englishwoman trekking through faraway lands whose expectations-be-damned!-uncommon-life-back-then is pieced together through left-behind words and pictures by a descendant living...
Little White Duck is a visual feast that showcases the childhood memories of author Na Liu, and vibrantly enhanced by her artist husband Andrés Vera Martínez. Liu introduces herself with an adorably grinning "Ni Hao!," explaining that she was born in Zhifang, a suburb of...
Gilead and Home are parallel stories – that is, one is not a sequel or prequel of the other, but what happens in one, happens contemporaneously in the other. As satisfying as each novel can be alone, to read both one after the other will be...
Of the debut novels by non-Asian men writing about Asia and Asian characters that I've read thus far this year, three stand out: Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master’s Son, Brandon Jones' All Woman and Springtime, and most recently this title by Virginia attorney Corban Addison. The one...
While I can hardly estimate the many, many books I’ve read about the Japanese American experience during World War II, I know few details about what happened to Japanese Canadians. The lone fact that looms is that like their Japanese American counterparts on the West...
For one reason or another, I've taken many years to finally finish a Gail Tsukiyama novel. I've started a few, gotten distracted and put each aside, but this time, after noticing that she was one of the few APA authors at this year's National Book...
