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Building a new life after trauma — Book recommendations

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By Samantha Pak Northwest Asian Weekly Severance By Ling Ma Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018 As a 20-something living in New York, Candace Chen is living month-to-month, just trying to get by. The first-generation Chinese American has recently lost her parents and spends her life working at a publishing company, specifically troubleshooting the Gemstone Bible, […]

This month’s must-reads: Drama, mystery, and murder novel recommendations for foodies

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By Samantha Pak Northwest Asian Weekly “The Way You Make Me Feel” By Maureen Goo Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018 Clara Shin doesn’t take life too seriously. For her, it’s all about pranks and disrupting the status quo. But when one of her pranks goes too far, her dad forces her to spend her summer […]

Book recommendations: Questioning the status quo

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By Samantha Pak Northwest Asian Weekly Go By Kazuki Kaneshiro, translated by Takami Nieda AmazonCrossing, 2018 As a Korean student attending a Japanese high school, Sugihara has been in (and won) his fair share of fights with bullies who have targeted him for his ethnicity. But then he falls in love with Sakurai, a Japanese […]

Fostering positive mental health in your community

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By Joshua Holland NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY In a world full of seemingly increased shared prosperity and more opportunities, life for people today is better than ever. Increasingly however, in the wake of high profile suicides of beloved celebrities like Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, who on the surface seemed to have it all, many have […]

Book recommendations

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By Samantha Pak Northwest Asian Weekly The Kiss Quotient By Helen Hoang Berkley, 2018 For Stella Lane, math is everything and her job of coming up with algorithms to predict customer purchases has given her more money than she knows what to do with, but not enough experience in the dating department. So when her […]

Book recommendations: Murder mysteries

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By Samantha Pak Northwest Asian Weekly Death by Dumpling By Vivien Chien St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 2018 Now that she is an adult, the last place Lana Lee thought she would end up is back at her family’s Chinese restaurant. But life happened — a bad break-up and dramatic walkout from her job have landed her […]

Book recommendations — Life’s unexpected turns

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By Samantha Pak Northwest Asian Weekly How to American By Jimmy O. Yang Da Capo Press, 2018 When Jimmy O. Yang graduated from college at the University of California, San Diego, he received a degree in economics. But he knew the last thing he wanted to do was to work in the field he had […]

Book recommendations — When things don’t go as planned… 

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By Samantha Pak Northwest Asian Weekly Checked By Cynthia Kadohata Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books, 2018 For 11-year-old Conor, hockey is life. Everything else comes second — except his dad. Although he’s not positive, Conor is pretty sure hockey is the reason his stepmom Jenny left them. Because the sport is also his dad’s life. One of […]

Stories of revelations — Book recommendations

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By Samantha Pak Northwest Asian Weekly Wires and Nerve, Volume 2: Gone Rogue By Marissa Meyer Feiwel & Friends, 2018 In the second installment of Meyer’s “Wires and Nerve” graphic novel series, we return to the world of the Lunar Chronicles. The story picks up where the first novel left off, with Iko the android […]