When I was a kid, I moved from Sri Lanka to the US without any knowledge of English. I first learned the language through the stories I watched and then the ones I read. I spent hours in the library and was most strongly attracted to stories with magic and witches, which allowed me to escape my own life and find refuge in my imagination. These stories are why I became a writer, and many of these stories still hold sway over me today. When life gets hard, I love to escape into these magical worlds.
This book explores family history and heritage, but this time with time travel. The art here is gorgeous, and I love how Kiku discovers more about her family’s legacy of resilience and strength through her time travel.
Kiku is on vacation in San Francisco when suddenly she finds herself displaced to the 1940s Japanese-American internment camp that her late grandmother, Ernestina, was forcibly relocated to during World War II.
These displacements keep occurring until Kiku finds herself 'stuck' back in time. Living alongside her young grandmother and other Japanese-American citizens in internment camps, Kiku gets the education she never received in history class. She witnesses the lives of Japanese-Americans who were denied their civil liberties and suffered greatly, but managed to cultivate community and commit acts of resistance in order to survive.
I am an author of short stories, young adult novels, romance, even a reference book, but I will read any genre and any age group. As a librarian, researcher, book reviewer, and former school teacher, I have a long-standing love for historical fiction. When an author gets the details right, and you feel transported in time and place to WWII, or the 18th century, or Victorian England…there is nothing sweeter. Witnessing humankind overcoming huge obstacles, facing the most that human nature can take, and coming out on top? Definitely literary therapy! So put down the cell phone, pour a hot cuppa, and let these favourites of mine transport you.
WhileSnow Falling on Cedarsalso flashes back to Japanese internment camps on the West Coast during WWII, this fictional story centers around a suspicious drowning of a white man in 1954 and the trial of the accused Japanese American. Ishmael Chambers, a one-armed war veteran himself, runs the local newspaper and follows the trial closely as he has a close connection to the players. Ishmael not only grew up with the drowning victim and the accused, but he was also the high school sweetheart of Hatsue, the accused’s wife. A love he never got over. (If you are an Ethan Hawke fan the 1999 movie is also well done, but more of a courtroom thriller than the book.)
Pearson English Readers bring language learning to life through the joy of reading.
Well-written stories entertain us, make us think, and keep our interest page after page. Pearson English Readers offer teenage and adult learners a huge range of titles, all featuring carefully graded language to make them accessible to learners of all abilities.
Through the imagination of some of the world's greatest authors, the English language comes to life in pages of our Readers. Students have the pleasure and satisfaction of reading these stories in English, and at the same time develop a broader vocabulary, greater comprehension and reading…
I have been passionate about continuous learning and understanding why people act the way they do. The books I recommend cover the topic of continuous growth across different states and areas of life.
I started following Guy Kawasaki because of some of his ideas on communication, work, writing, etc. Wise Guy is an easy-to-read book in which Guy Kawasaki shares some of the things he has learned across different areas of life (work, relationships, mentorship, etc.).
I really enjoy the personal stories shared in the book, which have led the author to grow both personally and professionally. It also made me reflect on my personal stories and how they have contributed to the person I am today.
Silicon Valley icon and bestselling author Guy Kawasaki shares the unlikely stories of his life and the lessons we can draw from them.
Guy Kawasaki has been a fixture in the tech world since he was part of Apple's original Macintosh team in the 1980s. He's widely respected as a source of wisdom about entrepreneurship, venture capital, marketing, and business evangelism, which he's shared in bestselling books such as The Art of the Start and Enchantment. But before all that, he was just a middle-class kid in Hawaii, a grandson of Japanese immigrants, who loved football and got a C+…
I am an award-winning author who grew up in a family of painters, poets, sculptors, and novelists; people who designed their lives around, and dedicated their lives to, artistic expression. I knew I wanted to be a writer at age three when I began dictating a poem every day to my mom. I first fell in love with Jane Austen as a student at Oxford, where I read my favorite of her novels, Persuasion.
Kyo Maclear is one of my favorite authors—someone who can gracefully transition from biography to graphic novel to memoir without losing her signature style, which is lyrical without being heavy-handed and playful without being cute. Like another book on my list, this one is brilliantly illustrated by the incredible Julie Morstad, who similarly manages to perfectly capture the unique spirit of each subject while remaining singularly herself.
This story of Gyo Fujikawa, the artist who created the first book featuring babies of all races tumbling and playing happily together, weaves together myriad themes—the women’s suffrage movement, the internment of Japanese citizens during WWII, the sexism in academia, and the racism that first plagued young Gyo at school, and later made it so difficult for the adult Gyo to get her first book published. It manages all this while being effortlessly readable and entertaining. Brava, Kyo!
"Playful, bold, and, much like its subject, full of grace." -Jillian Tamaki, Caldecott Honor winner for This One Summer
"It Began with a Page tells [Gyo Fujikawa's] story beautifully, in picture-book form." -The New Yorker
From beloved team Kyo Maclear and Julie Morstad (creators of Julia, Child and Bloom: A Story of Fashion Designer Elsa Schiaparelli) comes an elegant picture book biography that portrays the most moving moments in the life of Gyo Fujikawa, a groundbreaking Japanese American hero in the fight for racial diversity in picture books.…
I quit my job in 1994 to write. Fiction. It took me a while to find my niche, but what I realized is that I wanted to write political thrillers that were about more than how to stop the bad guys from killing the good guys by killing them first. There is another way. Starting with Priority One, and continuing to what is currently my tenth novel in the series, I imagine an American foreign policy that promotes the building of a more peaceful world through a combination of economic justice and humanitarianism, applied practically and pragmatically. It’s my dream for my fiction, as well as the real world.
As I set about the task of writing political thrillers, I read many gifted novelists in this genre. I found that the plots often revolved around shoot-‘em-ups and egregiously evil militant groups. Barry Eisler is an exception. He is a superb writer who casts a talented and likeable character into a career as an assassin. John Rain chooses this life because his actions deter greater acts of violence. And isn’t that the choice many of us face in the modern world? Isn’t going to war about saving lives by killing the bad guys? In my books, I try to be sensitive to the issue that peace does not come easy in a violent world, and sometimes the trade-offs to secure peace are not at all pleasant.
Previously published as Hard Rain and Blood from BloodAll John Rain wants is to get out of the killing business. But with his discretion, his reliability, and his unique talent for death by "natural causes," no one is willing to let him just retire. So when an old nemesis from the Japanese national police force comes to him with a new job-eliminate Murakami, a killer even more fearsome than Rain himself-Rain knows he can't refuse.Aided by an achingly desirable half Brazilian, half Japanese exotic dancer he knows he shouldn't trust, Rain pursues his quarry through underground no-holds-barred fight clubs, mobbed-up…
Although I was an avid reader of romance when I was a tween, the middle grade novels I wrote prior to Crashing in Love were about more “serious” topics. Yet, much of the mail I received from kids had pressing questions about the future of potential love interests. That’s when I realized that I’d been guilty (like many) of considering romance to be “light” fiction. What could be more important, more serious, than discovering ourselves while making genuine connections with others? Those letters changed my mind. Learning to love is essential and not to be taken lightly at all.
This sweet story brings me back to the rush of heady (albeit sometimes fleeting) infatuations and reminds me that simple friendship rules such as “Don’t let guys come between us” are not always as simple as they seem. The best part? Although Keiko ends up with the right romantic interest (there’s a scene that will melt your heart), she learns that self-love is paramount.
Fans of Judy Blume and Jenny Han are sure to fall head-over-heels for this funny, sweet story of crushes, competition, and the confusing reality of middle school. "Heartbreak is for suckers."
When Jenna Sakai gets dumped over winter break, it confirms what she learned from her parents' messy divorce: Relationships are risky and only lead to disappointment. So even though she still has to see her ex-boyfriend Elliott at newspaper club, Jenna is going to be totally heartless this semester - no boys, just books.
But keeping her cool isn't always easy.
Jenna's chief competition for a big journalism scholarship…
I have written all my life. This includes freelance writing as well as reporter jobs at small, weekly newspapers in the DC/VA area. I have also taught writing (creative and technical writing) to students as diverse as jail inmates, residents of homeless shelters, military officers at the Pentagon, CIA employees, and firefighters at Ronald Reagan National Airport. Both of my published novels are works of historical fiction set in my native Iceland: Seal Woman and Sigga of Reykjavik. These novels cover the time 1908 to 1955, a period when Iceland was a little-known island. I have always been drawn to novels about isolated, cold-weather places where unusual characters and mannerisms flourish.
Hata, a Korean, adopted by a Japanese couple, serves the Japanese Army as a medic in World War II. His job is to care for enslaved Koreans who serve as “comfort women” to Japanese soldiers. His experiences are the material of nightmares. Years later he leads a deceptively quiet life in a small town in New Jersey with his Korean adoptive daughter. It is deceptively quiet because his unresolved war experiences, presented in flashbacks, haunt him. I admired the abrupt manner in which Chang-Rae Lee interrupted Hata’s uneventful life with horrific memories.
The author’s method felt like the triggering of those who have suffered trauma and continue to relive events as PTSD. This approach of interweaving past with present inspired my depiction of a young German woman living a quiet life on a primitive Icelandic farm, milking the cows and raking the hay, while being repeatedly interrupted by memories of…
Franklin Hata, Korean by birth but raised in Japan, is an outsider in American society, but he embodies the values of the town he calls his own - he is polite and keeps himself to himself. Franklin deflects everyone with courtesy and impenetrable decorum, and becomes a respected elder of his small, prosperous American town. 'You make a whole life out of gestures and politeness,' Sunny tells her adoptive father. But as Sunny tries to unpick her father's scrupulous self-control, the story he has repressed emerges: his life as a medic in the Japanese Army and his love for a…
I didn't get into graphic novels until I was an adult. This one’s about a pompous armchair architect whose career was once promising, but not anymore due to his impractical theories.
Asterios nevertheless has this highfalutin view of himself–and is in a contentious relationship with a younger woman who idolizes him at first until she realizes that he’s washed up. It's such a situationship. But the breakups, non-breakups, and everything between leads to a very tender moment at the end. Yeah, pick this one up.
The triumphant return of one of comics’ greatest talents, with an engrossing story of one man’s search for love, meaning, sanity, and perfect architectural proportions. An epic story long awaited, and well worth the wait.
Meet Asterios Polyp: middle-aged, meagerly successful architect and teacher, aesthete and womanizer, whose life is wholly upended when his New York City apartment goes up in flames. In a tenacious daze, he leaves the city and relocates to a small town in the American heartland. But what is this “escape” really about?
As the story unfolds, moving between the present and the past, we begin…
I’m an avid reader of queer literary fiction not only because I write it but because I’m looking to see my life experience captured on the page. As a gay man, a father of two young boys, and one-half of an interracial married couple, I know the complexity of modern queer living firsthand. In recent years, I’ve been astounded by the breadth of great LGBTQ+ books that examine queerness fully and empathetically. I seek out these books, I read them feverishly, and I become a champion for the best ones. In an era of intense book banning, it’s so important to me to elevate these books and their authors.
Like so many of the books I love, this book isn’t afraid to show a queer couple in distress.
I love this book for its brutality, its interracial couple and the dynamics that entails, for its detour to Japan, for its scrumptious descriptions of food, and its emphasis on food as a means of connection.
It’s beautiful, honest, raw, and contemporary in all the best ways.
'This feels like a vision for the 21st-century novel... It made me happy' Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Benson and Mike are two young guys who have been together for a few years - good years - but now they're not sure why they're still a couple. There's the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other. But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives for a visit, Mike picks…
Although I was born in Seattle after the World War II years, my parents, grandparents, and aunts spent time confined at the Minidoka site, and they very rarely talked about “camp.” During the ‘80s and ‘90s, I worked as a newspaper journalist during the time of the movement to obtain redress, and I heard survivors of the camps talk about it for the first time. My acquired knowledge of the subject led to my first book in 1993,Baseball Saved Us. Since then, the camp experience has become like a longtime acquaintance with whom I remain in constant contact.
A government report that doesn’t read like a government report.
In 1980, the U.S. Congress voted to form the Commission to extensively research the Japanese American World War II experience and make recommendations to remedy past government actions.
This is the most extensive and comprehensive coverage of that period in American history, which includes lesser-known facts such as the U.S. government-arranged abductions of Japanese Latin Americans, and the forced evacuation of the indigenous of the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands in Alaska.
The Commission’s report led to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, commonly known as “redress,” which mandated an apology and $20,000 each to living survivors of that experience.
This compilation has been my consistent go-to reference source, a mountain of research from which I have often excavated.
Personal Justice Denied tells the extraordinary story of the incarceration of mainland Japanese Americans and Alaskan Aleuts during World War II. Although this wartime episode is now almost universally recognized as a catastrophe, for decades various government officials and agencies defended their actions by asserting a military necessity.
The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment was established by act of Congress in 1980 to investigate the detention program. Over twenty days, it held hearings in cities across the country, particularly on the West Coast, with testimony from more than 750 witnesses: evacuees, former government officials, public figures, interested citizens, and…
