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Caitlin from Caitlin Althea recently tagged me to do this Women’s History Book Tag created by Margaret from Weird Zeal! (Thank you for tagging me, Caitlin!) If you don’t know Caitlin, you should hop on over to her blog because she is a literal rock-star 💃.
Continue reading “The Women’s History Book Tag // fantastic women-authored stories (and beyoncé?)”During what I now consider the pinnacle of my writing prowess, aka the third grade, my classmates regarded me as a deft and literate comrade. I distinctly remember their tiny, gawking faces when I would be the first one to hand in our in-class essays, and then watching them form again when the teacher would read my work out loud. For once in my short-lived academic career, I felt like I was excelling compared to my peers.
I was a young J.K. Rowling in the making. I was a genius!
Title: Frankly In Love
Author: David Yoon
Published: September 10, 2019
Pages: 432
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Amazon / Barnes & Nobles / Book Depository / Goodreads
A total nerd, he spent his sweet, suburban Californian days studying for advanced placement tests, playing dungeons and dragons with his equally geeky friends, and helping his dad at their grocery store on the weekends. When a girl finally revealed that she liked him, Frank Li frankly couldn’t be any happier—except for one thing: his traditional Korean parents would never approve of his relationship with someone who wasn’t Korean.
Rather than be open with his parents and make them see reason, Frank pretended to date his fellow Korean American family friend, Joy Song, while he hid his European American girlfriend, and Joy hid her Chinese American boyfriend from her parents. What ensued was not a cliche contemporary about fake dating, but a complicated story of love, family, and identity.
Continue reading “Book Review: Frankly In Love by David Yoon // a hilariously heart-warming story about fake-dating and cultural limbo”
Title: The Girl with the Red Balloon
Author: Katherine Locke
Published: September 1, 2017
Pages: 256
Genre: Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Young Adult
Amazon / Barnes & Nobles / Book Depository / Goodreads
When she took a school trip all the way to Berlin from the USA, Ellie expected to practice her German while she finally explored Germany—a country her grandfather never forgave for all his heartache. Instead, her life turned on its axis after she noticed and latched onto a floating, red balloon reminiscent of the ones from her grandfather’s tales. In a blink of an eye, she was flung back and trapped in 1988 East Berlin where the past, present, and future were fantastically more entangled than anyone knew.
Continue reading “Book Review: The Girl with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke // east berlin, untold stories, and magic balloons”
Title: Internment
Author: Samira Ahmed
Published: March 19, 2019
Pages: 386
Genre: Young Adult, Fiction, Contemporary
Amazon / Barnes & Nobles / Book Depository / Goodreads
There’s no denying that the media and American politicians have capitalized on identity politics and racism falsely paraded as patriotism in order to socially isolate citizens into separate sides that need choosing. People are quick to write others off as another “liberal”, “conservative”, “immigrant”, “Trump supporter”, or whatever necessary label they can sneer at while they keep close company with a group that feeds their intransigence and confirmation bias.
More than ever, fostering honest and civil discussions between the divvied up parties should be a priority of any concerned American, no matter how frustrating or futile they seem. A glance back at just the last 100 years of history reveals that putting up fences between our ideas of “us” and “them” is ignorant, childish, and extremely dangerous.
Ahmed wrote Internment as a warning of horrific history potentially repeating itself, this time with Muslims as the scapegoats.
Continue reading “Book Review: Internment by Samira Ahmed // powerful themes, but disappointing execution”
Belle Can Read 