Slavery Archives - BookDragon

The Hard Road Out: One Woman’s Escape from North Korea by Jihyun Park and Seh-lynn Chai, translated by Sarah Baldwin-Beneich [in Booklist]

24 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Korean, Memoir, Nonfiction, North Korean, Repost, Translation

Jihyun Park is a twice-escaped defector. Seh-lynn Chai is initially her hired English translator, then her friend, even sister. “Jihyun is from the North and I am from the South,” Chai writes, “but we share a single identity: we’re both Korean.” At their 2014 first...

Shuna’s Journey by Hayao Miyazaki, translated by Alex Dudok de Wit [in Shelf Awareness]

10 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW In 1983, two years before Hayao Miyazaki cofounded the acclaimed Studio Ghibli, he published Shuna's Journey, a spectacularly illustrated graphic novel in watercolors about a young prince who undertakes an epic quest to save his citizens from looming starvation. Nearly 40 years after its...

The 1619 Project: Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson [in School Library Journal]

04 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Black/African American, Children/Picture Books, Nonfiction, Repost

Nikole Hannah-Jones’s seminal The 1619 Project becomes a 24-minute lyrical gift for youngest readers, rendered with Newbery Honoree Renée Watson. Hannah-Jones voices the affecting verses: gentle through the horror, solemn to encourage empowerment, inviting to share the joy. A Black girl’s school assignment to “trace your...

Yonder by Jabari Asim [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Chameleonic writer Jabari Asim’s second novel after Only the Strong (2015) gets historical with a cast of enslaved Black characters – searingly called the Stolen, their white enslavers rightfully are Thieves – who attempt to survive the atrocities of the antebellum South. “All of...

African Town by Irene Latham and Charles Waters [in Booklist]

14 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Poetry, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction

Fourteen voices (each embodying a specific poetic form!) – enlivened by 14 performers – take turns bearing witness in this novel in verse. Perspectives shift among the enslavers, the enablers to such inhumanity, their victims, and their descendants, revealing decades from capture to post-Civil War...

Discipline by Dash Shaw [in Booklist]

06 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Graphic titles about Quakers aren't exactly a hot topic – or are they? This season brings two Quaker-related comics in quick succession: David Lester's Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay and this, Dash Shaw's Discipline, a haunting fictionalization of a teenage Quaker Civil War soldier. Quakers...

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story created by Nikole Hannah-Jones [in Booklist]

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

*STARRED REVIEW In 2019, Pulitzer Prize–winning, MacArthur “Genius” Nikole Hannah-Jones “made a simple pitch” for a special issue of The New York Times Magazine to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the August 1619 arrival of the White Lion, the ship which carried the first captive Africans...

Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, a Graphic Novel by David Lester, with Marcus Rediker and Paul Buhle [in Shelf Awareness]

19 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Black/African American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Benjamin Lay, small in stature with dwarfism, was a monumental historical figure almost lost until historian Marcus Rediker published The Fearless Benjamin Lay (2017), which returned Lay to prominence as "the first revolutionary abolitionist." Canadian artist David Lester energetically distills Rediker's biography into a...

My Mother’s House by Francesca Momplaisir [in Booklist]

24 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Fiction, Haitian American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW It opens with the mellifluous Dion Graham and ends with an always-appreciated who-read-whom at recording’s end. In between, the horror is unrelenting, yet the three narrators persist with tenacious dignity and grace. Graham enthralls as the titular “my mother’s house” – Kay Manman Mwen...

The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President’s Black Family by Bettye Kearse [in Library Journal]

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

Retired pediatrician Bettye Kearse, her family’s eighth griot (storyteller/historian/genealogist), traces her lineage over two centuries: “Always remember – you’re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president,” her predecessors instilled. The fourth U.S. president, James Madison, never had biological children with wife Dolley. He...

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson [in Booklist]

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

In writing her now-classic The Warmth of Other Suns (2010), Pulitzer-Prized (and first Black woman so honored) Isabel Wilkerson reveals in her highly anticipated follow-up, “while working on ...

Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America by W. Caleb McDaniel [in Booklist]

09 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

Winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in History, W. Caleb McDaniel’s 2019 debut gets a 2020 aural adaptation, helmed by prolific Paul Heitsch, who adds solemn gravitas to an utterly compelling narrative. Born enslaved in 1818/1820 in Kentucky, Henrietta Wood was freed in 1848 and...

Conjure Women by Afia Atakora [in Booklist]

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

The eponymous conjure women here are two midwife/healers: enslaved mother May Belle and her eventually free daughter Rue. Their story gets revealed in three time-jumping segments – slaverytime, wartime, freedomtime – that readers will need to realign for full disclosure of brutal secrets, hidden pasts,...

The Silence of Bones by June Hur [in Shelf Awareness]

05 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

June Hur's gripping debut re-creates the Joseon Dynasty, when Korea relied on brutality to contain the spread of foreign Catholicism. During this bloody time, 16-year-old Seol's irrepressible curiosity is about to become her best asset for solving crime ...

Remembrance by Rita Woods [in Booklist]

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

First-time-author Rita Woods shares the debut spotlight with her multi-faceted narrator Ella Turenne, who agilely ciphers the unique voices of four women who share one remarkable legacy. Turenne's present-day Gaelle is a Cleveland nursing home aide who survived the 2010 Haitian earthquake, and has recently...

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...

Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi, translated by Marilyn Booth [in Booklist]

10 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab, Fiction, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Jokha Altharthi makes literary history as the first female Omani author to be translated into English and as author of the first novel written in Arabic to win the Man Booker International Prize. She shares that extraordinary success with translator and Oxford professor Marilyn...

The Last Word: Audios of Posthumously Published Books [in Booklist]

01 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, British, European, Fiction, Indian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American

The one thing in life that’s guaranteed is, well, death. But books are certainly a lasting legacy. And sometimes, when we get the books after their creator has passed on, an audiobook can breathe life into the text, animating from beyond. Here, we have a handful...

Dream Country by Shannon Gibney [in Booklist]

07 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in African, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Undoubtedly, Bahni Turpin is one of few narrators able to convincingly crisscross the gender spectrum with consistent agility. Here she begins as untethered Kollie, a Liberian immigrant teen in 2008, alternately dismissed and provoked by both white and African American peers at his Minnesota high school, until rage, violence,...

Five More (Audiobooks) to Go: Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, read by Dion Graham [in The Booklist Reader]

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

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan and read by Dion Graham George Washington Black – called "Wash" for short – is an enslaved 10- or 11-year-old (he "cannot say for certain") on Faith Plantation in 1830s Barbados. He is first owned by one brother, then stolen by another....

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