Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month: Fiction & Literature

An aging woman goes missing, spurring stories of love and guilt from her family in this South Korean novel.  An interesting choice of voice and a rich level of detail help bring depth to this universal human story. A mother's disappearance in a Seoul subway station elicits reflection on the part of her children, husband and the mother herself. The children and father suddenly realize how they have taken her for granted, and reminisce about the sacrifices made by the mother.

In 1913, Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore was the first Asian winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. This monumental volume in English offers a wide variety of Tagore's writings: poetry, plays, travel writings, humor, prose and letters

This is a sequel to the epic Summer Without Dawn and can be read on its own. In the 1950’s Nour Kadam attempts to reconcile his Armenian family’s past history, the Armenian Genocide and his own life as a successful Turkish lawyer.

A tour de force novel about a flinty, reclusive 72-year-old woman who lives in modern-day Beirut.  Aaliya spends her days thinking about books, art, music and what, if anything, they have to do with real life, especially with her beloved city.  However, once a year she takes on the self-assigned task of translating a book that she deems significant.

Note:  This book has a copyright date of 2013, but was published in 2014.

 

In this superb collection of short stories Iranian writer Goli Taraghi portrays what it is like for individuals to be deracinated within their own country, or exiled as the result of political change; for them to have an eternal longing to go home to a place that will never be the same, except in their memories and hearts. The various characters are portrayed in their full humanity which Taraghi does in a cheeky, humorous style.  The characters and perspective are Iranian, but the stories are universal in appeal.

November 5, 2013, the author was a guest at ALOUD.

A former prisoner of war leaves Korea for Brazil in an attempt to cobble together a different life from what he left behind. Lyrical and tender, this spare volume holds within its few pages a life both tragic and vibrant.

A striking debut collection of short fiction that traffics in desire. In "The Infamous Bengal Ming," a lovesick tiger mauls his keeper and then prowls the city in anguish under helicopter high beams. In "Demons," a quietly desperate wife idly wishes her husband dead, then is crushed by guilt when he suddenly dies of a heart attack. These characters - human, animal, and insect - bear the puzzling weight of destroying what they love, or being destroyed by it.

Fenfang Wang is the country-girl hick who leaves her family's sweet-potato farm seeking adventure, some money, and a better way of life in modern Beijing.

A novel that has been banned in modern China. This is a dystopian story set in the near future, in China, where there is a booming economy and seemingly public contentment. However, when a past month vanishes from the history of events, few people seem to care or notice, except one successful writer. A key premise of this book challenges the concept of prosperity and material comfort versus freedom of thought and expression in a totalitarian state.

A remarkable collection of short fiction and poetry from writers living in countries listed as "enemy nations," this is part of an ongoing project from Bard College, Columbia University and the NEA. The introduction raises questions about being open to what others in the world are thinking--whether we agree with them or not.

A surprising book from women who are oppressed in many ways, but their spirits, heart-felt desires (secular, sensual, and religious),and thoughts are not.

Lyrical, insightful, witty writing from the diary of a lady at the Imperial Court, 10th century Japan.

Samejima is a renegade but successful Tokyo detective who fights the police department's bureaucracy with the same tenacity that he pursues organized crime. A noir tale set within one of Tokyo's seedy districts. This is the first English translation of a very popular series of Japanese mysteries.

Post-9/11 Chicago is the backdrop for clashes of culture, politics, religion, bureaucratic contentiousness, sexual liberation, love and more, as revealed in the lives of a dazzling group of Americans and recent immigrants.

Psychoanalyst Jamal wants to turn the tables. Instead of being the one who listens, as his profession requires, he wants to be the one to talk. Satirically funny and biting, Jamal reveals a good deal about our modern life and its daily quirks that help to create havoc and insanity. Kureishi is well-known for this screenplays to Venus and My beautiful laundrette.

Alienation and inner reconciliation are the themes in this tale of a young woman's adolescence in modern Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War. Sensuous prose evokes a Baghdad of natural beauty and diversity, which create the backdrop for the young protagonist's conflicts with her two cultures, the war, her family and herself.

A teacher, a former concubine, a rubbish collector, a disfigured girl, a news anchor, a wealthy layabout, and a little boy--each of their lives will be impacted by a young Chinese counterrevolutionary.  Set two years after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Li's tale provides a gripping introduction to a turbulent time period that is not well known outside of China.

A rip-roaringly funny and clever work about modern China.Taking on the Cultural Revolution, entrepreneurship, capitalism, and a skewering of hyperbolic western values, Yu has created a satire to rival the best--think of Rabelais, Cervantes, Smollett, Swift, Bulgakov, Hasek and Twain. Half-brothers, Baldy Li and Song Gang, are opposites in personality, but dependent on each other for their existence as they compete, overcome and support each other in this ribald tale of humanity in all its glory and degradation.

Nidali, the daughter of a Palestinian father and an Egyptian-Greek mother, recounts with comedic aplomb her childhood in Kuwait, her family’s harrowing escape during the Iraqi invasion, the no-holds-barred fights between her parents, her teenage years in Egypt, and the family’s ultimate move to Texas where she is routinely perceived as a Spanish-speaking Latina.

Changez reminisces to an American he meets in Lahore, Pakistan, about his meteoric rise to success in a New York financial firm, and his acceptance in elite social circles via his relationship with a woman he met while a student at Princeton University. After September 11, 2001, his love for his new country transforms.

Dating back to the 9th century, David of Sassoun is a centuries-old Armenian epic, embodying the freedom-loving spirit, spiritual strength, and wisdom of the heart of Armenia.  Also recommended is this bilingual edition with lavish illustrations:  David of Sassoun: told and sung by more than forty generations of Armenian bards.

 

An engaging historical saga set in fifth century Armenia and the struggle to preserve its culture and faith.  The tyrranical monarch of a neighboring country demands that Armenia renounce its faith and accept a sun god as the ultimate deity. The Armenian princes are confronted with a crisis--to yield to the monarch's demand, or to suffer a devasting invasion by his mighty armies.

Contemporary Japanese authors approach the traditional form alongside masters like Basho. "half of the mountain/dyed by red maples-/one-sided love" -Chiyo-Ni

Along with poems of romantic love, this collection also includes a surprising number of poems expressing a darker, more cynical attitude. "The heart is not a tulip/to bloom on its own in answer to summer." -Dilara Hashem

Includes classical poems by Rumi and poems by sultans and folk poets from the Ottoman Empire as well as poems by contemporary authors. "You are half of an apple, I am the other half;/Day and night, we are one, our hearth and home are one." -Oktay Rifat

Kenneth Rexroth's translations of Japanese poetry from the 8th century to the modern age.

This is a strange and dreamlike story about a group of characters traveling through a mist shrouded ancient Britain. They, and many of the people they meet, are suffering memory lapses. Can they find the things and people that they seek, or will the fog hide everything from them, even who they truly are? 

 

Orhan Pamuk, 2006 laureate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, has created a picaresque tale of old Istanbul and Turkey versus the changing world of the modern city and country.  Boza, a fermented drink, was once ubiquitous, but is rare and sold by few sellers. Mevlut Karataş is one of the few who still walks the streets selling the drink. A rather ordinary man from Central Anatolia, he thinks back upon his entire life and wonders what or who brought him his greatest joy and love.

Post-World War II Cairo is the setting for murmurings of political change and upheaval.  Alaa Al Aswany writes about a once prosperous landowner whose life has taken a turn for the worse. He finds work as a servant at the Automobile Club, once the private reserve of former colonials. This 1950s political/social/economic setting is a portent of future dissatisfaction and unrest.

A big, complex book that deconstructs the dissolution of a marriage and alienation of a family, amidst and inevitably linked to the multifaceted social and political upheavals of India from the 1970s to the present. The book centers on a father and son, Toby and Skanda, both Sanskritists, and their difficult relationship with Uma, Toby’s estranged wife and Skanda’s mother, and with India. Taseer weaves a considerable amount of history and Sanskrit into this novel, but never at the expense of his characters who feel absolutely alive and credible and absorbing.

 

Though both of Yaas' Iranian parents are Jewish, her father's upper class family is contemptuous of her mother, who comes from an impoverished community of South Tehran.  But the real challenge to her parents' marriage is her father's love for his beautiful Muslim mistress.  Hoping to spare her daughter the misery she endures, Yaas' mother expects her daughter to excel academically, but something prevents Yaas from grasping the basics of learning.

This book follows a female professor and her students as they are forced to take their class out of the university and into their homes. Despite the social pressures they experience during this time of revolution, they continue to study classics of English literature.

Follow the lives of a pair of women in 19th century China, and experience vicariously everything from the agony of foot binding to the atrocity of war.

A recently released prisoner winds up on an ill-fated revenge quest in this stream of consciousness novel by Egyptian Nobel Winner Mahfouz.

This is an intimate look at the relationship between a Chinese army doctor, his wife, and the woman he is in love with.

While waiting in a clinic, Yemeni-American poet Jacob mulls over his life, which began with little promise, and was filled with turmoil. All the while, Satan is flirting with him, Death tells him to call it quits, and there are fourteen saints hanging about. Jacob is confronted with what is worth remembering and what should be forgotten in his exceptional life.

Both hauntingly lovely and upsetting, this novel follows the story of one lonely man as he transcribes the several strange and violent journals of an odd, feral man. The journals recount the lives of shapeshifters:  their loves, their hungers, and their loneliness 

Beginning with the American invasion of Iraq and Saddam Hussein's hanging, the nameless narrator reflects on his life as an Iraqi citizen and military man. He reviews Iraq's modern history as a nation, and the cultural-religious-political events which have left the country fractured.

From the award-wining novelist who wrote, Please look after mom, Kyung-Sook Sin has written a semi-autobiographical novel.

This slender debut novel is deceptively quiet and elegantly restrained on the surface, but packs a knock-out punch. The story of how and why teenager Lydia Lee, the beautiful, brilliant, best-loved child of a 1970's mixed-race Ohio family, meets her shocking death is much more than just a Midwestern mystery. Within her very specific rendering of one family's tragedy, author Celeste Ng illuminates America's poisonous history of racism, sexism, and homophobia, but never at the expense of a suspenseful plot and a compellingly original cast of characters.

Hamid, the Pakistani author of Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, is one of the world's best contemporary writers, sure to be considered for the Nobel Prize in literature. This novel concerns refugees who pass through hidden magic doors in search of a safer life. Fear, loss, resilience, love, and hope all play a part as main characters Nadia and Saeed gradually make their way from an unnamed, war-torn homeland to a dystopic America.

A scenically beautiful Turkish seaside resort does not provide respite for a bon vivant crime writer.  All the turmoil, political intrigue, personal pettiness and rivalries that existed in the big city are magnified in small town life, which has its own horrific secrets. Underestimating the town folk, the writer has the tables turned on him. A carefully crafted satire about politics and the human condition. What is truth, what is not?

A compilation of Sayed Qashu's newspaper articles in Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper. Qashu is a prominent Israeli Arab author and journalist, who has written about the dififculties of being an Israeli Arab.  He is well known for the novel Dancing Arabs, and for the satirical and biting television series, Arab Labor. which aired on PBS and can be found on YouTube.

A collection of eight short stories exploring the Vietnamese American diaspora.

2017-2018 Asian Pacific American Award for Literature, Honor, for Adult Fiction.

Explore the collective lives of a group of Japanese “picture brides” brought to the US in the early part of the 20th century.  Otsuka gives us a compelling yet wrenching tale of the immigrant experience in this novel.

 Marilyn Chin's poetry is direct, asssertive and examines her own identity as a woman and Asian American. Never self-deprecating, she weaves humor, earthiness, and candor about origins, family and love.

A tender story of friendship, love and trust between a stray cat, with a crooked tale, taken in by a man. Satoru travels in a van to various parts of Japan in order to visit old friends. Nana the cat is his companion as they venture forth on a trip of the spirit and road.

A historical novel based on the life of Iran's most controversial modern female poet, Forugh Farrokhzad, who was both exalted and reviled during her short life. The poetess dared to create and to live as a liberated woman, long before the Iranian Cultural Revolution. This beautiful novel brings to life the feelings, direct speech and thoughts of a woman seeking to live unshackled as a human being and artist.

In this dystopian novel, award-winning author, Toko Tawada portrays the after-effects of an unnamed, irreversible disaster that takes place in Japan. The novel is a riff on a post-Chernobyl, post-Fukushima world, which turns disaster on its head by way of Mumei, a child who will lead the way to something better.

Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, master storyteller Elif Shafak's deliriously melodic and beautifully written novel chronicles the life of an Istanbul streetwalker, Leila Tequila, as it unfolds during the 10 plus minutes her brain remains in a conscious state, after she is murdered and dumped in a trash bin. For the next 10 minutes and 38 seconds, we witness her poignant and often humorous memories from birth to adulthood, sketching the colorful life of her five close friends, and chronicling a story of friendship and love within the confines of a rigid, patriarchal society where repressive politics and societal mores crush and stifle spirits, both tender and strong. An elegy to Istanbul, an ancient and modern city, with all its ugliness and splendor, and to the enduring resilience of spirit and humanity. 

Ahmet Altan is a journalist and novelist who has been sentenced to life in prison in Turkey. This is volume 1 of his Ottoman Quartet, a series of novels about the last fifty years of the Ottoman Empire.

Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate, introduces this collection of over 800 poems by more than 200 international poets. Collins' introduction and overview helps place the haiku in its historical context.

U.S. history, the Chinese Exclusion Act and Chinese folklore are woven into a story about a young girl, Daiyu, who wants to escape the fate of the tragic heroine for whom she was named.

Eight stories of Korean-American families and the indignities, compromises, and sacrifices they endure as part of the Asian minority in their adopted homeland.

A perceptive talking cat enlists the help of an aimless high school student in order to help save books that "... have been imprisoned." A coming-of-age adventure that is also an homage to all kinds of books and to the joy of reading.

Yu plays with literary form in new and interesting ways as he tells a story about a Chinese American bit part actor while simultaneously investigating concepts of assimilation, the history of Asian immigration, and how the self fits into society.

A collection of poems, by eighty-three Persian women, from more than a thousand years ago to the present. According to the translator, Dick Davis, “The Persian language, especially its literary form, has remained far more stable over the past millennium than is true of most European languages.” Many of the subjects and issues that are important to women have remained the same: marriage, children, politics, emancipation (political, social and economic freedom) and death.  As well as the freedom of women to express themselves without serious repercussions. Therefore some poems are attributed to anonymous.

  

In graphic novel format, artist Ai Weiwei revisits his personal experience as a child growing up during China’s Cultural Revolution. Ai Weiwei has used the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac and Chinese folklore as a basis for this memoir, where he reflects on freedom of expression and what it means to be an artist.

This was a whopper. Illustrated with clean lines and a kaleidoscopic sense of kinetic movement. The tone was somber and had a poetic aesthetic ambiance. Richly rendered and provided a comprehensive and riveting retrospective of this significant contemporary artist's work and practice. A wholehearted and wholesale recommendation from this librarian.

In 2003, a mystery is created when an unsigned postcard, possibly from the 1940s, arrives with the current mail. It is left to Anne to dig into her family’s past, questioning her mother, family members, friends, and associates, and seeking the help of a private detective, a graphologist, and many others to unravel this. Her quest will take her back to the history of the Rabinovitch family and their flight from Russia after the revolution.