Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien

September 11, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. W.W. Norton & Company, 2016. 474 pgs. Purchased.  Marie’s father committed suicide in Hong Kong in the days after the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre — duel sins referred to only in hushed tones. Ten-year-old Marie is unsure how she is supposed to grieve for the father than abandoned her and her mother back in Vancouver months before the protests were brutally ended. And her distance from mainland China leaves her unsure as to why her father […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Asia, Awards and Prizes, Canada, China, Chunkster, Fiction, Giller Prize, North America, ReadDiverse, Women's Prize • Tags: Madeleine Thien

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

August 30, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Random House, 2016. 401 pgs. Purchased. In the fall of 2007, a Cameroonian man named Jende Jonga is living in New York City and attempting to provide a better life for his wife, Neni, and their six-year-old son. Jende, who has a temporary work visa while his asylum case makes its way through the courts, is thrilled when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Readers, of […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Africa, Fiction, New York, North America, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Imbolo Mbue

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

August 23, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Zainab Jah. Books on Tape, 2017. Originally published 2006. 18 hours, 10 minutes. Purchased.  Set in the 1960s, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel focused on the impassioned struggle of the largely Igbo population to establish the independent republic, Biafra, in southeastern Nigeria. In the early 1960s, readers are introduced to fraternal twins, Olanna and Kainene, and the men whom they become irrevocably tied to during the later portion of the 1960s. There is Odenigbo, a black […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Africa, Audiobook, Awards and Prizes, Chunkster, Fiction, Nigeria, ReadDiverse, Women's Prize • Tags: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Zainab Jah

The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami

July 22, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Neil Shah. Audible, 2015. Originally published 2014. 13 hours, 18 minutes. Purchased. In 1527, the Spanish conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez sailed from the port city of Sanlúcar de Barramedawith 450 troops, officers, and slaves and another 150 sailors, wives, and servants to the newly discovered island of La Florida (present-day Florida, which is obviously not an island). His goal was to claim La Florida for the Spanish crown and find Apalacha, a city rumored to […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Africa, Audiobook, Europe, Fiction, Indigenious Peoples, North America, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Laila Lalami

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

July 19, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Adjoa Andoh. Recorded Books, 2014. Originally published 2013. 17 hours, 29 minutes. Purchased. Fifteen years after leaving Nigeria to study in America, Ifemelu has decided to return home to Lagos. Everyone – her parents, her friends, even her hair braider in Trenton, New Jersey – think she is crazy to return after securing the necessary immigration papers to live in the United States indefinitely. Yet, Ifemelu has grown tired of navigating the fault lines within […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Africa, Audiobook, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Nigeria, North America, ReadDiverse, United Kingdom, United States • Tags: Adjoa Andoh, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

May 15, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Robertson Dean, Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, Ryan Anderson, Johnathan McClain, Robert Younis, and Thom Rivera. Highbridge, 2014. 26 hours. Purchased.  On December 3, 1976, gunmen opened fire inside the Jamaican home of Reggae superstar, Bob Marley. The attack occurred against the backdrop of the looming general elections – a event the American government was afraid would sweep a pro-Communist government into power — and only two days before Marley was set to perform at a […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Caribbean, Chunkster, Fiction, ReadDiverse • Tags: Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, Johnathan McClain, Marlon James, Robert Younis, Robertson Dean, Ryan Anderson, Thom Rivera

Becoming by Michelle Obama

April 17, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – audiobook. Read by the author. Random House Audio, 2018. 19 hours, 1 minutes. Purchased.  In 2009, Michelle Obama became the first African-American First Lady of the United States after her husband, Barack Obama, was elected President. Prior to that, Michelle attended Princeton and Harvard Law and worked as both a partner-tracked lawyer for a prestigious firm in Chicago and as an administrator in the University of Chicago medical system. These impressive achievements were – and continue to be […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Feminism, Nonfiction, North America, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Michelle Obama

Thoughts on Three Book of the Month Selections

April 3, 2019 by Christina

About four years ago, a number of the members of my book club in Boston joined Book of the Month, a subscription service that mails you a newly published book out of five options once a month. I passed on subscribing for two reasons: I was able to pick up a number of these titles as read (and unread) castoffs at book club meetings I figured a new book would arrive each month and promptly be added to my bookshelves […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Asia, Europe, Feminism, Fiction, New York, North America, ReadDiverse, United Kingdom, United States • Tags: Candice Carty-Williams, Etaf Rum, Yangsze Choo

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

March 18, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Vintage, 2011. Originally published 2010. 622 pgs. Purchased.   Subtitled “The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration”, Wilkerson’s book follows three individuals in order to construct a larger narrative about the movement of black Americans between 1915 and the 1970s. Historians estimate roughly six million black Americans moved from majority black southern states governed by white minorities to northern and western states where racism had not (yet) been codified through Jim Crow laws. The three individuals profiled […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Chunkster, Mountain West, Nonfiction, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Isabel Wilkerson

Last Train to Istanbul by Ayşe Kulin

March 13, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the Turkish by John W. Baker. AmazonCrossing, 2013. Originally published 2002. 395 pgs. Free download. Prior to the outbreak of World War II, Selva married Rafael Alfandari, a Jewish man whose family settled in Turkey after being expelled from Spain in 1492. Neither the Alfandari family nor Selva’s parents, Fazil Resat Paşa and Leman Hanim, support the marriage and, after being cutoff, Selva and Rafael flee to Paris in the hopes of finding a […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, France, Genocide, Holocaust, Middle East, ReadDiverse, Translated, Turkish • Tags: Ayşe Kulin

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

February 14, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Penguin Press, 2017. 338 pgs. Purchased. In the master plan community of Shaker Heights, Ohio, conformity is key. Mia Warren – an artist and single mother – arrives with her teenage daughter, Pearl, on the promise that she will stay in one place until Pearl graduates. In order to enroll her daughter in Shaker Heights’ award-winning school district, Mia rents the top floor of a duplex from Elena Richardson and takes a part-time job at a local […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Adoption, Fiction, North America, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Celeste Ng

The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay

February 13, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Grove Press, 2019. 448 pgs. Purchased. Following her mother’s unexpected death, Shalini finds herself set adrift amid a life of privilege in Bangalore, India. She is unstimulated and unfulfilled by her job as an accountant for a nonprofit – a fact her boss has started to notice and comment on – and is no longer interested in the cycle of working and partying that her friends are engaged in. As she searches for meaning, Shalini remembers a […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Asia, Fiction, India, ReadDiverse • Tags: Madhuri Vijay