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My First Book of Korean Words: An ABC Rhyming Book by Henry J. Amen IV and...
No matter where you’ve been hiding, someone has been able to infiltrate your defenses and made you watch the freakishly popular “Gangnam Style” by PSY (in Korean, 싸이, although apparently it’s short for...
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The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad, translated by Ingrid Christophersen
Okay, here we go again (see Kabul Beauty School below). We have a (fascinating, allegedly true) story, and then the (disturbing) story about the (now accuracy-challenged) story. Just after the fall of...
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Soul Calling: A Photographic Journey through the Hmong Diaspora by Joel...
Joel Pickford‘s titular journey took him through an 8,000-mile trek to some of the most remote villages in Laos, five years of interviewing Hmong refugees, and five years of reading Hmong history and...
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The Sky of Afghanistan by Ana A. de Eulate, illustrated by Sonja Wimmer,...
“I look at the sky, I close my eyes, / and my imagination begins to soar …,” so begins this beautiful, but bittersweet picture book – bittersweet because for now, the little girl can only imagine,...
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Little White Duck: A Childhood in China by Na Liu and Andrés Vera Martínez
Little White Duck is a visual feast that showcases the childhood memories of author Na Liu, and vibrantly enhanced by her artist husband Andrés Vera Martínez. Liu introduces herself with an adorably...
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The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger
Here’s my ‘why-I-read-this-book-scenario’: a 21st-century equivalent to the mail-order bride from Bangladesh, her middle-class white American engineer sponsor hubby, the suburban New York life they...
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Sumo by Thien Pham
Last seen on bookshelves sharing cover credit with National Book Award-finalist Gene Luen Yang on Yang’s latest, Level Up, Thien Pham makes his solo debut with this slim...
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Count Me In! A Parade of Mexican Folk Art Numbers in English and Spanish by...
Come one, come all: the Guelaguetza festival is about to begin. Guelaguetza means ‘to share’ in the Zapotec language, and every July, the people of Oaxaca, Mexico gather to ‘guelaguetza’ their...
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The Perfect Flower Girl by Taghred Chandab, illustrated by Binny Talib
Awww … who doesn’t love a joyous wedding? In this delightful cross-cultural Muslim marital fest, Amani is determined to be the best flower girl ever for her Aunty Sarah. Even when her little sister...
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House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East by Anthony...
The late Anthony Shadid is back in the headlines today with happy news: the double-Pulitzer winner’s resonating memoir is one of the autobiography finalists for the National Book Circle Critics awards...
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The Year of the Snake: Tales from the Chinese Zodiac by Oliver Chin,...
Three weeks into the new year, and I’m already so behind I surely wouldn’t mind a do-over. I don’t think I’ve ever been this tardy before with the latest annual installment of Oliver Chin‘s energetic,...
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A Bride’s Story (vol. 4) by Kaoru Mori, translated by William Flannagan
Life along the Silk Road – 19th-century style, imagined by and translated from a 21st-century Japanese original – moves onward west, meticulously detailed in creator Kaoru Mori’s breathtaking manga. To...
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A Kid’s Guide to Arab American History: More Than 50 Activities by Yvonne...
Here’s a common occurrence at our house: I can’t go to bed without a book, which usually means I’m a constant barrage of ‘Did you know that …? Were you aware that …?’ to the ever-patient hubby who’s...
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Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking by Fuchsia Dunlop
How’s this for a fabulous first line? “The Chinese know, perhaps better than anyone else, how to eat.” Think about any little small town in the U.S. alone … no matter where you are, the one type of...
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A Chinese Life by Li Kunwu and Philippe Ôtié, translated by Edward Gauvin
No other word than epic describes this almost 700-page tome. It’s epic in content: six decades of one ordinary man’s extraordinary life, told through detailed, rich depictions in swirling...
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The Hakka Cookbook: Chinese Soul Food from Around the World by Linda Lau...
How come no one is out there cooking their way through all the recipes of an Asian cookbook and blogging about it, then making a movie with … say, Jackie Chan fighting the good fight with woks and...
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Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion by...
I refer to myself as a ‘recovering Catholic,’ and yet I can’t stay out of churches for long. I enter as a tourist – admiration for architecture seems to be genetically coded into our extended family –...
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What a Party! by Ana Maria Machado, illustrated by Hélène Moreau, translated...
In the same delightful, sequential fun of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie – if you do x, then y happens – Brazilian überauthor of more than a hundred books, Ana Maria Machado, puts on a party of epic...
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Author Profile: Don Lee
When Don Lee’s first book debuted in April 2001, he probably didn’t know that he was the forerunner of a colorful trend – literally. His collection, Yellow, had the shortest of subtitles, simply...
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Author Interview: Don Lee [in Bloom]
With his eyes and body still “bleary from post-windsurfing and traveling,” Don Lee nonetheless graciously agrees to be grilled yet again – we’re going on a decade-plus of various interviews through...
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