50books_poc | Entries tagged with asian writers

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

38. Malinda Lo, Ash

A YA novel retelling the Cinderella story, but with a twist: Cinderella falls in love with a woman instead of Prince Charming. I've been excited for this book ever since I first heard about it: retelling of a fairy tale! Chinese-American author! YA lesbians! I love all these things. Also, the book has an absolutely gorgeous cover.

I'd somehow gotten the impression that this was the Chinese version of Cinderella, and so was a bit disappointed to find that instead the setting is a fairly generic Medieval-ish Europe. However, Lo does do some very interesting things with the setting, particularly in changing the Fairy Godmother to an elf (and not a nice elf, the Tam Lin and changelings and Childe Rowland kind of elf). Ash's relationship with the elves and magic- constantly drawn in but never quite able to entirely leave our world- was well-written and fascinating. I also really liked the repeated use of telling fairy tales as a way for characters to communicate.

I do wish that there had been more about Ash's relationship with Kaisa, but for what little there was, it was extremely well-written, subtle but vivid. There's not much detail given of people's reactions to the relationship, but it appears to be set in one of those worlds were being gay or lesbian is unremarkable. Certainly, there's no mention of a backlash to them, and Ash doesn't go through any sort of sexual identity crisis. I also wish the book had been longer! There was a lot more about these characters and world that I would have liked to know. But overall, very recommended.

Current Mood: busy

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

36. Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country. Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker.

A classic novel of Japanese literature, this book was cited as one of the reasons the author won the Noble Prize for Literature in 1968. The plot concerns a small hot-spring town in the mountains. A rich, lazy young man comes to visit several times over the course of a year or two, carrying on a relationship with a local geisha who is in love with him. The book has lots of very beautiful descriptions of landscapes- mountains in snow, fall leaves on the trees, bugs dying against a window in the summer; the translator even compares the novel to haiku- but not much plot. There are a lot of conversations where no one quite says what they mean, and most of the important developments take place in the subtext. That's interesting in some ways, but it's also very distancing, and I never felt very attached to the characters. On the other hand, this is a very short book, so if you want to try out a famous Japanese novel, it's definitely an easy read.

Current Mood: cold

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

34. Cindy Pon, Silver Phoenix

A YA fantasy novel set in a world based on Chinese legends and history, the plot concerns Ai Ling's search for her father, teaming up with some people she meets on her travels, and finding out about her special destiny. I really enjoyed the vast, vast number of monsters and other supernatural creatures Ai Ling has encounters with; there was always another legend or story popping up, and that felt very fun to me. I also agree with many other reviewers who have said that all the eating scenes in this book are fantastic, and make you hungry. Totally true! Although it made me realize that most fantasies a) don't show the characters eating very often, and b) when they are, it's usually "stew". Or occasionally "bread and cheese". A little description goes a long way, authors!

On the other hand, I felt like the writing was a little flat, and that really prevented me from getting into the story as much as I might have otherwise. Still, a very fun read overall, and I'm looking forward to more books by the author.

Current Mood: cheerful

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

32. Geling Yan, The Lost Daughter of Happiness, translated by Cathy Silber

This novel is about a real historical figure, Fusang, a Chinese woman who was a prostitute in San Fransisco in the late 1800s. Although the narration focuses on Fusang and her relationship with others, particularly Chris- a young white boy from a German merchant family in love with Fusang- and Da Yong- a Chinese gangster who is influential in Fusang's life- Fusang herself ultimately remains a blank. She's never given motivations, inner dialogue, or even much emotion. And this is deliberate. The narrator- who, as a Chinese writer living in America in the modern day, may or may not be the voice of the author herself- often breaks into the story, explaining the impossibility of truly knowing another person, especially when that other person is a historical figure with only brief mentions in texts. At other times, the narrator speaks directly to Fusang, asking her to move a certain way or to reply to a question. I found this distancing effect to be really intriguing, but in other reviews people seem to have been annoyed by it, so your mileage may vary.

The language is beautiful and vivid; the plot is compelling. The novel explores racism, sexism, and violence, often explicitly linking events of the historical period depicted to the modern day. Highly recommended.

Current Mood: cheerful

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

31. Nu Nu Yi, Smile As They Bow

This short novel (translated from Burmese by Alfred Birnbaum and Thi Thi Aye) takes place during the week-long Taungbyon nat religious festival, a annual festival located in a small, rural village which swells dramatically with pilgrims and other people who come to attend. The narration skips between different people at the festival, from pilgrims to the spirit mediums and musicians who make their living off such festivals, to pickpockets who take advantage of the crowds. The main character is Daisy Bond, a 50-ish gay/transgender (the Western categories don't really map onto the Burmese characters) well-known spirit medium. Daisy's relationship with Min Min, his 18-year-old servant/factotum/lover is the center of the plot, but the book seems concerned less with a typical straight-forward chain of events than with showing the chaotic feel of the festival, jumping backward and forward in time, constantly introducing new characters and perspectives, making and breaking connections.

The book is very short (about 100 pages), so it's an easy, fun read. As an American reader, I knew very little about the festival, nats, the role of spirit mediums, or gay/transgender people in Myanmar culture, and the book does not take the time to explain any of the connotations of these. Which, of course, it's under no obligation to do, but I feel sure that I was missing a lot of depth from the story. It would have been nice if the translators had included a few pages with cultural information. Despite my own problems, I still recommend this book, even if you (like me) know very little about Myanmar. It was never hard to follow the plot or sympathize with the characters, and I found it to be a very enjoyable read.

Current Mood: busy

whereweather.livejournal.com

#29. Same Difference and Other Stories, Derek Kirk Kim
2004, Top Shelf Productions (material originally self-published between 2000-2003)

I really, really like this story. (Also, the edition I'm reading has an extraordinarily beautiful cover, which I wish would show up more readily on Google searches for the book. I just love it a lot.)

This is a collection of short stories, but the book is clearly dominated by the title piece, which at 80 pages makes up more than half the book. (The rest of the pieces are a grab bag of variable interest and quality, ranging from two to eight pages or so.) "Same Difference," though, is a novella -- or a short graphic novel -- and I really dug it a lot. The central characters are Simon Moore and his friend Nancy; both are Korean-American, both are recent college graduates, both are living and working in Oakland and working on finding their adult footing and way in the world. An over-the-top prank played by Nancy, and her insistent desire to follow it up (Nancy has a very forceful personality, to the point of being domineering), leads to a day-trip-cum-road-trip down to Pacifica, the quiet, beautiful beachside suburb where Simon grew up. The day brings encounters and surprises; it ends, as days do, with sunset, night falling, the stars.

It would make this a longer review than I have time for to go into detail about all the reasons I like this work, but I'll throw out a few. I like Kim's aesthetic; by that I mean not just the technical execution of his artwork (which I also like very much), but also the way he chooses to depict things: his sense of pacing, of rhythm, of composition; his interest in quiet spaces and quiet passages, in the emotional value of light and natural and constructed-urban patterns in the environment. (This stuff is not blatantly obvious while you're reading the story, which I think is also deliberate -- it has a cheerful, almost noisy flow -- but it's definitely there.) Also, I like his character design, and I like his characters.

I find myself thinking of this in comparison to other comics I've been reading lately. Adrian Tomine's 2007 book Shortcomings throws up a similar dynamic: the protagonist's best friend Alice Kim is, well, actually almost identical to Simon's best friend Nancy. (Huh. The more I think about those details of character design and dynamic, the more I start to wonder about that. Kim's came first... ) But I like Kim's characters, and story, better: I find the protagonists more realistic (although that's admittedly a complicated term) and more engaging and endearing. Another comparison that comes to mind is Dan Clowes' Ghost World, for reasons which will probably be evident if you've read both books. Once again, though, I find myself liking Same Difference better.

I think the reason might be... or boil down to... because I find Kim's view of his characters, and the world, ultimately much more compassionate and humane than is the case with either Tomine or Clowes? And I like humane. It is ultimately what makes great literature great to me; which is why I'm not really a fan of either Clowes or Tomine, despite the respect I can accord to some of their work.

Your mileage, of course, might vary. This is why the world is full of books! :)

[Tags I would add if I could: california, disability, twentysomething, coming of age, culture shock]

PS: Oh yeah -- the rest of the stories are interesting, too, at least some of them. (A number of the tags I've used apply to them, not to the title story.) I couldn't really get into most of them, though; a lot of this work seems to be Kim complaining about how girls don't like him. They are fairly superior examples of the type, but there's not much depth there. This is, I'm coming to think, just material that many artists have to work through before they can get to plumbing their memories and emotions for richer and more mature work, and Kim has worked his way through it and gotten beyond. (Unlike some other cartoonists I could mention, like Chester Brown, or Ivan Brunetti, or Adrian Tomine, or Dan Clowes. (Oh, excuse me! Did I say that out loud? ;))

whereweather.livejournal.com

#28. Skim, Mariko Tamaki (writing) and Jillian Tamaki (art)
2008, Groundwood Books

Another book that I found through reviews on this comm. (Thanks again to all of you: you keep leading me to wonderful books.)

I enjoyed the book for many of the same reasons others did, especially those mentioned by

kyuuketsukirui,

sanguinity and [Bad username or unknown identity: puritybrown .] As regards the art style, I also loved, as someone else mentioned, that it clearly evokes Japanese aesthetics and the Japanese artistic tradition... but the influences it draws on are not manga. There's something about that, especially given the often troubling aspects of gender representation in mainstream manga (I'm thinking of exaggerated gender dimorphism, neoteny, and hypersexualization), that I found profoundly refreshing and even kind of inspiring.

Very highly recommended. I'm putting Mariko Tamaki's other graphic work, Emiko Superstar, on my to-read list, and I'd love to see other work from Jillian Tamaki. (Actually... let's see. Her website is here, there's an interesting illustrated interview with her here, and I see mention of a 2006 book called Gilded Lilies. Has anyone read it?)

[Tags I would add if I could: spirituality (or: religion/spirituality), high school]

Hey, by the way: [Bad username or unknown identity: puritybrown ,�]did you ever send the Tamakis that fan letter?

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

29. Shan Sa, Empress. Translated from French by Adriana Hunter.

A novel based on the life of Wu Zetian (called Heavenlight in the novel), a woman born in China in 625 AD to a relatively obscure family, who rose to eventually become Empress of China- in her own right, not as a wife- and found her own dynasty. The novel, told in first person, covers every single event of Heavenlight's life, from before birth (this may be the only novel which includes a fetus's perspective I've ever read) until after her death. This comprehensiveness is my main complaint with the novel: there are only so many scandals, political power grabs, rebellions inside and outside of the court, and trouble with relatives I can read about before it all starts to sound the same and I stop caring about who is who. I think this would have been a much more interesting book if it had chosen one period and focused on it in detail, instead of trying to cover Heavenlight's entire life.

That said, I did enjoy this novel. The beginning especially had lots of beautiful descriptions and fascinating events. Heavenlight was raised at least partially as a boy, and her accounts of horseback riding were so evocative (Sa is a poet, which I'm sure accounted for the gorgeous language in some parts of the book). Her early days as a concubine in the court were also fascinating, particularly when she develops a relationship with one of the other women. Recommended, though I do warn that it is extremely similar in parts to Anchee Min's Empress Orchid (despite the books being based on two different historical figures).

Current Mood: cheerful

whereweather.livejournal.com

#22. Good as Lily, by Derek Kirk Kim (writer) and Jesse Hamm (illustrator)
Marvel Comics (Minx imprint), 2007

I ordered this book from the library on the strength of the short-story collection The Eternal Smile (reviewed in a previous post), the 2009 collaboration between Derek Kirk Kim and Gene Luen Yang. I have already had a taste of Yang's solo work (in American Born Chinese), and I liked The Eternal Smile well enough that I became eager to check out Kim's solo work as well. So I asked the library for Same Difference and Other Stories, which is Kim's debut collection, published in 2003; and Good as Lily, which is a graphic novel published in 2007 by Marvel's short-lived Minx line for tween girls. (AAARGGH I HATE THAT NAME.)

Anyway. Good As Lily isn't bad, although I don't like it as much as Kim's earlier book (for reasons I will elucidate). ( Here's why... )

All in all a very interesting book, one of the more successful pieces I've seen from the Minx line. (I STILL HATE THAT NAME! And I can't help being glad they got served for it. ;)

[Tags I wish I could add: i: hamm jesse, coming of age, california, magic realism.]

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

27. Dorothy Ko, Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding

A non-fiction, academic book, but very readable. Ko states that her intention is to present a study of footbinding that does not approach the subject moralistically; she's very good at that. However, she also writes that she wants to give the female perspective on footbinding, and I felt that she mostly failed in that attempt. Nearly every single source is from a male writer. The few female sources don't show up until the last chapter. I also would have liked to see more archaeological sources used, either of the actual preserved shoes, or information from graves, houses, etc. Though being an archaeologist, I may be predisposed to that source.

Anyway. Regardless of my problems with it, I mostly enjoyed this book. Ko does a very good job of showing that there was no such single thing as "footbinding". What the practice entailed, in terms of age begun, physical shaping (or not) of the foot, and the cultural meaning, changed continually across time and space. She also does a great job of showing that ending footbinding was in itself a cultural practice, which meant specific things to specific people. Overall, an interesting book, even if I wished it had used a wider range of sources.

Current Mood: cheerful

annwfyn.livejournal.com

This is the latest in Nalini Singh's Psy/Changeling paranormal romance series, which I think have thoroughly been reviewed in the earlier books, but no one other than me seems to be actually reading their entire way through. I know a few earlier reviewers have rather been put off by a lot of the alpha male dynamics that Nalini Singh is very fond of. I see where they are coming from, but have kept going, in part for the world building (which is really interesting and original) and in part for the meta-plot which has been a constant thread throughout all the books and just keeps getting better and more convoluted.

This last book actually made me wonder if Nalini Singh wasn't actually a secret sf-fantasy author, who just learnt early on that the way to get published was to throw in a Mills & Boon stule romance on top. ( Review follows with mild spoilers )

Current Mood: bouncy

vegablack62.livejournal.com

The Snow day by Kamako Sakai,
3/50 (Only the third of my fifty books.)

On a whim I picked up this child's picture book by the Japanese writer and artist Kamako Sakai and found a beautiful, gentle story that captures the experience of a certain kind of kindergarten age child. If any one has been around a quiet watchful five year old they will recognize this child. A heavy snow has fallen keeping the child from going to school and the child's father from flying home from a trip. The delay of the father supplies a little tiny bit of plot and resolution when the snow stops enough for him to return. Sakai captures the muffled quiet and isolation a heavy snow creates. It looks like the child and the mother are the only two people in the world.

I loved that the child is portrayed as a bunny, a bunny how could be either a girl or a boy and could be from any race or gender. This could be any child. I also appreciate that the family lives in an apartment building. So often normalcy has to be a single family suburban home.

The illustrations are lovely and the text matches.

anitabuchan.livejournal.com

I've spent the last few days at the Hay book festival, and this is one of the books I got there (and went to the connected panel). 'Free?' is a collection of poems and short stories by children's writers, each one inspired one of the articles from the Declaration of Human Rights. The ones by POC authors are below.

( After the Hurricane by Rita Williams-Garcia, inspired by article 13. )

( Uncle Meena by Ibtisam Baraket, inspired by article 18. )

( Searching for a Two-Way Street by Malorie Blackman, inspired by article 19. )

( Jojo Leans to Dance by Meja Mwanji, inspired by article 21. )

( Wherever I Lay Down My Head by Jamila Gavin, inspired by article 22. )

Overall, I loved this and would recommend it to anyone, child or adult. Aside from the authors above it has stories from Michael Morpurgo, Eoin Colfer, David Almond, Patrica McCormick, Roddy Doyle, Theresa Breslin, Ursula Dubosarky, Sarah Mussi, and Margaret Mahy. Almost all feature CoC. Also, it's published by Amnesty International, so by buying it you'll benefit them.

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

11. Henry Chang, Chinatown Beat

Jack was born and grew up in New York City's Chinatown, and now that he's an adult, he's back in the neighborhood working as a cop; Johnny is a new Chinese immigrant with little to no English, working as a hired driver; Mona is also a recent Chinese immigrant, brought to NYC by Uncle Four, an older man involved with powerful gangs, to be his mistress. This novel switches between these three characters' narrations, and is about what happens when they interact. It's not much of a mystery (since the reader always knows who did what), though it's definitely noir. The language is very chilly and the world is very bleak; I know these are pretty much the defining traits of noir, but they very much didn't work for me in this book. In fact, I was so uninvolved in it that I put it down and read several other books before finishing it, coming back to it only because I figured there were only 50 pages left, so I may as well finish it.

The other thing I disliked in this book is that every female character is portrayed, to one degree or another, as a pushy, grasping bitch (or, in few scenes, as a damsel in distress). It was quite grating by the third or fourth character (that's an understatement).

On the good side, I thought this book did do a very good job of describing the look and feel of NYC's Chinatown, and I really enjoyed reading about the way the different racial groups (particularly Chinese, black, and Hispanic) uneasily interacted with one another.

12. Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

I know everyone has already said this, but: So! Good!

This book is about Junior, a Native American teenager living on a Spokane reservation, who decides to go to an all-white high school in a nearby town. He draws cartoons, and the text of the book is accompanied by drawings (done by Ellen Forney). The story deals with Junior's choice to leave the reservation, how the other Indians react to that choice, particularly his best friend, Rowdy, and the way he is treated by the white students, teachers, and other adults at the school. Everything is complicated, and done with such detail and honesty. It's funny, really funny, but what I was most surprised by was how tragic the book was also. There's a lot of death, and bad choices, and tough realities in here. Very highly recommended.

Current Mood: cheerful

sumofparts.livejournal.com

I picked up these two randomly from the library. Our Twisted Hero was on the table promoting Asian Heritage Month at the library. Link here for reading suggestions. I Say a Little Prayer was on a shelf in the hardcover fiction section.

( Cut for length and potential spoilers )

Note about tagging: I've added a "translation" tag but haven't tagged the (white) translator although his name is noted in my post.

sumofparts.livejournal.com

I read The Withdrawal Method a while back but forgot to post about it. I remembered when I finished When She Was Queen because they're both collections of short stories and also happen to have Indian-Canadian authors although the content and style of both are very different.

( Cut for length and possible spoilers )

whereweather.livejournal.com

Hi! This is my first post to this group. It's a fascinating community and I'm looking forward to participating. Also, please call me out if I say anything truly dumb-ass.

Tales from Outer Suburbia, Shaun Tan
2009, Templar Publishing

Shaun Tan is a fantastic illustrator and writer from Australia. I became a rabid fan of his last year, when a co-worker, who, I might add, usually shows no interest in either picture books or comics, pointed me to Tan's magnificent 2007 book The Arrival. The Arrival is beautiful, ingenious, and justifiably prize-winning, and it almost certainly ranks among the best books ever made about the immigrant experience. I recommend it to everybody. (I don't think it's worth going into detail about that book here, because people should probably experience it for themselves; I will add that, as Tan is primarily an artist, the book is mostly pictures.)

I went to catch up on Tan's oeuvre via interlibrary loan; so far I've also read The Red Tree, The Lost Thing, The Rabbits, and The Viewer, the latter two of which are books Tan illustrated to another writer's words and story. (The Rabbits is a painful and visually stunning parable of Australian colonialism; The Viewer is a horror story about a magic device that opens a window onto a past and a future wracked by war. They are both putatively children's books, but I have to say they are also pretty freaking scary. I wonder if Australia has different ideas about what constitutes children's literature than we do in the U.S.)

( Which brings us to Tales from Outer Suburbia... )

(*ETA: OMG DID I FORGET THE ONE ABOUT THE STICK PEOPLE?)

sumofparts.livejournal.com

Haven't posted or read in a long while.

Here's my latest book post.

Re the tags: her bio on her website says she lives in both the US and China, not if she's a citizen but I tagged this as "chinese-american" and "asian-american" anyway. The story however takes place almost entirely in China.

annwfyn.livejournal.com

'Brick Lane' is one of these books that I'd heard a lot about before I bought it - it had a lot of good reviews, was turned into a film, inspired protests from the Bangladeshi community and provoked a minor contraversy regarding the authenticity of the author and whether it was reasonable for an Asian writer from a fairly western and assimilated background to write about first generation Bangladeshi immigrants.

And so I read it, and having done so I can see why so many people liked it - it is a well written, thoughtful, insightful book in which Ali is incredibly good at not creating bad guys, or cardboard cut outs, but a lot of different men and women trying to do their best. I also really enjoyed seeing the east end of London - which I know well - through immigrant eyes. It was really interesting to look at the city I live in in a different way. Some of the things she said also reminded me of how I felt about England when I came back after living in Nepal for six months - I remember how big and grey and concrete everything felt, and how everyone seemed to move so quickly and looked so big and doughy, and I had only been away from England for six months!

Yet for all that, 'Brick Lane' failed to connect with me. I think a big part of the problem for me was the sheer scale of the novel. It starts in the early 80s in Tower Hamlets, and runs through until the present day. That's an awful lot of time to cover, with the main character starting off as an 18 year old girl who has just arrived in England, and ending as a mature woman with two teenage daughters. I think that's an ambitious structure for a novel, and one which I think mostly worked, but did leave me feeling a little lost behind at times, as it jumped about.

I've just finished this book, and I'm still unsure if I enjoyed it. I didn't dislike it, and I'm sure a lot of people will really enjoy it. It just didn't satisfy me, and I felt at times as if I'd have got as much out of it by just dipping in and out, and picking out bits of the descriptions that appealed.

It isn't a bad book, but I think if I had my time again I'll move it to the back of my pile and save it for a slow and rainy day.

Current Mood: awake

annwfyn.livejournal.com

I've just finished this book, and my brain is still rather clogged up with stray thoughts that I haven't processed yet, so I apologise if this review isn't very coherent.

First of all, I want to say that 'Anil's Ghost' is an amazing book. It is really really really good - the kind of good that gets inside your heart and your head and leaves you feeling slightly breathless after each chapter. The second thing I'd like to say is that this isn't an easy read. Michael Ondaatje started out as a poet, I believe, and like many poets, it shows in his writing. He writes through imagery, through capturing individual moments. His writing style isn't exactly linear, and his stories tend to twist and turn around in time, as if caught by some kind of current.

( Review follows with some light spoilers )

Current Mood: accomplished

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Writers of Color 50 Books Challenge

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Writers of Color 50 Books Challenge

Entries tagged with asian writers

Malinda Lo, Ash

Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country

34. Cindy Pon, Silver Phoenix

32. Geling Yan, The Lost Daughter of Happiness

31. Nu Nu Yi, Smile As They Bow

#29. Same Difference and Other Stories, by Derek Kirk Kim

#28. Skim, by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki

29. Shan Sa, Empress

#22. Good As Lily, by Derek Kirk Kim and Jesse Hamm

Dorothy Ko, Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding

'Branded by Fire' by Nalini Singh

The Snow Day by Kamako Sakai

Free? by Rita Williams-Garcia, Ibtisam Barakat, Malorie Blackman, Meja Mwanji, Jamila Gavin

Henry Chang, Chinatown Beat; Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

10. Our Twisted Hero by Yi Munyol and 11. I Say a Little Prayer by E. Lynn Harris

8. The Withdrawal Method by Pasha Malla and 9. When She Was Queen by MG Vassanji

#1: Tales from Outer Suburbia, by Shaun Tan

#7. February Flowers by Fan Wu

'Brick Lane' by Monica Ali

'Anil's Ghost' by Michael Ondaatje

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