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MY LIFE

GROWING UP ASIAN IN AMERICA

A luminous book that highlights the humanity and multitudes of being Asian American.

A timely collection that captures a wide variety of Asian American coming-of-age experiences.

Compiled amid the anti-Asian violence that began in 2020, the anthology shows that the Asian American experience is not monolithic but rather layered and diverse. Yet all readers will find much to relate to via universal themes of intergenerational conflict, stereotypes, and what it means to belong. Malaysian Chinese immigrant Shing Yin Khor’s “I Don’t Want To Write Today” is a gorgeously illustrated short story that captures the author’s exhaustion at having to make a case to exist, especially within a White-dominated culture. Novelist Melissa de la Cruz’s “Fourteen Ways of Being Asian in America Over Thirty-Six Years” chronicles her life from being a young girl from the Philippines to growing in her career as a writer; the one sad constant has been racism and microaggressions. Journalist Amna Nawaz grippingly depicts the fear she felt after 9/11 as a young Pakistani American and how that has shaped how she raises her biracial daughters in today’s culture. Besides the dual identities of being Asian and American, the book explores intersectionality in other aspects. “On Being Black and Asian in America,” by Kimiko Matsuda-Lawrence, is about how her Japanese and Black identity changes with different social situations. Kim Tran’s “An Incomplete Silence” explores the author’s relationship with her family and how her mother’s silence when she came out did not necessarily mean disapproval. Other writers choose song lyrics (“Listen Asshole” by Yellow Rage) and poetry (“a bad day” by Catzie Vilayphonh, “Ten Things You Should Know About Being an Asian From the South” by G Yamazawa) to convey their anger at anti-Asian violence and the feeling of being a perpetual foreigner. Marie Lu’s poem, “Museum in Her Head,” describes a woman heroine walking through halls of memories and realizing the power of pride in one’s work and name. SuChin Pak provides the introduction, and other contributors include Kao Kalia Yang, David Kwong, and Aisha Sultan.

A luminous book that highlights the humanity and multitudes of being Asian American.

Pub Date: May 17, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-982195-37-3

Page Count: 256

Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022

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WAR

An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.

Documenting perilous times.

In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”

An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024

ISBN: 9781668052273

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024

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THE MESSAGE

A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.

Bearing witness to oppression.

Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”

A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024

ISBN: 9780593230381

Page Count: 176

Publisher: One World/Random House

Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024

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