Click Here for Book Reviews “Of Butterflies And Bees” It’s true that summer will be here any day now (weather permitting) and we’ll have our share of butterflies and bees in the garden but writing this introduction to our latest Pacific Reader brings on memories of Mulhammed Ali’s poetry instead. Our feature story for this [...]
It seems like planners and policy makers, especially environmentalists, have been consumed by the idea of everything being “green and sustainable.” So, the focus for these professionals is what makes communities, environment, transportation systems, economies, development, and so on, ecologically right and sustainable. Greening Cities, Growing Communities: Learning from the Seattle’s Urban Community Gardens”, which [...]
Henry Chang and Joe Tsujimoto come from opposite ends of the isle of Manhattan, but their recent books, “Year of the Dog and “Morningside Heights: New York Stories”, reside on the same artistic/generational aisle of NYC/Asian American awareness. Both came of age in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s, and while thirty or forty years may not [...]
Sarah Sze is a young talent that came out of the late 1990s, and is now nationally and internationally recognized. We can see one of her installations in Seattle, permanently installed, a white chandelier at an entrance to the Marion Oliver McCaw Hall in Seattle Center. The piece has her signature material base of electric [...]
Even after the Olympics in Beijing, China continues to transform itself at a startling pace, driven by the opening of its economic market to modernize. This trio of books document a turning point in China’s history. They also show just how differently artists can approach the same subject and their ability to evoke such varied [...]
It has been over 6 decades since the incarceration of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians took place during WWII, and in the last decade or so, there has been a relatively constant stream of publications and films about these events. This stream is unlikely to dry up in the near future. If anything, the later [...]
In 1989, students in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) marched for democracy and an end to government corruption. They held Tiananmen Square and the world’s attention for many weeks before martial law was declared and the demonstrations were ended in bloodshed. In the midst of that push for social change, three men from Hunan [...]
Chiura Obata’s 1925 painting of flaming sunset skies over the Sacramento Valley that graces the cover of “Asian American Art: A History 1850-1970” is a fitting choice to represent a unique survey of artists. Above a low-slung charcoal-colored landscape the sunset is rendered as furious crimson and gold flames in a fluid style that suggests [...]
According to author, D.J. Maeda, “…the four major themes of this book (are) Asian American struggles with and against whiteness, the emergence of Asian American identity in relation to blackness, transnational sympathies with Asians in Asia constructed through opposition to the war in Viet Nam, and the cultural formation of Asian American identity.” Maeda continues [...]
In Jeff Talarigo’s novel “The Ginseng Hunter”, a solitary man becomes reluctantly involved in the lives of North Koreans who have illegally entered China. Though his reluctance soon recedes, it is replaced by a moral discomfort that becomes especially acute as his relationships with these strangers become more personal. In this novel, quiet contradictions abound. [...]
Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton of Seattle are the award-winning translators of numerous volumes of modern Korean fiction. Most recently, the Fultons have received the prestigious literary translation prize from the Daesan Foundation for “There a Petal Silently Falls: Three Stories” by Ch’oe Yun (Columbia University Press, 2008). Here, we interview them. Q: You have translated [...]
Korea is no stranger to traumatic events. From Mongol subjugation during the Koryo Dynasty to cultural genocide by the Japanese in the twentieth century, Korea has experienced horrors that have affected people long after the traumas have passed. So pervasive have these traumas been that a word has been coined to describe the emotional turmoil [...]
Azby Brown, whose “The Very Small House” was reviewed in the International Examiner in 2005 has come out with another gem. In “Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green from Traditional Japan” (Kodansha International) Brown points to the past to show how we can live happy, fulfilled and responsible lives today. In my mind Azby Brown [...]
Among the requirements of the “Young Adult” – or “YA” – category of “juvenile literature” are that there be an older teenage protagonist; and that sex, drug use and language be strictly limited. So, why is the “m__f__” word there in Peter Bacho’s new YA novel, “Leaving Yesler”? “For the most part, I refrain from [...]
Love can be found in the fidelity to daily details in “7 Continents 9 Lives” (Bowery Books 2010), by Fay Chiang, a genre-defying collection of poems, prose poems, journal entries and dramatic monologues that includes work from the poet’s previous two volumes published by Sunbury Press. It’s a brave, beautiful, compassionate, harrowing, imperfect and impossibly [...]
Grotesque, from the Old Italian grottesca (feminine of grottesco, from grotta), literally means “cave painting”. It refers to a style of art that blends human and animal forms, resulting in a fantastical distortion of the natural into a caricature of itself. It usually portrays something absurd or terrifyingly ugly. Sandra Lim’s first book of poems, [...]
“No man is an island.” John Donne (1572-1631) On January 20, 2009, Hawaii unwittingly became the focus of the nation when Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. Obama was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, and although he has undoubtedly had a remarkable influence on the country so [...]
When Yao Ming’s Houston Rockets came to visit the Seattle Sonics in his rookie season, a Chinese basketball tournament was being held in town and hundreds of Chinese, some of them quite tall, were in attendance to cheer on their hero. Long before Yao came along, there were young Chinese men and women who learned [...]
This is the most exquisite and elegantly designed catalogue of Mariko Mori I have ever seen. The pure white square book box and book cover almost cautions me to put on white gloves. There is no printed word at the beginning but the pages start with silvery pale photos of sacred ancient sites from various [...]
What would you risk for love? “Steer Toward Rock”, Fae Myenne Ng’s latest novel, asks exactly this. Fifteen years after her critically acclaimed first novel “Bone” was released, Ng has captivated us again with another beautiful and well-written novel. A haunting, brave story about courage and unrequited love and desire, loyalty and family, this is [...]
“Shopping for Sabzi” is a debut collection of short stories by Nitin Deckha who was born in England, raised in Canada and educated in the United States. His transnational experiences are reflected in the dozen stories in this collection. Many of his South Asian characters are transnational subjects who are negotiating multiple cultural and social [...]
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 [...]
