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Recent Reviews
Jane Wong
Rave The New York Times Book Review \"Honoring the full depth...in a single review is as impossible as celebrating the full richness of Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage in a single month ... Wong’s book is reminiscent of an abstract watercolor, free-flowing, nonlinear, without clear borders.\
Fae Myenne Ng
Rave The New York Times Book Review Might be likened to a figurative oil work, with structured lines building layers of her family’s history.
Nicole Chung
Rave The Washington Post Moving ... Both of her adoptive parents died within two years of each other. In this intimate memoir, she explores this difficult emotional terrain while also delivering a powerful social commentary that poses vital questions on access to medical care and the meaning of home and family ... Chung’s deeply personal story also highlights the shortcomings of health care in America ... Powerful.
E M Tran
Rave The New York Times Book Review ... daring ... The novel’s magical realism contrasts poignantly with its depiction of the too-real pressures of assimilation, which the modern Trung sisters face. In spare prose, Tran paints the sacrifice, guilt and culture clash of immigrant families. Precise details point to these larger dynamics ... By connecting these contemporary challenges with the Trungs’ warrior lineage, Tran shows us that modern resistance to assimilation is a continuation of a historical fight against imperialism ... And while I wished to follow each act of defiance longer, wished there were clearer resolutions for the modern Trungs and more details given about each of their ancestors, I also wondered whether this was exactly Tran’s point: that acts of resistance cannot stand alone. They form a continuous fabric through time, weaving a tapestry through the ages.
Vanessa Hua
Rave The Washington Post ... masterful ... These thoughts bring the reader to question what Mei might be misremembering throughout the novel, and what she might not remember at all — a metaphor for the selection of events that official history deems fit to either embrace or discard...But that’s the thing about hidden history, political, national and personal: Once a long-buried truth is revealed, it sparks connections, understanding and empowerment ... Mei’s description of the Cultural Revolution does not sound so removed from our daily American reality. Hua concludes her Author’s Note by warning that \'[t]he past is never as distant as it seems.\' That’s just another reason that her novel is eye-opening, vital and timely now more than ever.
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado
Rave New York Times Book Review Powerful ... Vasquez-Lavado’s memoir is many things. It is an adventure saga of her ascent of Everest; a vulnerable meditation on her childhood in Peru; and the tale of an immigrant’s journey to the United States. Above all, the book is Vasquez-Lavado’s reclamation of the truth behind the stories and secrets she had to learn to bear early ...The writing is cinematic ... Two timelines alternate and reinforce each other, like dual strands of a knotted rope. Vivid adventure scenes abound ... At the beginning of the climb, Vasquez-Lavado keeps company with Nepali women who were trafficked as children, voices I wish were more present throughout the book ... Herein lies the wisdom of this work, aptly subtitled \'A Memoir of Courage\': In a world that demands us to harden, to tell stories of strength and triumph, the bravest act can be embracing our inner child, our fears, our truths.