Talking to My Country by Stan Grant

July 15, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Scribe, 2016. 230 pgs. Purchased. Grant, an Australian television journalist for CNN and member of the Wiradjuri people, begins his memoir with three intriguing sentences: “These are the things I want to say to you. These things I have held inside or even worse run from. It is not easy, what I have to say, and it should not be easy.” These difficult things are centered around the historical and ongoing treatment of Aboriginal people in Australia. […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Nonfiction, Oceania, ReadDiverse • Tags: Stan Grant

Under the Tripoli Sky by Kamal Ben Hameda

July 8, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the French by Adriana Hunter. Peirene Press, 2014. Originally published 2011. 128 pgs. Purchased.i In the 1960s, a young boy named Hadachinou moves between the public streets of Tripoli and the private spaces inhabited by his mother, her best friend, and other women of his acquaintance. His age and size means he isn’t viewed as a threat in Libya’s patriarchal society, allowing him to blend in and go unnoticed in female spaces. It also […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Africa, Feminism, Fiction, French, Peirene Press, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Adriana Hunter, Kamal Ben Hameda

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

June 13, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Algonquin Books, 2018. Print. 308 pgs. Borrowed from a friend. Celestial and Roy are a young couple in Atlanta with a marriage that can be both wonderful and rocky. Roy’s career in sales has afforded her the opportunity to chase her dream of making handmade baby dolls, and the two of them are contemplating having the child that both sets of parents long for. Their dreams are put on hold after a trip to Louisiana to visit Roy’s […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Fiction, North America, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Tayari Jones

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

May 6, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Doubleday, 2016. 322 pages. Purchased. Whitehead’s novel won both the 2017 Pulitzer Prize and the 2016 National Book Award, the first novel to do so since 1993. It also won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, and was longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize. Given this lavishing of praise and accolades, I added Whitehead’s novel to my to-read list but shied away from picking up the novel until I […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Booker Prize, Fiction, National Book Award, North America, Pulitzer Prize, ReadDiverse, Science Fiction, United States • Tags: Colson Whitehead

The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez

April 22, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Christine Avila, Ozzie Rodriguez, Yareli Arizmendi, Gustavo Res, Gabriel Romero, and Jesse Corti. Random House Audio, 2014. 9 hours, 12 minutes. Library copy. After their fifteen-year-old daughter suffers a traumatic brain injury, Alma and Arturo Rivera move from their home in Mexico and immigrate to the United States. The family ends up living in a rather dilapidated apartment in Delaware; grateful for the opportunity to come to America legally — Arturo insists at more than one […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Fiction, North America, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Christine Avila, Cristina Henriquez, Gabriel Romero, Gustavo Res, Jesse Corti, Ozzie Rodriguez, Yareli Arizmendi

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

January 10, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – print. Vintage, 2014. 415 pgs. Purchased. In the 1960s, two brothers born roughly fifteen months apart explore the lowlands of Calcutta with a particular fascination for the Tolly Club, a golf course established for whites only by the British during the colonization of India. Their exploratory exploits are interrupted first by a policemen tasked with enforcing the club’s exclusivity and, later, by their pursuit of higher education. Udayan, the younger brother, went to the Presidency to study physics; […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Asia, Awards and Prizes, Booker Prize, Fiction, India, National Book Award, ReadDiverse • Tags: Jhumpa Lahiri

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

March 8, 2017 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Knopf, 2016. 320 pgs. Library copy. Gyasi’s novel opens with the story of Effia, a young girl living a small village along the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) with a father who adores her and a mother whose good graces Effia is excluded from. On the cusp of womanhood, Effia is desperate to marry the future chief of her village, Abeeku, and is told she will as soon as she has her period. Her mother, Baaba, convinces Effia […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Africa, Fiction, ReadDiverse • Tags: Yaa Gyasi

Kenya by R. Mugo Gatheru

February 12, 2017 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. McFarland, 2005. 236 pgs. Library copy. Long time readers of this blog will know that the continent of Africa is poorly represented in my reading selections. In fact, a quick perusal of the category shows that the majority of the books I’ve read set in one of the 54 African countries have largely focused on the genocide in Rwanda or the economic development of the continent as a whole. Since I’ll be traveling to Kenya later this […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Africa, Nonfiction, ReadDiverse • Tags: R. Mugo Gatheru

All About Love by bell hooks

March 29, 2016 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. William Morrow, 1999. 240 pgs. Library copy. This collection of essays by bell hooks analyzes the many facets of love — self-love, romantic love, parental love, greedy love — and how the lack of love (or, too much of “bad” love) can spread from the public sphere to the private sphere. She defines love as “as the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”. And hooks’ central thesis is that […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Book Club, Feminism, Nonfiction, ReadDiverse • Tags: bell hooks

Aya by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie

February 26, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from the French by Helge Dascher. Drawn and Quarterly, 2007. 105 pgs. Library copy. Nineteen-year-old Aya lives in working-class city of Yopougon (also known as Yop City) of the Ivory Coast in 1978. Aya’s father works for Solibra, a beer company, and is determined to establish a match between the young son of his boss and his daughter. As a studious young woman determined to become a doctor, Aya is neither interested in this match nor in the cousin of one […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Africa, Comics, Fiction, French, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Clément Oubrerie, Marguerite Abouet

A Bride’s Story by Kaoru Mori (Volume Seven)

February 22, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from the Japanese by William Flanagan. Yen Press, 2015. 191 pgs. Library copy. On his journey from present-day Mongola to India, the British wannabe anthropologist Mr. Smith stays for a period of time with a wealthy trader and his beautiful, young wife named Anis. As a Muslim woman, Anis is required to remain hidden from Mr. Smith and other male, non-family visitors to the home. Therefore, she often passes her days in complete solitude save for the […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Asia, Comics, Fiction, Japanese, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Kaoru Mori

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

February 19, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Matilda Novak. HighBridge, 2005. Originally published 1999. 6 hours, 15 minutes. Library copy. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2000, Lahiri’s collection of nine short stories address the conflict between one’s identity as an Indian and the America in which the individual now lives. This common theme connects all nine of the stories irregardless of the exact identity of the central character (male or female, Indian or Indian-American or white American) or the location (Boston, […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Asia, Audiobook, Fiction, India, New England, North America, Pulitzer Prize, ReadDiverse, Short Stories, United States • Tags: Jhumpa Lahiri, Matilda Novak