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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
