War Archives - Page 2 of 33

Beasts of a Little Land by Juhea Kim [in Booklist]

15 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean American, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Covering most of the 20th century across the Korean peninsula, Juhea Kim’s debut novel wondrously reveals broken families and surprising alliances created by uncontrollable circumstances. Kim links multiple narrative prongs, effortlessly navigating overlaps and disconnects. Korea remains under Japan’s ruthless occupation in 1917, which lasts...

Hakim’s Odyssey, Book 1: From Syria to Turkey by Fabien Toulmé, translated by Hannah Chute [in Booklist]

26 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW French graphic creator Fabien Toulmé transforms “the words that were entrusted“ to him into this stupendous testimony of survival. The first of three volumes (the subsequent two have published in France and are scheduled to be published in the U.S. in 2022) begins with...

A Girl Called Rumi by Ari Honarvar [in Shelf Awareness]

04 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Iranian, Iranian American, Persian, Persian American, Repost

Journalist/artist/activist Ari Honarvar's promising debut, A Girl Called Rumi, memorializes the lifesaving power of storytelling through the darkest terrors. In 1981, the Iran-Iraq War was still new and a semblance of normalcy seemed possible for 9-year-old Kimia, who claims "Rumi" as part-time moniker. She's missing...

Child of the Flower-Song People: Luz Jiménez, Daughter of the Nahua by Gloria Amescua, illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh [in Shelf Awareness]

20 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Biography, Children/Picture Books, Latina/o/x, Mexican, Repost

Educator and poet Gloria Amescua makes her picture-book debut with the inspiring Child of the Flower-Song People, spectacularly illustrated by award-winning Mexican American author/artist Duncan Tonatiuh (Undocumented). Amescua poignantly uses her own experiences of "almost losing my Spanish language and culture" as a Latina in Texas...

One Line by Ray Fawkes [in Shelf Awareness]

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

*STARRED REVIEW Ray Fawkes's One Soul debuted in 2011, earning extensive adulation (including an Eisner nomination) for its never-before-done graphic presentation of 18 lives via 18-panel grids divided across two-page spreads. His 2014 follow-up, The People Inside, used a similar format to follow 24 individuals through various relationships. One...

A Play for the End of the World by Jai Chakrabarti [in Shelf Awareness]

12 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Eastern European, European, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

Time, geographies, and backgrounds all seem to flow effortlessly through Jai Chakrabarti's exquisite debut novel, A Play for the End of the World. At its core is the provenance of a possible love story between two strangers in New York City. Interwoven into this uncertain...

The Waiting by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, translated by Janet Hong [in Booklist]

28 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW The book is labeled fiction, but the extraordinarily haunting narrative is inspired by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s mother and two elderly survivors of Korean War separations who were briefly allowed to meet their North Korean families; Gendry-Kim’s mother still hopes to glimpse her sister. That survivor...

We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration by Frank Abe and Tamiko Nimura, illustrated by Ross Ishikawa and Matt Sasaki [in Booklist]

15 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Three months after the Pearl Harbor bombings, rumors of racist mass eviction became reality when President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, unlawfully condemning 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent into concentration camps across the western U.S. Following political leaders spouting conspiracy...

Author Interview: Silvia Moreno-Garcia [in Shelf Awareness]

20 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Canadian, Fiction, Latin American, Mexican, Repost

Silvia Moreno-Garcia: On Publishing, Racism, and a "Real Horror Story" Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a literary chameleon, successfully writing across genres, including speculative short fiction (This Strange Way of Dying), historical fantasy (The Beautiful Ones), magical realism (Gods of Jade and Snow) and horror (Mexican Gothic). She's also edited several anthologies, is the publisher of micro-indie...

Catch the Rabbit by Lana Bastašić [in Booklist]

12 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Bosnian, Eastern European, European, Fiction, Repost, Translation

Once upon a time, two Bosnian girls arrived at kindergarten with paper-doll selfies. Sara’s mother made hers, garbed in pink and glittery. Lejla’s was blank. “[I]t’s not like I wear the same clothes every day,” she insisted, as if already aware that future incarnations –...

Sparks Like Stars by Nadia Hashimi [in Booklist]

05 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Afghan, Afghan American, Audio, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Veteran narrator Mozhan Marnò has one of those gratifyingly recognizable, sigh-inducing audiobook voices that immediately immerses readers. Here, for 12 hours, she commands Afghan American pediatrician-turned-novelist Nadia Hashimi’s (A House without Windows, 2018) latest, ciphering the multi-pronged epic over decades and across continents, cultures, and...

One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle over American Immigration, 1924–1965 by Jia Lynn Yang [in Booklist]

04 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, Nonfiction, Pan-Asian Pacific American, Repost, Taiwanese American, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Pulitzer Prized NYT editor/journalist Jia Lynn Yang makes history intimately personal: “This book is an attempt to fuse my family’s history to the history of the country that found a place for us ...

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...

Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho [in Booklist]

26 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Hapa/Mixed-race, Korean, Korean American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW “In my lifetime, I’ve had at least three mothers,” Grace M. Cho writes. After surviving the Korean War, Cho’s mother worked as a bar girl at a U.S. naval base during the U.S. occupation of South Korea. In 1971, she married Cho’s father, a...

City of a Thousand Gates by Rebecca Sacks [in Booklist]

22 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Israeli, Jewish, Middle Eastern, Palestinian, Repost

Lameece Issaq reads languidly, her voice an ongoing invitation to Rebecca Sacks’ debut in which so much happens, but by book’s end might feel narratively stagnant – not because of Sacks’ writing, but because Israel and Palestine remain relentlessly enshrouded in conflict. The opening credits wisely...

Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town by Barbara Demick [in Booklist]

15 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Tibetan

Let’s just agree that Casandra Campbell is not fluent in any Asian languages – which makes her an odd (mis)casting choice for a title set mostly in Tibet, populated by mostly Tibetan characters. That said, lauded journalist Barbara Demick’s extraordinary latest is a book to...

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;...

At the End of the Matinee by Keiichiro Hirano, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter [in Booklist]

25 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

The I-narrator of the opening prologue, presented rather like an author’s note, sets up a revealing frame for the love story to come even as he inserts, then immediately elides himself. “If I were absolutely faithful to the truth, I myself would have to make...

The Committed by Việt Thanh Nguyễn [in Booklist]

18 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Vietnamese American

Six years since his first novel, The Sympathizer, won the Carnegie Medal and the Pulitzer Prize, Việt Thanh Nguyễn is back with the much-anticipated second installment in a planned trilogy. Here, the same unreliable narrator adds another few hundred pages to the already 367-page confession he...

The Opium Prince by Jasmine Aimaq [in Shelf Awareness]

22 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Afghan, Afghan American, Canadian, Fiction, Repost

In her extraordinary fiction debut, The Opium Prince, Afghan Swedish academic and communications expert Jasmine Aimaq, who lives in Canada, combines elements of literary thriller, sociopolitical exposé, and historical witnessing. The Afghan people lived in relative – albeit tense – balance between the 1973 coup d'etat...

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