Seoul, South Korea – South Korea recognizes Christmas as a public holiday, with 30 percent of the population being Christians. Even non-Christian Koreans engage in gift-giving, card-sending, and plastic tree-decorating at this time of year, and engaging lights beautify the City Hall area for people to enjoy. What’s surprising is the locals treat the season [...]
The holiday season has arrived. Many families will come together to celebrate, to share and to love one another despite differences. But what do you do during the holidays when you share different religions? Personally, I was raised Buddhist and my husband was raised Christian. We respect each other’s beliefs and values. Yet, we are [...]
Historically, the Chinese community churches have provided a communal place for people to gather and share their experiences. But as times have changed, some Asian Americans have turned to religion and their faith to understand their cultural identities. Luzminda Eng’s grandparents are of Chinese ancestry but moved to the Philippines, where her parents grew up [...]
The financial crisis is deepening poverty’s reach across the globe; the fierce healthcare debate in the U.S. is raising questions about what rights are truly universal; and economic inequality continues to grow wider in superpowers like India and China. It’s an apt time for Irene Khan, Amnesty International’s first woman and first Muslim Secretary General, [...]
My Tam H. Nguyen is a graduate from the Asian Pacific Islander Community Leadership Foundation’s (ACLF) Community Leadership Program Class of 2008. She works in community relations for the City of Seattle. Nguyen is launching an ethnic food and community oriented blog focused around preserving heritage and memories through food. You can view her blog [...]
“Did you know about the storm that hit Vietnam and the Philippines? How do you feel about what happened to our parent’s homeland?” I asked a friend, My Hoa Nguyen. “It’s horrifying and depressing,” she said. “It’s tragic how these things can happen. It’s a good thing the U.S. and other nations are providing aid. [...]
Early in this century, Japanese immigrants cultivated the land east of Lake Washington into verdant acres of strawberries and other crops. World War II banished those farmers to internment camps, their fields to be taken over by suburban blocks, then high-rise buildings. This autumn, a strawberry field reappeared like a ghost in downtown Bellevue; in [...]
View Pacific Reader Articles Here It’s been a long time coming but we would like to welcome our loyal readers to the return of our Pacific Reader book review supplement that covers new titles by or about Asians in North America as well as new books from Asia. This new issue is a special feature [...]
Asian Pacific American (APA) parents and community members must challenge publishers to provide more quality literature where the protagonists are strong APA role models. Many books for children draw narrow portraits often shaped by deeply embedded stereotypical caricatures like the karate kid, heavily-accented foreigner, geisha girl, math/science nerd, and rice rockets (modified cars). These fallacies [...]
I thank the America which lets me talk and write freely about people and events which I shall never forget. —Taro Yashima This is the quote which introduces a defining account of the life of the artist Iwamatsu Jun’s graphic memoir, “The New Sun”. He had to practice his trade as a painter under the alias of [...]
The levity at which Shaun Tan weaves visually in “The Arrival” is something that makes his illustrative style an enjoyment to read, though this previous book had not a decipherable word to consume. I don’t state that as a critque—his construct was actually intentional. As with The Arrival the structure of the suburban landscape based [...]
In An Na’s “The Fold”, Joyce Park, a sweet, self-conscious Korean seventeen year-old is a girl that many teenage girls will be able to identify with—from dealing with that big annoying zit that comes at the worst time, to confronting your long-time crush or just having to deal with the insecurities of being a teenager. [...]
Even before you open this large-format graphic novel, your first take is absorbing the beauty of this hard-bound book. The cover appears something of a tattered leather-bound volume denoting the ravages of age or just heavy use. Here, we are introduced to the author’s first metaphor of the protagonist’s migrant experience. This character endures a [...]
“When I was a little boy, I lived in an old courtyard in Beijing, China, between the Drum Tower, the Bell Tower and the river…” So begins Guo Yue and Clare Farrow’s “Little Leap Forward: A Boy in Beijing”. The boy, Leap Forward (Yuejin), is the much-beloved child of a musician father and an educated [...]
“The Slant”, by Laura Williams, is the story of Lauren, a middle school girl struggling with identity. However, what sets Slant apart, is the combination of the universal social struggles of adolescence, with the complex and challenging issues that Lauren faces. Lauren, adopted from Korea, her sister Maia, adopted from China, her father, an American [...]
In his memoir, “A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants”, Jaed Coffin is the child of a Thai mother and an American father, in search of the concrete identity he feels he lacks because of his interracial background. As an American college student he returns to Thailand, where he briefly becomes a Buddhist monk in an [...]
Chen Jiang Hong’s “Mao and Me: The Little Red Guard” evokes the ambivalences of one young Chinese child’s autobiographical experiences growing up during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966 – 76), a decade-long political shake-up and the last hurrah of the Mao era. Powerfully illustrated in full-color hand drawings, Mao and Me strives for realism [...]
“The Buddha’s Diamonds” is a story-telling book written in a very easy and readable language. It is a vivid description of a difficult life of a poor family in a remote village in Vietnam. The family mainly contains the parents, Tinh, a boy – the main character, and his sister. The family is extremely poor [...]
“Something for School” starts with a little girl, Yoon off to her first day of kindergarten. Yoon is very sad. Because of her short hair she is mistakenly identified as a boy by her classmates and her teacher and is placed in the wrong group. This picture book details the little girl’s hard time on [...]
“The Snow Day” by Komako Sakai. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2009. “The Snow Day” is a charming story of how a child and his mother deal with an unexpected winter storm. Children will relate to the wonder and excitement of playing in freshly fallen snow, and parents will smile with familiarity at the sense of dread [...]
“Wave” by Suzy Lee. Chronicle Books, 2008. With black charcoal and turquoise blue paint on a stark white background—and no words—a young girl’s day of discovery at the beach comes to life in this delightful book by Korean artist Suzy Lee. Lee uses the panoramic format of the book and simple but evocative art to [...]
Patti Yoon, aged seventeen and up to her head in SAT study books, AP Calculus practice tests and, of course, those soul searching college essays, is tired of being a PKD (Perfect Korean Daughter). She is tired of feeling like the only thing that her Korean parents care about is what grades she gets in [...]
A tepid reader who first gazes upon this book may shy away from breaching its pages. The captivating collages of magazine cutouts, mammalian illustrations mounted in magic and glittered fascination of a helpful cephalopod can seem discordant for most, but the celebrated world Lynda Barry has created for the imagination and inspiration is actually most [...]
Kimberly Keiko Cameron, a part-Asian pseudo-Wiccan- maybe-Goth high school student also known as Skim, has issues. Stuck in an all-girls private school with only one friend and a penchant for cheap cigarettes, she falls in love with her English teacher Ms. Archer. Whilst her classmates are swooped up in the throes of a popular girl’s [...]
