• About
  • Photo Contest: AAPI Heritage Month
  • Community Calendar
  • Advertise
  • Subscriptions
  • Contact
  • Seattle Chinese Post

Northwest Asian Weekly


  • Community
    • Names in the News
    • Local
    • Business
    • Pictorials
    • Obituaries
  • Nation
  • World
  • Arts & Entertainment
  • Columns
    • On the Shelf
    • At the Movies
    • A-POP!
    • Publisher Ng’s blog
    • The Layup Drill
    • Travel
    • Wayne’s Worlds
  • Opinion
    • Editorial
    • Commentary
    • Publisher Ng’s blog
    • Letters to the Editor
  • Astrology
  • Classifieds
  • Community Calendar
You are here: Home / Archives for Columns / On the Shelf

Gangster Daddy’s Little Girl

October 18, 2008 By Northwest Asian Weekly

Shoko Tendo grew up a yakuza’s daughter turned into a juvenile delinquent, then a drug addict, then finally a sturdy writer with a compelling memoir. Being daddy’s girl didn’t shield her from much, and her life bore no resemblance to the Western image of a coddled “mafia princess.” Underneath her walking, talking, I-don’t-care exterior is someone who never knew love, security and stability.

Filed Under: Arts & Entertainment, Reviews, On the Shelf Tagged With: 2008, Andrew Hamlin, Kodansha International, London, New York, Northwest Asian Weekly, Shoko Tendo, Tokyo, Yakuza Moon, japan, turkey, vol 27 no 43 | October 18 - October 24

Novel closes the generation gap

October 11, 2008 By Northwest Asian Weekly

If ever there were a situation where the phrase “you can’t go home again” would apply, it would be in Many Ly’s second novel for young adults, “Roots and Wings.” Though the phrase should probably be altered to “you can go home again, but prepare to be reminded of why you left.”

Filed Under: Arts & Entertainment, Reviews, On the Shelf Tagged With: 2008, Cambodian American, Delacorte Books, Northwest Asian Weekly, Samantha Pak, attention, culture, vol 27 no 42 | October 11 - October 17

Growing Pains — Teacher matures along with her students

October 4, 2008 By Northwest Asian Weekly

Author Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum knows how complicated growing up can be. Her first novel, National Book Award finalist “Madeleine is Sleeping,” explored the turbulent, often surreal world of adolescence. There, Bynum revealed the tragedy that can hide behind the physical or hormonal changes that put an end to childhood. Far too many of us want to stay children, want to stay unformed and unfocused as adults, escaping into a private void we mistakenly call “freedom.”

Filed Under: Arts & Entertainment, Reviews, On the Shelf Tagged With: 2008, Beatrice Hempel, Calton Breen, Chinese, Harcourt Inc, Hempel Chronicles, National Book Award, New York City, Northwest Asian Weekly, vol 27 no 41 | October 4 - October 10

Life lessons through food

September 27, 2008 By Northwest Asian Weekly

As expected of the wired Generation X-er I am, I Googled “Serve the People” to find out more about the book and the author. I was a little surprised; what I thought was a cleverly coined book title was actually a political slogan stemming from a speech Mao Zedong delivered on Sept. 8, 1944, in memory of a fellow Communist party member.

Filed Under: Arts & Entertainment, Reviews, On the Shelf Tagged With: Chairman Wang, Chef Zhang, China, Chinese American, Cultural Revolution, Hualian Cooking School, Jereme Leung, MSG, Mao Zedong, Pat Tanumihardja, Southern California, Whampoa Club, commentary, culture, language, vol 27 no 40 | September 27 - October 3

Deadpan Asian female actress looking for work

September 27, 2008 By Northwest Asian Weekly

Novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo has a wonderfully deadpan sense of humor. This was evident in her previous book, “A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers,” which revealed, in the form of a glossary, a fraught-with-misunderstandings romance between an untutored Chinese peasant girl, who comes to London to study languages, and the bisexual British aesthete whom she meets at the movies. Likewise, Guo’s feature debut as a director, the meta-comedy “How is Your Fish Today?” was a gentle satire about a Beijing hipster trying to succeed as a screenwriter, despite having none of his scripts make it past government censors.

Filed Under: Arts & Entertainment, Reviews, On the Shelf Tagged With: Beijing Film Studios, China, Chinese, Deadpan Asian, London, Northwest Asian Weekly, Talese Doubleday, Twenty Fragments, Xiaolu Guo, letter, vol 27 no 40 | September 27 - October 3

Novel deals with suicide, abuse, and the legacy of being Japanese American

September 20, 2008 By Northwest Asian Weekly

Working within the emotionally associative forms of poetry and memoir, award-winning poet David Mura has already created a body of work that tackles head-on complex issues such as sexual desire and addiction, race relations and the unspoken consequences of U.S. WWII internment camps on later generations of Japanese Americans.

Filed Under: Reviews, On the Shelf Tagged With: 2008, American-born Japanese, Ben Ohara, Calton Breen, Coffee House Press, David Mura, Heart Mountain, Japanese Americans, Mojave Desert, Northwest Asian Weekly, Turning Japanese, WWII, culture, vol 27 no 39 | September 20 - September 26

‘Passage’ is meditative but a little disjointed

September 6, 2008 By Northwest Asian Weekly

It is a story told in photos, of a childhood growing up in the ghetto of San Francisco’s Chinatown district. Because of a father who was largely absent from the family members’ lives, Foo’s mother worked 10 to 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week, in a sweatshop to support Foo and her five sisters. “Earth Passages: Journey Through Childhood” doubles as an autobiography and collection of nature photographs by author, attorney and activist Lora Jo Foo.

Filed Under: Reviews, On the Shelf Tagged With: 2008, Chinatown, Krista Thom, Lara Jo Foo, Lora Jo Foo, San Francisco, vol 27 no 37 | September 6 - September 12

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Find us on Issuu!

Subscribe to our e-news

© 2022 NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
412 MAYNARD AVE. S., SEATTLE, WA 98104
206-223-5559 | INFO@NWASIANWEEKLY.COM