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Randy Ribay, an author who writes through the lens of experience as a Filipino, shares tremendous history in his novel Everything We Never Had. Telling his story from multiple perspectives, Ribay provides the reader with insight into the Manong Generation, the Watsonville riots, Stockton’s Little Manila, the Delano grape strike, the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, the assassination of Benigno Aquino, Jr., and the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic. The story opens in 1929 when Francisco Maghabol is sixteen years old. Believing in the Land of Opportunity, Francisco comes to the United States from Manila in the Philippines by way of Japan toRead More →

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Molly X. Chang’s The Nightblood Prince features a royal love triangle complicated by a prophecy and politics. Set in a world inspired by ancient China and predicating a sequel, the novel explores gender roles, the reasons for war, and the process of identity formation.   Now seventeen, Fei Lifeng is destined to be the future Empress of Rong. Betrothed to Siwang and feeling like nothing more than a pawn in a quest for power, she hungers for choice, control, and freedom. Fei hopes that if she can kill a Beiying tiger during the season’s first imperial hunt, the emperor will be obligated to grant herRead More →

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Just as William Blake, in his poem “The Tyger,” explores the duality of human nature and our potential for both good and evil, SF Said takes up the task in his novel Tyger illustrated by Dave McKean.  Although the novel is targeted for middle grade readers, its themes, morals, and complexity suit a much broader readership. Both the poem and the novel ultimately suggest that the imagination is the location of a miraculous but dangerous kind of creative strength. The willingness to “dare,” as the poem would put it, to create anything of any worth out of the “fire” of creativity, requires both bravery andRead More →

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Ann Liang writes an intriguing, genre-blending novel in Never Thought I’d End Up Here. Part romantic-comedy, part realistic fiction, and part self-help, this novel addresses multiple teen issues. These include topics such as self-acceptance, coming-of-age, and the power of choice. It also bumps up against matters of cultural diversity. Seventeen-year-old Leah Zhang has lived in Los Angeles all her life, and while she knows a small amount about her Chinese roots and a few words of Mandarin, she feels no need for greater cultural immersion until she embarrasses herself at her cousin’s wedding. After Leah mixes up the Mandarin blessing she attempts to deliver toRead More →

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Alice Oseman’s recent novel, I Was Born for This centers around the phenomenon of fandom. Jimmy Kaga-Ricci, Allister Bird (Lister), and Rowan Omondi are part of the boy band, The Ark. They are a musically talented group whose fame has sky-rocketed. From the outside looking in, the group has it all: fame, wealth, notoriety, and adoring fans. Fereshteh (Angel) Rahimi and Juliet Schwartz are two of those fans who met online. Initially attracted to one another because of their love for The Ark, they agree to meet up IRL and attend a concert together in London. All does not go as planned, and the pairRead More →

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Sabina Khan writes her novel Meet Me in Mumbai in two parts. Part I focuses on the life of Ayesha Hameed, a Muslim teen from India who is finishing high school in the United States so as to maximize her future potential. Here, she meets Suresh Khanna, a Hindu teen also from Mubai who is an exotic stranger but who totally “gets her.” As fellow Mubaiites, the pair share common rituals, foods, and similar backstories. Eventually, they fall in love, and after a glorious weekend together over the Thanksgiving holiday, Ayesha discovers she is pregnant. All of Ayesha’s lies and subterfuge have turned her intoRead More →

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XiXi Tian’s debut young adult novel, This Place Is Still Beautiful, features the stories of Margaret and Annalie Flanagan. The two sisters face the complicated elements of identity, family dynamics, ugly truths about racism, and growing up as mixed race teens in Illinois.  Tian’s approach challenges the reader’s perspective as she shares insight and invites us to look from various lenses. Annalie’s father left when she was only three, so she has no memory of him. Her Chinese mother is determined to protect her girls from the pain she herself endured in a biracial marriage that ultimately fails when cultural differences intrude. Still, Margaret lovesRead More →

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A Izenson lives in a world where transgender youth are an unwelcome anomaly. Although assigned female at birth, fourteen-year-old A is nonbinary. Because his parents think he is gender confused, they force him to attend Save our Sons and Daughters (SOSAD) meetings, where a type of conversion therapy takes place through counseling for “temporary emotional issues.”  A’s parents not only want their daughter back, they want to see legislation passed to prevent estrogen or testosterone treatments that might support youth who wish to transition during puberty and to put an end to “this transgender craze.” At SOSAD, he meets Yarrow, an agender teen who doesn’tRead More →

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S.K. Ali writes a powerful story with her science fiction fantasy Fledgling. Told in eleven parts, this first book in a promised duology is about colonization, oppression, rebellions, and politics. However, it isn’t didactic, as Ali entices readers by sharing just enough to lure them in as they form their own opinions about pervasive attempts to manipulate minds with propaganda and as they form attachments to intriguing characters. Thematically, Ali develops ideas similar to George Orwell’s Thought Police and Aldous Huxley’s class system and lab-controlled intelligence while weaving in tropes from M.T. Anderson’s Feed to reveal how thinking threatens those in power and how technologyRead More →