Author: terryhong

How helpful to find a “For New Readers”-summary on the Table of Contents page! And it’s so thorough that if you pick up volume 2 (or any after) before volume 1, you can still enjoy this touching series about the trials and travails of early teenagehood.

Sweet Shizuka Shiroyama has “Translucent Syndrome,” a mysterious disease which causes her body to become completely translucent on a monthly cycle. As an eighth-grader, she’s at that age when just about everything is embarrassing and painful, never mind having to deal with this rare condition. Thankfully, she has two supportive classmates always ready to buoy up spirits:  Okouchi (no one seems to know her first name!), the ever-popular  gorgeous student body president who doesn’t suffer foolish admirers well, and Mamoru Tadami, the goofy, ever-cheerful, ready-to-help boy who can fix just about any situation out of pure good will.

Volume 2 opens with Okouchi trying to coach Tadami how to be the perfect date for Shizuka, but turns out Shizuka likes him exactly as he is. Shizuka’s overeager doctor is all but ready to see the lovebirds get closer. Tadami and Shizuka spend a near-perfect day with Shizuka’s adult friend, Keiko, who also suffers from Translucent Syndrome, and Keiko’s boyfriend. At school where Shizuka is a member of the drama club, she dreams earnestly of becoming a real actor one day, in spite of her disappearing act … literally.

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2007 (United States)

Filed under: ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, .Graphic Novels/Manga/Manwha, .Translation, Japanese Tagged: Coming-of-age, Friendship, Identity, Illness, Love

Winner of the 2009 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, Philip Hoose’s inspiring title brings much-needed focus on a brave 15-year-old girl who decided, “You just have to take a stand and say, ‘This is not right.’” In March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks made history, young Claudette Colvin was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a Montgomery, Alabama bus.

Even though Colvin did not resist arrest, she was violently dragged backwards off the bus by two police officers as she repeatedly screamed, “‘It’s my constitutional right!’” She was thrown into the back of a police car, handcuffed through the open window, and endured racist, sexually-charged verbal abuse all the way to the police station. “‘I recited the Lord’s Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm over and over in my head, trying to push back the fear,’” she told Hoose. Booked and fingerprinted, she was transferred to the adult city jail and thrown into a cell without even a phone call. Schoolmates had seen what happened and reported back to Colvin’s mother who immediately headed to the jail with the family’s reverend and bailed out the frightened teenager. Colvin’s life would never be the same.

For all her courage in standing up (or, more accurately, sitting down) against injustice, Colvin became a social pariah. At school, she was shunned as ‘the girl who got arrested.’ She was charged with and found guilty of three criminal acts: violating the segregation law, disturbing the peace, and – shockingly and incongruously – ”assaulting” the policemen who had dragged her off the bus. Upon appeal, the first two charges were dropped, but the assault charge held. Because she was labeled “emotional” and saddled with a permanent criminal record, she was dismissed as a symbol around whom Montgomery’s civil rights leaders might rally.

Nine months later, Rosa Parks – older, married, an established activist with the local NAACP – became that beacon behind which the African American community of Montgomery could unite. In spite of her youth, Colvin never lost hope in her personal fight for justice. She would emerge again in the public eye to fight injustice, proving to be a key plaintiff in the 1956 landmark Browder v. Gayle case which finally knocked down Montgomery’s bus segregation laws.

Using Colvin’s own words culled from 14 interviews, as well as four interviews conducted with Colvin’s activist lawyer Fred Gray (who also represented Rosa Parks), Hoose combines first-person testimonies, journalism, and extensive historical research to bring Colvin’s missing story to glorious life. He tells that story with care and accuracy, never glossing over the more difficult details, including Colvin’s teenage affair with a married man and the resulting pregnancy that led to her high school expulsion.

Best of all, in the book’s Epilogue, Hoose captures Colvin’s half-century-later appearance at Booker T. Washington Magnet High School in Montgomery, from where she never graduated. She returns as a hero to share her remarkable history, and tells the eager students, “‘Don’t give up. Keep struggling, and don’t slide back.’” Good advice for us all.

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2009

Filed under: ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Biography, .Nonfiction, African American Tagged: Civil rights, Coming-of-age, Historical, Politics, Race

It’s true, it’s true once again … good things come to those who wait and indeed, after what seemed like way too long (including multiple emails from Amazon warning of delivery delays first because of the snowpocalypse and then apparently because of warehouse glitches or some such), I finally got volume 10 (whoo hooo!!).

Uhm … and not to whinge again, but that final page came way too fast. I tried to make it last by doling out sections, but that lasted one overnight, alas. Now apparently I’ll need to wait until August for my next fix. Will I last?

Volume 10 opens with Kurosagi regulars – psychic Kuro Karatsu, corpse dowser Makoto Numata, hacker Ao Sasaki, embalmer Keiko Makino, and alien channeler Yuji Yata with his sock puppet Kereellis – sitting in a class about AEDs (automatic external defibrillators) as a favor to their ex-cop social worker/sometime employer Sasayama. Their usual help-wronged-corpses-to-their-final-peaceful-rest mission gets interrupted when corpses suddenly start disappearing, as if they literally came back to life and walked away … turns out what they learned in that AED class proves useful after all, when they meet an ex-killer with super-AED capabilities.

Next up, the team travels to a small seaside town to deliver a retired police dog to his ex-partner and chase down a centuries-old legend of a murdered monk, only to get embroiled in a drug smuggling/illegal immigrant plot filled with … well … a lot of corpses. Then they get sent to be advisors for a reality television show starring psychic mystery solvers, only to run into Numata’s Master Azuma who taught him all the secrets of dowsing for lost souls. Tragedy strikes (more than once) and Numata’s past as an orphaned 6-year-old is revealed, how he got that way, why he always wears dark glasses, and a posthumous letter that takes him to a faceless building alone. Good thing it’s pouring rain …

One last thing … even if you don’t usually read endnotes (although you really should with this whole series, because not only do they offer some helpful insights, but they’re also just downright entertaining, too), make sure to read the final note in this volume …

Click here to check out volumes 1-4, and here for volumes 5-9.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2010 (United States)

Filed under: ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, .Graphic Novels/Manga/Manwha, .Translation, Japanese Tagged: Adventure, Betrayal, Death, Family, Friendship, Mystery

Even as he is pulling his body – mid-escape! – out of the tiny hole that will release him from the infamous Umihotaru Prison, manga artist Kakuta momentarily gets distracted: “Whenever I run into anything that would make good material for a manga, I get totally absorbed” … spoken like a true artist! And great material this proves to be! Fellow escapee Otcho (also known as Shogun) has to snap Kakuta out of his reverie to continue their dangerous journey out. Despite impossible circumstances, they manage to traverse the 10 kilometers to temporary safety in Tokyo.

While Otcho’s been locked away for 14 years, Kamisama (literally ‘honorable god’) who was once the leader of Tokyo’s homeless community (and helpful collaborator/friend to Kenji and his fellow 20th-century boys), has become fabulously wealthy. Being able to tell the future makes stock markets quite predictable. In spite of his many mansions, he’s still most at home, no irony intended, at the homeless shelter among his familiar cronies.

Between Otcho’s explanations to Kakuta, and Kamisama’s reveries to an insistent high school student researching a history project, the truth about what really happened on that fateful last night of the 20th century comes to light. Textbooks often get facts wrong, after all … whatever happens now, Kanna is truly the last and final hope. Can our world be saved?

To check out the other volumes of 20th Century Boys, click here.

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2009 (United States)
20 SEIKI SHONEN © Naoki Urasawa/Studio Nuts
Original Japanese edition published by Shogakukan Inc.

Filed under: ..Adult Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, .Graphic Novels/Manga/Manwha, .Translation, Japanese American Tagged: Adventure, Betrayal, Friendship, Mystery, Politics

Through the decades, Ruthanne Lum McCunn has built a lauded career giving voice to spirited, groundbreaking heroes of Asian descent. Growing up in a large, extended family in Hong Kong, McCunn, who is half Chinese and half Scottish American, was surrounded by strong, independent women to inspire her. Her titles include Sole Survivor (1985), about a Chinese sailor who miraculously survived 133 days adrift in the Atlantic Ocean after his ship was sunk during World War II; Wooden Fish Songs (1995), in which three very different women present the life of a Chinese American immigrant to whom they are somehow related; The Moon Pearl (2000), about a group of brave young women in 1830s China who refused to accept arranged marriages and vowed to live independent lives as spinsters; and her latest God of Luck (2007), which tells the story of one Chinese man among thousands who were kidnapped and sold into slavery in the mid-19th century to work in the deadly guano mines in faraway Peru.

More than merely appreciating McCunn’s many titles, I also owe her an unrepayable debt of literary gratitude. Decades ago, her children’s classic, Pie-Biter, was the book that sparked my initial interest in Asian American literature. I can’t emphasize enough just how important finding Pie-Biter was to my literary development. As the first bona fide children’s picture book by an Asian American author that celebrates the Asian American experience, Pie-Biter is based on a real-life Chinese immigrant boy who arrives in the American West in the late 1800s to work on the transcontinental railroads and, as tall tales go, gets his strength from eating pies.

Even though I’m not Chinese American (although the Hong side of my family originated in China 46 generations ago), and even though I don’t have direct ancestors who built the transcontinental railroad, Pie-Biter offers a collective historical past with which I can identify as an Asian American today. Stories like Pie-Biter allowed me to voice my discomfort about growing up without books that spoke to my own experience. Contrast McCunn’s book – her very many books, actually! – to something like the still-popular The Five Chinese Brothers which is all about the exotic and foreign. Instead, Pie-Biter is a piece of genuine history with none of the cloying made-up exoticism seen through someone else’s eyes.

Of all of McCunn’s many books, her debut novel Thousand Pieces of Gold (1981) remains her signature work. Based on the life of a 19th-century Chinese American pioneer woman, Thousand Pieces of Gold is almost three decades old, has had countless printings, has never been out of print, is available in eight languages, is ubiquitous on high school and college reading lists, and has even been made into a PBS film of the same name.

So when a galley arrived late last year which seemed to be about Polly Bemis, said Chinese American pioneer woman, I immediately thought of McCunn’s now-classic. I ended up reviewing Christopher Corbett’s The Poker Bride: The First Chinese in the Wild West for a major newspaper, and will admit reading it to be a frustrating experience. And so I contacted McCunn, and we started chatting about history, authenticity, writing, and so much more…

You’re hapa, Scottish on one side, Chinese on the other; why the focus only on your Chinese side in your writing?

I grew up in Hong Kong in my mother’s Chinese family and didn’t come to America until I started college. Even now, after decades in the U.S.A., I feel like an immigrant. Maybe I always will. As a little blond girl growing up in Hong Kong, though, I was very much an outsider, including within my family. Not just because of color, but interests – my love of books, to name just one. Similarly, the people I’ve written about – whether Chinese, White, Black, or Latino – have been outsiders because of characteristics beyond color and ethnicity. Just as the people I’m closest to in my life are outsiders. … [click here for more]

Author interview: Feature: “An interview with Ruthanne Lum McCunn,” Bookslut.com, March 2010

Tidbits: Ruthanne Lum McCunn was a delightful guest, together with Jeannie Pfaelzer and Jack Tchen, for the Smithsonian APA Program’s literary event, “The Chinese American Experience – and Those Who Survived and Thrived to Tell the Tales,” on October 12, 2007.

Readers: All

Filed under: …Author Interview/Profile, ..Adult Readers, ..Children/Picture Books, ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, .Nonfiction, Chinese American, Hapa Tagged: Civil rights, Coming-of-age, Cultural exploration, Family, Friendship, Historical, Identity, Immigration, Love, Mixed-race issues, Personal transformation, Race

Vollmann (Imperial; Europe Central), who has tackled an astonishing array of subjects in fiction and nonfiction, here explores female beauty – its creation and consumption– with a spotlight on highly stylized traditional Japanese Noh theater. Because male actors wearing strictly codified masks perform all Noh roles, men, ironically, are both the creators and purveyors of female beauty. From Noh, Vollmann explores other far-flung performances of feminine beauty, including revered geisha, L.A. transvestites, a porn model, Andrew Wyeth’s Helga paintings, and legendary Norse women and even dons his own cross-gendered mask with the help of a makeup artist. While Vollmann’s sprawling tome clearly contains committed research, it is a flawed hodgepodge of indulgent musings (or a “string-ball of idle thoughts,” as he calls it).

Verdict: Describing himself as “Deaf, dumb and illiterate in Japanese,” Vollmann also admits, “This book cannot pretend to give anyone a working knowledge of Noh.” Readers might instead try Japanese Nō Dramas, translated by Royall Tyler, or, for Japanese perspectives on beauty, the works of Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata.

Review: “Theater,” Library Journal, March 1, 2010

Readers: Adult

Published: 2010

Filed under: ..Adult Readers, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, Japanese, Nonethnic-specific Tagged: Art/Architecture, Cultural exploration, Identity, Personal transformation, Sociology, Theater studies

In today’s tough times filled with unemployment woes and economic downturns, The Can Man is all too real a story. Once a neighbor with a job – and a real name, Mr. Peters – the homeless man everyone just calls The Can Man wanders the neighborhood collecting cans for the deposit refunds. Tim’s parents remember he lived in apartment 3C. “‘[H]e couldn’t find another job,” Tim’s mother explains. “He’s been down on his luck for quite awhile now.’”

Returning the The Can Man’s wave with a smile, Tim gets a great idea. Since his parents can’t afford the skateboard he really wants for his birthday, Tim decides he’ll get the money on his own … by collecting cans. He works hard after school and even on the weekend, getting that much closer to the prize skateboard. One rainy Saturday, he runs into The Can Man, and notices his near empty cart … When Tim tells The Can Man that he’s collecting for a birthday skateboard, The Can Man reveals he “‘wouldn’t mind a new coat before the snow starts flying.’” Of course, Tim learns the age-old lesson that giving is better than getting … and good things come to those who least expect it, too!

While Laura E. Williams‘ story sweetly offers a memorable lesson (always so necessary even now in our gimme, gimme culture of instant gratification), what makes this title a standout are the carefully thought-out details of Craig Orback’s illustrations. Like Williams herself, Tim is hapa Asian American – his mother is Asian American while his father is African American. The family’s kitchen reflects both cultures, with an Asian fan on the wall, and a hanging towel made of African-inspired patterned cloth. Tim’s local bakery captures the diversity of his neighborhood. Tim’s friend Mike who already has a cool board also is cool enough to wear all his protective gear. And when Tim finally gets his birthday wish, he’s just as protectedly cool, too!

To Williams’ few hundred words, Orback seamlessly adds a few thousand more with his pictures. The result is a definitively noteworthy collaboration indeed.

Readers: Children

Published: 2010

Filed under: ..Children/Picture Books, .Fiction, Korean American, Nonethnic-specific Tagged: Friendship, Haves vs. have-nots, Personal transformation

Heartbreak and hope are two words that define this 1948 classic by one of South Africa’s most important writers. I picked it up recently because it’s on our daughter’s middle school reading list and while I vaguely remembered some of the plot, I realized I had never read it through …

How Alan Paton’s now-classic first got to the presses is itself a noteworthy story to share. By the end of World War II, Paton was already an accomplished educator who reformed a Johannesburg reformatory for troubled black youths into a school where boys aged 9 to 21 could get both an education and learn a trade. To further train himself, Paton toured penal systems in 1946 throughout Scandinavia, Britain, Canada, and the United States at his own expense. In between extensive meetings and site visits, Paton managed to write Cry in just three months. He completed the book in San Francisco, where newfound friends read it, admired it, had it typed, and sent it to New York. Miraculously within weeks, an American publisher readily accepted the manuscript. It proved to be an instant bestseller.

The story is epic. Stephen Kumalo, an elderly Zulu village pastor, travels to Johannesburg in search of his sister at the behest of a stranger’s letter that alludes to her grave suffering. While there, Kumalo is also determined to find his only child, his son Absalom, who went in search of his aunt and never returned. In Kumalo’s remote, bereft village where “the maize hardly reaches the height of a man,” only the elderly are left. “The men are away, the young men and the girls are away. The soil cannot keep them anymore.”

In the big city, Kumalo is befriended by the kind Msimangu, a fellow pastor who humbly remarks, “I am a selfish and sinful man, but God put his hands on me, that is all.” With Msimangu’s unwavering help, Kumalo reunites with his sister who readily agrees to leave her life of alcoholic prostitution. His son, when Kumalo finally finds him, is shockingly under arrest for murder. The victim, tragically, was one of few white men fighting for the rights and dignity of the native Africans. The murdered man’s father lives in the neighboring valley next to Kumalo’s parish, and both men will return home as sonless fathers. But amidst the tragic violence, Kumalo never loses sight of the humanity around him, always grateful for kindnesses, small and large – the talented lawyer who goes to court on Absalom’s behalf free of charge “for God,” the bright young son of the murdered man who appears for unexpected visits, and even the eager young agricultural specialist who might somehow save the barren village.

In the 1987 edition’s introductory note, Paton explains his emblematic title, the result of a “little competition” with his California benefactors. Each wrote down a title, which turned out to be the same: “Cry, the Beloved Country.” The passage, Paton reveals, is repeated in the book: “Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear …” Paton quotes his 1969 self about his 1948 debut, “Just how good [the story] is, I do not know and I do not care. All I know is that it changed our lives. It opened the doors of the world to us, and we went through.” Decades later, the literary world has deemed it better than good, and indeed, it continues to open doors …

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 1948, 1987 (new edition)

Filed under: ..Adult Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, African Tagged: Betrayal, Civil rights, Death, Family, Father/son relationship, Friendship, Parent/child relationship, Politics, Race

Coming from a family of urban planners and architects (Pops was head of urban planning graduate department at major university, baby bro is mega-award winning architect and professor at Harvard’s GSD, middle bro used to make all his ex-girlfriend’s architecture models when he got tired of computers – shhhh!) made me appreciate this lively, sassy, youth-empowering new title oh so much!

“You don’t have to buy something or pay an entry fee to be in a public space. You don’t need to be a member or explain why you’re there. Public spaces exist so everyone can use them. All you have to do is show up.” Could it be any more simple? And these public spaces need to be protected, especially for youth who need a place to just … “hang out.”

Author Hadley Dyer explains how “teens don’t have private places to call their own.” At home, parents make the decisions about who comes over, what kids can do. At school, teachers rule. But in public spaces, kids can be together to just do nothing. “Yet something is happening when you spend time in public spaces,” Dyer insists. “You’re figuring out how to get along with people, without adult interference. You’re sorting out who you are and how you fit in. You’re becoming part of a community.”

With Dyer’s chatty, welcoming narrative and Marc Ngui’s entertaining drawings and layouts, Watch This Space covers the earliest public forums to the latest virtual social spaces,  to sharing public spaces with everyone of all ages and backgrounds (not just your friends), to ultimately designing your own great public space.

Along the way, you’ll learn some fabulously fun facts … like why agoraphobia means a fear of public or open spaces, why we’re still watching gory gladiator deaths, what the Serengeti and Old Quebec’s Historic District have in common, how you can take walking tours of major cities without even leaving your desk, why suburbs are more dangerous than crowded cities, the #1 killer of under-18s, what you might expect to pay if you get caught smuggling gum into Singapore, why the no jyuku sha community in Osaka, Japan prefers the great outdoors, where the largest skateboarding park can be found, and just so much more, more, more.

The book debuts next week. Order a copy, then go to your favorite public space and share that copy with lots of others … if you don’t use it, you could lose it!

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2010

Filed under: ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Nonfiction, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Nonethnic-specific Tagged: Art/Architecture, Sociology

The girl power companion to Akira to Zoltán: Twenty-Six Men Who Changed the World celebrates the accomplishments of 26 admirable, brave, cheeky women from all over the world who refused to ever take ‘no’ for an answer and made their own herstory along the way!

Just in time for the latest Olympics, check out “B is for Babe,” as in “Babe” Mildred Didrikson Zaharias, who “won more medals and set more records than any athlete of her time, man or woman,” so much so that she was only allowed to participate in three events during the 1932 Olympics. Not only did the judges fear her prowess, but they denied her her third gold medal – in the high jump because they didn’t like her headfirst hurling technique, which has since become standard practice!

While we all remember the “Yes, we can!” motto of Obama’s winning campaign, we must give credit where credit is due: “D is for Dolores,” as in Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW), who had her rallying cry decades ago with “Si, se puede!” … Yes, we can, en Español!

“G is for Grace,” as in Grace Hopper, who was anything but a Luddite, who helped make the UNIVAC computer, co-created the computer language COBOL, and popularized the term “computer bug.” If she were still around, certainly, she’d be doing some major virtual exterminating!

“K is for Kristi,” as in Yamaguchi, whose winning skates and skating dress reside at the Smithsonian. “N is for Nawal,” as in the multi-inspirational Nawal El Sadaawi who is doctor, writer, and women’s right fighter. “P is for Patricia,” as in Schroeder, who served 12 terms as a Congresswoman. “R is for Rachel” as in Carson who blew the whistle on the dangers of pesticides, a prescient environmentalist before her time. “S is fo Suu Kyi” as in the imprisoned, democracy-seeking Daw Aung San Suu Kyi who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her dedication to her troubled country of Burma.

“V is for Vijaya,” as in Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, a courageous fire fighter, diplomat, and first woman president of the United Nations, who said, “The more we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in war.” Could we have a more appropriate 21st-century world motto? “Y is for Yoshiko,” as in Uchida, who spent her young girlhood in a U.S. prison camp during World War II just for looking like the enemy and went on write more than 25 books about her Japanese American experience.

At book’s end, Chin-Lee provides a detailed bibliography for further reading about any of her 26 subjects, and notes her own love of biographies which she explored on the shelves of Murch Elementary School right here in Washington, DC! [She currently lives in Palo Alto, California.] She also adds an incredibly thoughtful note about names: “I chose given names, rather than family names, for each woman … Family names are usually based on a father’s or husband’s name. Using a woman’s name seemed more personal to me.” She further explains, “I followed this strategy with Asian names, in which the given name comes after the family name. … For Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, ‘S is for Suu Kyi.’ In Burmese, Daw is an honorary title, meaning aunt, Aung San is the family name and Suu Kyi is the given name.”

In every way, every woman is each her own here.

Readers: Children, Middle Grade

Published: 2005

I have old emails in my inbox from Jabari Asim, when he used to be a books editor at The Washington Post. I did a couple of book reviews for him, and pitched a few more … full disclosure: he was always very nice, very easy to work with, and he barely changed a word. He even sent proofed copy back before publication! Now I get to write about him here because in just a couple of weeks, Asim makes his fiction debut – he’s already been lauded for his nonfiction titles, The N Word and What Obama Means … For Our Culture, Our Politics, as well as a number of kiddie books.

Made up of 18 interconnected stories (although the back cover and accompanying PR letter both say 16 – I counted multiple times to make sure this wasn’t some new math!),  A Taste of Honey, follows the residents of a fictional town somewhere in the Midwest, not unlike a Chicago suburb. It begins and ends with tragic, racially-motivated deaths: first the murder in the summer of ‘67 of “the short, scary-looking blind man who ran the candy store on Vandeventer” in the opening story, “I’d Rather Go Blind,” and concludes with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. which affects the final three stories.

But lest you dismiss this as a depressing, sad collection, be assured it’s not. In spite of the tumultuous racial divide of the late 1960s, Asim’s Gateway City residents both struggle and celebrate their challenging, changing lives. The Jones family is raising three strong sons, the oldest in love for the first time and thinking about faraway Harvard, the middle child boasting bravery but suddenly afraid of zombies, and the youngest who just might be the wisest of all.

Uncle Orville, who was a top graduate at Tuskegee, didn’t go on to win the Nobel Prize as Big Mama (the Jones boys’ grandmother) expected, but came home to teach high school chemistry at a “white school way out in the suburbs.” At least he tutors the neighborhood genius, who just wants to ask if Orville is his missing father.

Next door to the Jones lives the honey-voiced Rose who wants nothing more than to sing to God’s glory, but her abusive husband has no patience for her dulcet praises. When he suddenly disappears, and Gabriel appears – he isn’t named after the avenging angel for nothing! – Rose might finally be able to breathe freely again.

The ugly shadow of violent racism is never far, especially in the guise of the local white cop, an evil man beyond tolerance. But life goes on while the youth are organizing and protesting the inequity all around them. Change is definitely coming, even while something that should be so terrible as revenge can produce a guilty but grateful sigh of relief. In spite of its slimness, Asim’s new volume is dense with lingering glimpses into real lives … and ultimately (the audacity of) real hope.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2010

Sisters Sharon and Mary are shocked when their mother tells them that their two-year-old younger brother, Di Di, will be sent to China to live for a year with their grandparents. “‘A whole year?’” they ask incredulously. Mama explains that the girls are older, heading into fourth and first grade, their father needs to stay late at his architecture job, and she herself is starting a new job at the junior high school. “‘We cannot leave him with a stranger,’” she tries to explain to the girls when they suggest day care or a babysitter. “‘A babysitter is not like Nai Nai [grandmother]. For a babysitter, Di Di is a job. But for Nai Nai, he is a grandson.’”

So off Di Di goes on the big airplane with Mama, who returns home alone. Sharon and Mary miss him muchly at first, but their busy lives make the year pass quickly. When Di Di returns home to America with Nai Nai, Di Di’s readjustment to his parents and siblings is not without tears. Little by little, the siblings find their way back together again, with the fivesome-family finally restored.

Ever prepared for readers’ reactions, Andrea Cheng, who writes often about families in flux, adds in the “Author’s Note” at story’s end, “The idea behind this story may seem unusual, but it is not as uncommon as you may think. Some parents in the United States might find it hard to imagine being separated from their young children, but attitudes about raising children are sometimes quite different in other countries, especially in Asia and Africa.” She offers a heartfelt essay about why parents – especially immigrant parents – might choose long-term separation from their children, and challenges older readers to think about different family structures. She shares further thoughts in an interview available on her publisher (Lee & Low Books)’s site.

Cheng’s illustrator, Nicole Wong, who also did the touching art for Cheng’s Brushing Mom’s Hair, who gently captures the family just so in this latest title, mentions in her back-flap bio, “Wong was drawn to the story in Only One Year because it presents a Chinese American experience that is different from her own.” The family’s separation will definitely strike a chord with parents as they will share Sharon and Mary’s initial shock. But Cheng resolves her story with great care and understanding without judgment, which readers of all ages will undoubtedly appreciate.

Readers: Middle Grade

Published: 2010

How fitting to finish reading University of Michigan Professor Scott Kurashige’s debut title on the 68th annual Day of Remembrance, which marks the anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt which led to the imprisonment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II. Timing is everything … and better late than never, right? Especially since I’m supposed to be introducing him in a few hours to a waiting audience at the National Museum of American History (together with his co-guest, the fabulous playwright Philip Kan Gotanda)! I figured writing about his book this morning would be good practice indeed.

Shifting Grounds is a powerful read that brings together two seemingly divergent narratives (and how fitting we’re still in Black History Month, currently commemorating the Day of Remembrance). Combining detailed historical research with personal accounts, Kurashige presents the transformation of the city of Los Angeles “from white city to world city,” focusing on the trajectories of Japanese American and African American communities’ development through the 20th century.

Kurashige convincingly presents three pivotal periods during the century: During the two world wars, Japanese Americans and African Americans experienced “two overlapping processes of exclusion”; during World War II, Japanese Americans all but disappeared into U.S. prison camps while African Americans integrated with other non-Japanese minorities; and after WWII, the two communities experienced “two overlapping processes of integration that set the two groups apart and ultimately gave rise to multiculturalism.”

As Los Angeles grew exponentially after World War I, city leaders were able to construct a segregated city through a white racism that evolved from blatant Klan-type supremist violence to “more socially acceptable forms,” including housing discrimination, unequal employment, and political oppression. Shared experiences of white racism brought minority communities together, creating “a nascent sense of interethnic solidarity.”

With the advent of World War II, paths diverged dramatically. Japanese Americans became victims of Executive Order 9066 which negated their basic civil rights and sent them to U.S. prison camps for the duration of the war. African Americans benefited from Executive Order 8802 which “maintained Jim Crow policies in the military but outlawed discrimination by defense contractors.” For the first time, African Americans had seemingly equal employment opportunities. While the Japanese Americans were coerced into quietly submitting to imprisonment by their own leaders to prove their patriotism, African Americans celebrated a “Negro Victory” symbolized by the united wartime efforts of Black defense workers. As the U.S. government forcibly removed Japanese Americans, the African American community which grew to meet the employment demands of wartime factories moved into the vacated areas. Little Tokyo became Bronzeville (where legends like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis found grateful audiences).

As war ended, Japanese Americans slowly trickled back to Los Angeles. China became the next enemy and suddenly Japan was a major ally in the U.S. fight against communism. The 1952 McCarran-Walter Act brought an unexpected boon to Japanese Americans, providing long denied citizenship while opening Japanese immigration. But the legacy of imprisonment loomed large, and the submissive Japanese Americans were labeled the “model minority,” held up as shining examples of successful integration. African Americans were critical of the “stoic nature” of Japanese Americans, as the “Negro Victory” movement during the war effort transformed into agitated protests demanding equal rights. In spite of divergent paths, the Crenshaw neighborhood became a multicultural haven, playing an important role especially for younger Japanese Americans in the 1970s on a path to a new awareness. Upon these “shifting grounds,” Kurashige leaves a final image of a “possible future’ – the Hollywood Bowl and a local’s quote: “‘It’s the only place I know … where you can go and see an African American eating udon [Japanese noodle soup] next to a Japanese American eating grits.’”

Tidbit: Professor Scott Kurashige, together with playwright Philip Kan Gotanda, graced the Smithsonian stage to commemorate the 68th annual Day of Remembrance.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2008

For most of the last hour (of 10+ hours) of listening to an effusive, lilting Chike Johnson read to me William Kamkwamba’s phenomenal life story, I wore the goofiest grin on my face. Surely fellow drivers passing me by wondered what sort of gleeful idiot they were sharing the road with, as we skidded around in the aftermath of the 2010 Snowpocalypse. But I would wager that no one can possibly read (or listen to) this memorable survive-and-thrive story without finding relief and joy at happy endings – or happy beginnings, in this real life case.

Kamkwamba’s native Malawi has lately been in the news too often for the exploits of fame-seekers like Madonna (whose motives might be heartfelt, but perhaps a bit misguided), her adoptions, and most recently the school she’s helping fund. Far more inspiring is one Malawi boy’s story of overcoming impossible conditions – starvation, lack of education, basic resources, political upheaval, and collective trauma – to become the ‘Don Quixote of Africa.’

More than chasing windmills, Kamkwamba, out of school at age 14 because his parents could no longer afford his meager school fees, built his own windmill using library books, salvaged garbage, and pure unwavering determination to provide electricity first for his room, then the rest of his home, and eventually his entire village. And, in the process, he became not just a local hero, but an international phenomenon as a 2007 TEDGLOBAL Fellow. Kamkwamba’s simple explanation on how he made the windmill, “I try, and I made it,” becomes a motto for TED 2007.

“‘Africans bend what little they have to their will every day. Using creativity, they overcome Africa’s challenges. Where the world sees trash, Africa recycles. Where the world sees junk, Africa sees rebirth,’” Kamkwamba quotes a new friend as he recounts how many of his young fellow Africans are inventing powerful new ways to make life better throughout the African continent. His joyful devotion and utter pride in the potential of his country and all of Africa is thoroughly contagious – and you can’t help but cheer and believe that great changes are coming for impoverished communities with Kamkwamba’s young generation’s imaginative and practical plans.

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2009

*STARRED REVIEW
The title of Sonya Chung’s exquisite novel, Long for This World, seems to be missing a word: “not long for this world” would be the easy, expected phrase. But little is ‘easy’ or ‘expected’ in this multilayered story of two brothers – one Korean, the other who chooses to become Korean American – and their scattered families whose lives converge in the perfectly blended east/west house on a faraway Korean island. Unplanned and unexpected, Han Hyun-ku arrives at his younger brother’s home, escaping his American life circumscribed by a detached wife and troubled son. His exhausted daughter Jane, a renowned photojournalist of death and destruction, follows her missing father. Strangers that they are even among family, father and daughter are gratefully absorbed into a seemingly easy rhythm, but the temporary peace cannot ease inevitable tragedy. “Some people are not long for this world,” Jane remarks. “The rest of us survive.”

Verdict: Readers who enjoyed superbly crafted, globetrotting family sagas such as Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows, Naeem Murr’s The Perfect Man, or Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life will swoon over Chung’s breathtaking debut.

Review: “Fiction,” Library Journal, February 15, 2010

Tidbit: Chung’s got a haunting book trailer up … and it ends with a quote from ME! How cool is that??!! Click here for trailer link.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2010

Newbery Medalist Jerry Spinelli is one of those favorite authors I share with my children, Maniac Magee and Stargirl probably being our all-time favorite Spinelli titles. I think this might be his very first picture book (Spinelli’s back flap bio mentions his 28 novels and 17 grandkids, but not another young kiddie title) – although kids of every age will definitely enjoy this one. The bright orange sticker on the cover, “Perfect for Graduation,” shows the marketing department has things figured out … many a BIG kid is going to be getting this along with their diplomas come spring …

Told in adorable, gigantic-print rhymes, an exuberant little boy (although he bears quite a resemblance to our daughter with her very short hair, energized blue overalls, blue suede shoes, and matching blue bunny to boot!) dreams big dreams of “what shall I be?” From paper-plane folder to puppy-dog holder, from barefooted hopper to bubble gum popper, from cheek-to-cheek grinner to dizzy-dance spinner, the child is so enthused at all the possibilities that he decides to choose them all! Why not … he’s young, he’s got time to try anything and everything!

As fun as Spinelli’s story is, what makes the book ideal is Jimmy Liao’s playful drawings. Another kiddie favorite, Liao has over 30 book titles to his credit (and apparently no grandchildren as yet …). His jaunty, bright signature style perfectly captures the child’s energy, infusing him with indescribable FUN. In Liao’s whimsical world, the child stomps through puddles with two merry ducks leading the way, is unaware of a surprised caterpillar atop an oversized apple he’s about to crunch into, watches with bug-eyed wonder at a screen filled with make-believe creatures (one of whom might be himself), and naughtily sneaks off with the very best piece of birthday cake. Liao’s gleeful fun is downright contagious.

Readers: Children

Published: 2010

In 1848 American English, “wench” referred to “[a] colored woman of any age; a negress or mulattress, especially one in service.” Among far too many southern (utterly misnamed) ‘gentlemen’ (as these men exhibited nothing ‘gentle’ in their behavior), a wench’s expected service was sexual in nature, as well as consequently material as these favored bedmates often produced more slaves for ready sale.

Perkins-Valdez’s debut novel is a stunner. Four women gather to enjoy the summer at Tawawa House, a private retreat in Ohio for the wealthy, but especially popular with said Southern gentlemen as they are able to bring and openly engage with their slave mistresses. In the decade before the Civil War, talk of emancipation is on the rise, but hope for freedom is merely a dream for most slaves. At Tawawa House in 1852, Lizzie, Reenie, and Sweet warily welcome the newcomer Mawu who is shockingly outspoken and clearly not much longer for the slave world.

Lizzie belongs to Drayle, the most humane of the title’s white men, but don’t be fooled into thinking he’s humane in any way. Married to the childless, moody Fran, he seduces Lizzie when she is just 13, and has had two children (the younger daughter emerges blonde, pale, and blue-eyed) with her by the time she is 16. Reenie belongs to her Sir – a horrifying, twisted man who turns out to be her half-brother, who ‘lends’ her out to the hotel manager in exchange for local prostitutes. Sweet, who is very pregnant, belongs to an unnamed master who seems mostly absent, except to continuously impregnate the long-suffering woman.

Mawu, property of the evil-to-the-core Tip, who has continuously brutalized her since she was a young child, knows she cannot survive much more. After watching her light-skinned children be sold off one by one, she has no more love left for the damaged last child she has left behind. Only freedom offers salvation … and somehow, she must get out.

The reading is riveting. Like a train wreck, you can’t turn away. While the characters are fictional, their stories are only too real. Sally Hemings (who was reportedly the half-sister of the wife of her owner, Founding Father/third U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, who was an outspoken abolitionist but still owned many slaves, including his own alleged slave children) is undoubtedly the most famous historical “wench” of all.

Novel though it may be, Tawawa Resort was a real place in Xenia, Ohio, that was open to guests from 1852 to 1855. “It is documented by historians,” writes Perkins-Valdez in the “Author’s Note,” “that Southern slaveholders frequented the resort with slave entourages … The presence of slave concubines is part of local oral history.” The truth in this novel is bound to disturb and haunt you. How some of these women manage to survive is nothing short of miraculous, even when sometimes death seems to be the best alternative of all.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2010

I thought I should mark Lincoln’s birthday today with Ho Che Anderson’s epic graphic biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., who gave his legendary “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. Eighteen years in the making, including 10 years of extensive research, King was originally a three-volume production, printed over a decade from 1993-2002.

King debuts in full this month for the first time in this special edition, which combines all three volumes without breaks, plus includes Anderson’s “Creating King: Personal and Professional Reflections” that records the often frustrated saga of how the full work finally came to print. An additional “Gallery” showcases Anderson’s 1992 comic, Black Dogs [“I haven’t reread it (because I can’t bear to),” he confesses], as well as various sketches and scripts from his King creative process.

Anderson, a London-born Canadian transplant, was named after Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevarra … and his art has certainly lived up to his revolutionary predecessors. Anderson’s King is most definitely NOT your feel-good, sanctifying version of King’s life that most readers are probably used to. From helping his pastor father don his robes as a young boy in 1935 to his Memphis assassination on April 4, 1968, the MLK presented here is a multi-dimensional, gifted man … but still very much a man, nevertheless, filled with doubt, frustration, anger, arrogance, and even deceit.

To give deeper context to King’s life story, Anderson effectively combines the memories and voices of multiple ‘witnesses’ who were at major events, who met King, who worked with King – an effective device he admits he picked up from the movies: “… I’ve seen Warren Beatty’s Reds, and within the first five seconds decided I’m using the movie’s opening ‘Winesseses’ device. Call it an homage. Or call it what I call it: theft.” In a 2007 interview, Anderson insists his quotes are “99% real things that people said.”

While Anderson starkly presents King’s less-than-saintly episodes – his inability to keep his marriage vows, his troubled relationship with his wife Coretta, his affiliations with JFK, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, his sometimes questionable work in Chicago – the final reaction is a fuller understanding of a great man, with inspiring ideals, and an unshakeable dedication to equality through nonviolent, loving means.

MLK’s “I Have a Dream” sits smack in the middle of the book, spread over eight full pages (140-148): ”When we let freedom  from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual – Free at last! Free at Last! Thank God Almighty – We are free at last!”

And when you turn the page, a blood-splattered American flag awaits with the words: “Truth or Myth – None of that matters. All that matters is the legacy.” MLK’s legacy undeniably lives on in Anderson’s King.

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2010

Reading this phenomenal title four years ago was and remains for me one of the most searing literary experiences about the horrors of slavery. Something made me pull it out again and leaf through the pages, and viscerally recall 15-year-old Amari’s terrifying 1738 journey across the world.

In her remote African village, Amari is just on the verge starting her adult life, engaged to a caring young man, innocently happy, surrounded by love and the hopes of new possibilities. Brutally kidnapped by slave traders after witnessing the gruesome murders of everyone important to her, she is thrown on a slave ship, survives inhumane conditions, arrives in the new world, and is sold to a cruel South Carolina plantation owner for 60 pounds as a 16th-birthday present for his son. For as young as he is, Clay, Amari’s new master, could not be more evil. Amari finds moments of tender respite with Polly, a feisty indentured orphaned white girl, and the warm plantation cook Teenie and her young son Tidbit. Surprisingly, Amari shares kind understanding with the pregnant young second wife of the plantation owner who suffers her own private demons. But always and foremost, what Amari dreams most about is freedom. And she must risk all to escape her hellish imprisonment.

“I am the granddaughter of a slave,” Sharon Draper opens her award-winning title. “My grandfather – not my great-great-grandfather or some long-distant relative – was born a slave in the year 1860 on a farm in North Carolina.” Draper dedicates her book to all who came before her, “who lived, suffered, and endured”; she imbues Amari with their spirit. Although a work of fiction, Draper explains in the “Afterword” that “the facts of the story are true.” Her research is thoroughly documented, and she includes multiple resources for further examination, including almost two pages of websites for easy instant access.

As Draper bears witness to the unspeakable horrors of our collective American past, we readers must join in. No doubt this is a very difficult read; although it’s recommended for ages 14 and up, I would recommend at the youngest 17 or 18. Even adult readers are likely to be shocked.

And yes, we are nauseated, we are haunted, we are disturbed, but we learn. And we must keep learning. Slavery, especially sexual slavery, is STILL part of today’s reality in too many parts of the world, even right here at home in the U.S. [the “United States” section from sexual slavery link above has frightening U.S. numbers]. Amari’s story, carefully researched for historic authenticity, remains a contemporary tragedy.

The more we know, the more we can help change the world. For ways of making change, please check out Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn … if nothing else, turn to that book’s final pages and check out “Four Steps You Can Take in the Next Ten Minutes.” It’s the perfect place to make a start.

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2006

“Willow’s words came out in whispers …,” so she just doesn’t get heard. She ends up sitting alone at school, drinking orange juice when she prefers apple, getting her doll snatched away in mid-play, and gets overlooked once again from being chosen line leader.

“‘Your big, strong voice got stuck way inside you,’” her father gently encourages her. “‘But one day your voice will wiggle its way out,’” he promises. One morning Willow wakes up and decides to make her very own magic microphone. And finally, Willow finds her own “big, strong voice.”

Willow’s Whispers immediately stands out with its simple lines, bight colors, and lots of fresh white space. Illustrator Howells adds memorable little details to her drawings, like fruit-filled healthy lunches, ethnically diverse dolls (which only enhances Willow’s multi-hued schoolmates), and even a recycle symbol on the center of box from which Willow gathers the ingredients to make her magic microphone.

Most importantly, Canadian author Button’s debut picture book is an adorable, powerful tale of empowerment. How many girls can you remember in school who didn’t, couldn’t speak up? How many little girls do you see getting lost and never heard? Start them young in letting out their big, strong voices. We should all be heard, loud and clear!

Readers: Children

Published: 2010