The beauty of having every month of the calendar honor a specific group or topic is that it allows us to open our minds to differences around us and, if we choose, explore the ideas, successes and challenges surrounding whomever or whatever is being celebrated. Some may seem quite silly such as National Pizza Month or National Ice Cream Month but others take the opportunity to honor great segments of our society. Our blogs in the past have highlighted Women’s History Month, Black History Month and LGBTQ Pride Month. The newest books on display in the library celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage month. Here are a few of the great titles on display.
Shanghai has historically been China's jewel, its richest, most modern and westernized city. The bustling metropolis was home to sophisticated intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and a thriving middle class when Mao's proletarian revolution emerged victorious from the long civil war. Terrified of the horrors the Communists would wreak upon their lives, citizens of Shanghai who could afford to fled in every direction. Seventy years later, members of the last generation to fully recall this massive exodus have revealed their stories to Chinese American journalist Helen Zia, who interviewed hundreds of exiles about their journey through one of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth century. From these moving accounts, Zia weaves together the stories of four young Shanghai residents who wrestled with the decision to abandon everything for an uncertain life as refugees in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States.
The plan is to leave. As
for how, when, to where, and even why--she doesn't know yet. So begins a
journey for the twenty-four-year-old narrator of Days of Distraction. As a
staff writer at a prestigious tech publication, she reports on the achievements
of smug Silicon Valley billionaires while her own request for a raise gets
bumped from manager to manager. And when her longtime boyfriend, J,
decides to move to a quiet upstate New York town for grad school, she sees an
excuse to cut and run.
Moving is supposed to be a
grand gesture of her commitment to J and a way to reshape her sense of self.
But in the process, she finds herself facing misgivings about her role in an
interracial relationship. Captivated by the stories of her ancestors and other
Asian Americans in history, she must confront a question at the core of her
identity: What does it mean to exist in a society that does not notice or
understand you?
After more than forty years in the United States, Lan Cao
still feels tentative about her place in her adoptive country, one which she
came to as a thirteen-year old refugee. And after sixteen years of being a
mother, she still ventures through motherhood as if it is a foreign landscape.
In this lyrical memoir, Lan explores these two defining experiences of her life
with the help of her fierce, independently-minded daughter, Harlan Margaret Van
Cao.
In chapters that both reflect and refract her
mother's narrative, Harlan describes the rites of passage of childhood and adolescence,
as they are filtered through the aftereffects of her family's history of war
and migration. Lan responds in turn, revealing her struggles to understand her
American daughter. In this unique format of alternating storytelling, their
complicated mother-daughter relationship begins to crystallize. Lan's struggles
with the traumatic aftermath of war--punctuated by emotional, detailed
flashbacks to her childhood--become operatic and fantastical interludes as told
by her daughter. Harlan's struggle to make friends in high school challenges
her mother to step back and let her daughter find her own way.
In 2004, Momofuku Noodle Bar opened in a tiny, stark space in
Manhattan's East Village. Its young chef-owner, David Chang, worked the line,
serving ramen and pork buns to a mix of fellow restaurant cooks and confused
diners whose idea of ramen was instant noodles in Styrofoam cups. It would have
been impossible to know it at the time--and certainly Chang would have bet against
himself--but he, who had failed at almost every endeavor in his life, was about
to become one of the most influential chefs of his generation, driven by the
question, "What if the underground could become the mainstream?"
Chang lays bare his mistakes and wonders about
his extraordinary luck as he recounts the improbable series of events that led
him to the top of his profession. He wrestles with his lifelong feelings of
otherness and inadequacy, explores the mental illness that almost killed him, and
finds hope in the shared value of deliciousness.
