Thank you to Alcove Press & NetGalley for the Reader's Copy!

Now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Indie Bookstore!

Prior to reading Sumi Hahn's gorgeous historical fiction in The Mermaid from Jeju, I had no idea about the rich cultural heritage of Jeju Island or the storied history of the haenyeo women.

The book is roughly split into two parts - Junja's perilous existence during the start of the Korean American War as she navigates the unexpected death of her mother, her new growing relationship with Suwol and an ever growing precarious political climate which makes it hard to differentiate between friend and foe. Along the way, we meet Junja's grandmother, a cunning & wily woman who protects her at all costs. This part of the book is incredibly detailed, with gorgeous descriptions of the Korean countryside & vivid recollections of an idyllic past.

The second part of this epic novel dives into the present, starting with Junja's untimely passing. It mostly focuses on her husband, Dr. Moon, and his own reckoning as a Nationalist soldier during the Korean American War. What I liked about this narrative is the way it complicated history & strived to view each character as human, no matter what side of the war they were on. In fact, as Constable once says, "There are no good guys in War."

Overall, I enjoyed the book! My only critique would be that it felt it could be split into two separate books as the two halves are quite different in content, theme and narrative style.

Thank you to Alcove Press & NetGalley for the Reader's Copy!

Now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Indie Bookstore!

Prior to reading Sumi Hahn's gorgeous historical fiction in The Mermaid from Jeju, I had no idea about the rich cultural heritage of Jeju Island or the storied history of the haenyeo women.

The book is roughly split into two parts - Junja's perilous existence during the start of the Korean American War as she navigates the unexpected death of her mother, her new growing relationship with Suwol and an ever growing precarious political climate which makes it hard to differentiate between friend and foe. Along the way, we meet Junja's grandmother, a cunning & wily woman who protects her at all costs. This part of the book is incredibly detailed, with gorgeous descriptions of the Korean countryside & vivid recollections of an idyllic past.

The second part of this epic novel dives into the present, starting with Junja's untimely passing. It mostly focuses on her husband, Dr. Moon, and his own reckoning as a Nationalist soldier during the Korean American War. What I liked about this narrative is the way it complicated history & strived to view each character as human, no matter what side of the war they were on. In fact, as Constable once says, "There are no good guys in War."

Overall, I enjoyed the book! My only critique would be that it felt it could be split into two separate books as the two halves are quite different in content, theme and narrative style.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for the Reader's Copy!

Now available on Amazon, Barnes&Noble and Indie Bookstore.

Catherine Hernandez's dystopian fantasy "Crosshairs" seems all too close to reality today with immigration detention camps across the United States, reports of forced sterilizations and "iceboxes" and a resurgence of hate crimes and hate groups. After all, slightly less than 50% of the country voted for a man who condoned white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys this November.

The story follows Filipino drag queen Kay after a traumatizing conversion effort by his mother's conservative church community. As he starts to work as a dishwasher in a local drag bar, Kay is mesmerized by the host & discovers a passion for a new line of work. Unbeknownst to Kay, though, his blissful domestic paradise is about to be shattered when a hate group, The Boots, starts to relegate all minorities into concentration camp. Yeah, it gets wilder and wilder as the story continues with indigenous activist groups, underground rebel factions and some good old political subterfuge.

Crosshairs is an inventive novel that confronts our present reality, our precarious precious hold on life itself. Hernandez asks her readers what they would do themselves to protect their lives, their loved ones and their very humanity. A stirring call to action and stunning tour de force.

Thank you to Kensington Books and NetGalley for the Reader's Copy!

Now available!

Tense, tightly wounded and intense are all words that perfectly fit Yolanda Vance, the protagonist of Aya de Leon's latest thriller A Spy in the Struggle. After recent scandals at her law firm, Vance finds herself on the verge of homelessness, a condition she sought to escape throughout much of her childhood. Driven by desperation, she joins the FBI on a mission to investigate the untimely death of a young Black woman and a community based organizing union, the Red Black and Green. Along the way, Vance confronts her own demons and paradoxes.

What I liked about this novel is Leon's never ending plot twists. Each time I thought I knew what Vance was going to do, she surprised me. The ever evolving character development and Aya de Leon's complex exploration of class, race and gender in the modern "movements" makes this a great read!

What a treat, what a dream it was to curl up with this book well into the New Year. Nicole Byer is fabulous, serving us bikini goddess realness & #bravery all through a mix of gorgeous photos, offhand humor and vulnerable memoir. What often gets me about Byer's comedy is the way she gets to the heart of the material, the painful tragic story of her mom dying before she could go back to her native Barbados, and finds humor & love in the situation. It's truly more therapeutic and educational than any therapist I've been to.

Like the spinning dancer that graces the cover of Sejal Shah's "This is One Way to Dance", this collection of essays blur the lines between lyrical and factual, between longing for home and being self sufficient, between proudly declaring a heritage and being caught in vulnerable moments of self doubt and questioning. Shah delves into the complexities of her childhood, of a racialized upbringing in a white neighborhood, of wanting to connect to a home that isn't quite home, of the inexplicable bonds created by poetry and writing that can carry across generations. As a whole, the reading is light, fast paced and often compulsive, like the mesmerizing spins of a Bharatanatyam dancer.

Quotes:
"I wrote about 9/11. I wrote about what it feels like to lose a language you grew up with and to be able to express this loss only in another language."

"Why must I give context for my characters? Who is my audience? Why should I explain myself to you? How do you make it through a program without giving another's point of view and references more weight than your own?"

"In the books I read growing up, there were always words I couldn't quite imagine. I remember, with a specificity that surprises me, the foreignness of certain colors: kelly green, strawberry blonde."

"My name means water. You are the absence of rock: something that can hold, something that is whole without it."

"Love. You, turning toward me in the bed, light slanting in from the streetlamps, through the lattice window, from the coming sunrise, from the day."

"Which Indian restaurant would you recommend in the area? I tell him I don't eat Indian food out. I tell him that I only eat Indian food (and we just call it food) at my parents' house. I tell him I find this question unprofessional."

"There are stories we tell ourselves, stories we tell each other; weddings are stories we tell ourselves; we are stories we tell each other."

At 5 pm today, I found myself inexplicably weeping over the navel oranges in a bag. I blame the one and only Aimee Nezhukumatahil and her glorious collection "World of Wonders". Between detailed descriptions of animal, flora and fauna and recollections of her mixed Filipino and South Indian upbringing, Nezhukumatahil seeks to bring us back to a state of childlike wonder with the natural world. It is an ambitious goal, but her gentle narrative style guides the reader to a place of contemplative reflection. Just incredible!

Quotes:
"I know I will search for fireflies all the rest of my days, even though they dwindle a little bit more each year. I can't help it. They blink on and off, a lime glow to the summer night air, as if to say: I am still here, you are still here, I am still here, you are still here, I am, you are, over and over again."

"If a white girl tries to tell you what your brown skin can and cannot wear for makeup, just remember the smile of an axolotl. The best thing to do in that moment is to just smile and smile, even if your smile is thin. The tighter your smile, the tougher you become."

"I wonder about alectryomancy, writing by divination. A white hen is set near a board divided into 26 segments. You place a grain on each segment, then take down what words are spelled out when the hen eats the grain. On my worst writing days, that's what writing a poem feels like. Only I am not the hen. I am the grain."

Naben Ruthnum's Curry is not so much about the comfort food we have all known to delight in, but the concept of curry in pop culture. Specifically, Ruthnum discusses the variations of curry as they appear in British and North American literature and media, by both diaspora writers like Lahiri and Rushdie, white authors like Elizabeth Gilbert, and shows like Gordon Ramsey's "Kitchen Nightmares". It is a deliciously mind boggling adventure that takes the reader around the globe in search of a simple question, "What is a curry?"

Yet as broad as the narration was, I would have liked more concrete history. I loved, for example, when Ruthnum discusses how the British invasion of Mughal India changed the components of North Indian curries as an export commodity. It would be interesting, perhaps, to see these ideas presented in a continuum, tracing the evolution and explosion of curry across the world.

Quotes:

"Before, or after, there was a curry. Vegetables, a thick sauce, rice I couldn't get the knack of clumping and thrusting into the sauce with the bird-beak grip my uncles and cousins demoed for me. It had been forks and knives up until this day as it would be afterwards. Tiny cuts I didn't know I had at the base of my cuticles tasted the curry as I did, the elements of sauce that bit my tongue taking a purchase in the blood there, leaving a sting that lasted."

"They exist as reflections the author's consciousness and culture, with culture processed through that consciousnesss."

"Curry is only definably Indian because India is a country that has the world in it."

Reflecting on her experiences as an Asian American writer in mostly white American spaces, Cathy Park Hong details her journey through academia in "Minor Feelings". For a book that discusses Asian Americanness in such candid, frank manner, I found it really curious how Hong frames her discussion, how she doesn't address the radical origins of "Asian American" until the final page or two. It's an okay read. I was most moved by the essay on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha!

Thank you to Perseus Books and NetGalley for the Reader's Copy!

Now available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Indie Bookstore.

While intriguing as a concept, I found Jane Dailey's White Fright to be ultimately essentialistic. Through a series of historical analysis, Dailey serves to build the premise that the fear of black sexuality has been the main motivation for racial tension between Black and White communities. She particularly relies on examples of misconduct in the military, contrasting the treatment of hypersexualized Black males to their white counterparts.

The premise laid out in this book is nothing new - fear of sex is the basis of any Puritan society as Howard Bloom tried to prove back in the 1990s. There's no nuance, for example, in differentiating the different Christian communities, only that God fearing white Christians in the South fear black men. Where do non Black POC males like Asian Americans, Latinx or Indigenous folk fit into the conversation? Where do Black and non Black POC women fit into the conversation?

What if we reversed the conversation and discussed the vitality of Black power and Black love and Black community? That Black folk in the US have continued to thrive despite these constant "fears"? What if we talked about White Mediocrity as Ijeoma Oluo does, white insecurity? I felt like that would be a much more interesting conversation.