Good Reads - Fiction

Multicultural Fiction

FFICTION/ABU-JABER
Abu-Jaber, Diana - Crescent - 2003, 349p.
Daughter of an Iraqi exile, Sirine spends her days cooking at a Middle-Eastern café and her nights among an engaging cast of characters. These professors, creative types, and cooks are homesick for places they can't return. As she nears her fortieth birthday, Sirine is swept off her feet by Han, a talented and engaging poetry translator. Despite his obvious adoration, Han is oddly distant from Sirine as he longs for the peace his family enjoyed before Saddam Hussein's rise to power, and mourns the tragedies that befell them when he was forced to flee Iraq as a young man. This timely novel is beautifully evocative of political exiles longing for home and creating new lives with one another in their adopted country. Heather Booth

FICTION/ALVAREZ
Alvarez, Julia - How the García Girls Lost Their Accents - 1991, 290p.
Alvarez writes beautifully about four sisters caught between American ways and the old world values embodied by their strict parents. After the family is forced to flee the Dominican Republic, the sisters must learn to juggle both worlds and become accustomed to their conflicting identities. In America, their speech, their nationality, and their "uptight" attitudes are often ridiculed, but when visiting the Dominican Republic, they are told they are too immodest, too independent, and too American. At times this novel is both humorous and poignant, and nearly everyone can relate to the themes of isolation and the difficulties of family relationships. Nicole S.

FICTION/BOYLE
Boyle, T. Coraghessan - Tortilla Curtain - 1995, 355p.
Boyle's title refers to the California-Mexico border, the source of much contention and frustration. In this novel, the desperate existence of illegal immigrant couple América and Cándido Rincón is contrasted with the white, liberal Mossbachers—Kyra and Delaney. A chance encounter between Cándido and Delaney on a narrow, winding road in Topanga Canyon subtly begins to change Delaney's attitude regarding illegal Mexican immigration. Boyle skillfully draws the picture of disparity between the two couples and gives the reader insight into one facet of the contemporary immigrant experience. Nicole S.

FICTION/CASTILLO
Castillo, Anna - Peel My Love Like an Onion - 1999, 213p.
Carmen Santos is a complex woman who faces life with unflinching bravado and verve. The smoky world of flamenco dance, cognac, coffee, gypsies, late nights, and stolen affairs was Carmen's world. But, the door to that world closed when her lovers, Augustin and Manolo, walked out and her old companion, polio, walked back in. So, at forty, Carmen la Coja (the cripple), queen of flamenco dance, finds herself back in Chicago, unable to dance, broke, and living with her unusually challenging mother. Floating from doctor to doctor and job to job, coping with her losses and new realities, the world can look pretty bleak; but Carmen is a survivor, not one to be kept down for long. Terri W.

FICTION/DASWANI
Daswani, Kavita - The Village Bride of Beverly Hills - 2004, 271p.
After her arranged marriage, Priya departs her native Delhi for the U.S. with her new husband and the advice from her aunt to, "be obedient and homely and everything will be fine." Priya soon finds that marriage and Los Angeles are both more difficult to navigate than she anticipated. As the daughter-in-law of a traditional Indian family, she is expected to cook and clean, yet as a new American, she is also expected to work outside of the home. From her place at the reception desk of a celebrity news magazine, Priya rubs shoulders with people who know famous people, admires the women around her with high-powered journalism jobs, and yearns to stretch beyond the confines of tradition. Heather Booth

FICTION/DUBUS
Dubus, Andre III - House of Sand and Fog - 1999, 365p.
Kathy Nicolo's husband has left her, and her family disapproves of her; but she has her house, until an error by the county lands her house on the auction block, and Kathy becomes homeless. Colonel Behrani, once a man of privilege in Iran, is now Behrani the immigrant who picks up trash along the California Highway. But a county auction changes everything. With the last of his savings, Colonel Behrani purchases a house as a first step on the road back to a life of respect. He purchases Kathy Nicolo's house. When the desire for dignity and respect, and the need for security and stability, collide, events spiral out of control driving this novel to its tragic conclusion. Terri W.

MYSTERY/HIRAHARA
Hirahara, Naomi - Summer of the Big Bachi - 2004, 287p.
Japanese-American gardener Mas Arai is forced to confront a secret from his past when investigator Shuji Nakane travels from Japan to California to locate Joji Haneda, a former friend of Arai's. Suspicious of Nakane's motives, and protective of the events that occurred after the 1945 atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima that he survived, Arai launches his own low key investigation, finding bribery, theft, and murder. Evocative of Japan during World War II and the experiences of the generation of Japanese immigrants who came to the U.S. after the war, this is the first book in a projected series. Sue O'Brien

FICTION/KIRSHENBAUM
Kirshenbaum, Binnie - An Almost Perfect Moment - 2004, 321p.
This coming-of-age novel set in 1970s Brooklyn, filled with both tenderness and laugh-out-loud fun, tells the story of Valentine Kessler, arguably the prettiest girl in her high school class. A Jewish teen, with an uncanny and puzzling resemblance to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Valerie shuns the popular crowd—choosing instead to pine away for her pathetically geeky math teacher and secretly obsess over a book about the Catholic martyrs. Her single-mother Miriam and "the girls" (her colorful best friends) surround Valentine with unconditional love and support—even after an "immaculate" event that affects them all. Debbie Deady

FICTION/LAHIRI
Lahiri, Jhumpa - The Namesake - 2003, 291p.
Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli's immigration to the United States from India in the 1960s is followed by the birth of their son, Gogol, named for the Russian author Nikolai Gogol. His non-Indian name affects his entire life as he struggles to find his place in the world—Indian or American. Details of Indian culture are woven throughout this literary novel of a family adapting to new ways while also trying to hold on to the old ones. Sue O'Brien

FICTION/OTSUKA
Otsuka, Julie - When the Emperor Was Divine - 2002, 146p.
Devastated when their father is arrested and taken away to prison, the rest of the family must move when Order 19 is posted saying all Japanese-Americans must relocate to internment camps. Each chapter gives us a glimpse into what the individual members of this family endure. For over three years they suffer the harsh winters and stifling heat of the Utah desert. When released they are given $25.00 and returned to their home, grateful they still have a home. This is a fascinating insight into their unique experiences. Sheila Guenzer

FICTION/PAPALEO
Papaleo, Joseph - Italian Stories - 2002, 295p.
This is a collection of humorous and poignant tales of Italian immigrants in the Bronx during the 1930s and 1940s. The stories are diverse in topic and move chronologically. Each story expresses the struggles different members of the family experience trying to live their lives as typical Americans, yet maintain their unique Italian heritage. Several of the tales focus on one family—the traditional nurturing Italian mother, the father who owns a raincoat business, and the son Mauro. The intergenerational relationships between the family members are an exceptionally accurate portrayal of families during that era. Sheila Guenzer

FICTION/PIETRZYK
Pietrzyk, Leslie - Pears on a Willow Tree - 1998, 272p.
Four generations of women tell the story of a family's immigration to America from Poland in 1919 and their adjustments to life in America over the next 50 years. Rose, the matriarch, writes to her mother in Poland about her new life, yet embraces her Polish heritage when her own daughters are born. Daughter Helen creates a blend of old and new traditions within her Detroit community. Her daughter Ginger rebels against the values of both her mother and grandmother and moves to Phoenix, where she raises her own family. Returning home to Detroit each summer, Ginger's daughter Amy watches her mother struggle with alcoholism and tries to bridge the gap between her mother and grandmother. Marianne Trautvetter

FICTION/STEFANIAK
Stefaniak, Mary Helen - The Turk and My Mother - 2004, 316p.
This novel recounts the saga of four generations of Croatian immigrants in a collection of touching love stories and revelations of family secrets long held and cherished. Storytelling is at the heart of this novel, as George Iljasic, Grandmother Staramajka, and others describe their family's travels from Hungary to Wisconsin and to Russia after World War I. By the end of this moving and often hilarious story that crosses generations, wars, and borders, it is clear that no one is immune from love and the appeal of music, storytelling, and the exotic stranger. Nana Oakey-Campana

FICTION/TAN
Tan, Amy - The Bonesetter's Daughter - 2001, 353p.
Tan brings us another novel about the complex relationships of Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters. Ruth Young, a San Francisco career woman who is a ghostwriter of self-help books, is frustrated by her own poor relationship with her mother, LuLing. Now that LuLing has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, Ruth tries to become closer to her mother before it is too late. When she has her mother's diary that was written in Chinese calligraphy translated into English, Ruth learns family secrets that help her to see her mother from a different perspective, and she begins to understand the large role that superstition and tradition play in her mother's life. Marianne Trautvetter

FICTION/TRIGIANI
Trigiani, Adriana - Lucia, Lucia: A Novel - 2003, 263p.
Lucia Sartori, the beautiful daughter of an Italian-immigrant grocer, lives in an ethnic section of Greenwich Village in the 1950s and works as a seamstress for B. Altman's department store. Lucia, fearful that her impending marriage to childhood sweetheart Dante will result in a regret-filled life spent entirely within the confines of her in-laws home (as is the custom), breaks her engagement, only to find love again in the arms of a handsome con-man, who eventually breaks her heart. This bittersweet novel provides an intimate and thoughtful glimpse into the lives of a close-knit Italian family and their community. Debbie Deady

FICTION/YOSHIKAWA
Yoshikawa, Mako - Once Removed - 2003, 289p.
This is a powerful story of two women from different cultures who form a deep friendship that, although severely tested, can never be broken. Many years ago Claudia's Jewish father fell in love with Rei's Japanese-American mother and abandoned his family to be with her. Now after many years, the stepsisters find a way back into each other's troubled lives. Taking the reader from the exotic Japan of the 1940s and the effects of Hiroshima, to the urban streets of Boston, the stepsisters overcome regrets and family betrayal to maintain the strong bond between them. Nana Oakey-Campana

Prepared January 2006