local_shipping Free Standard U.S. Shipping on all orders $25 or more
Beginning with "A is for Asian American," Che and Wu center Asian American figures and history as well as intersectionally aware concepts in this activist-leaning abecedarian. Throughout, rhyming and near-rhyming couplets ("F is for being first, a leader of your times./ So many have been bold enough to walk a new line") appear alongside alternatingly bright and somber scenes from Ramchandran. Figures mentioned include activist Grace Lee Boggs, musician Bruno Mars, Congressperson Rashida Tlaib, and others. The pages also reference prejudicial treatment throughout American history, including the murder of Vincent Chin and Japanese incarceration. Uneven contextualizing sometimes undercuts the rhythmic lines, but it's a hopeful, liberation-minded primer that culminates by speaking to the "power in knowing Asian American history." A glossary concludes. Ages 5-9. (May)
Copyright 2023 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.Cathy Linh Che is the daughter of Vietnam War refugees. She is the author of Split, winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the Best Poetry Book Award from the Association of Asian American Studies. Her work has been published in New Republic, Nation, McSweeney's, and Poetry. She serves as Executive Director at Kundiman and lives on the traditional lands of the Lenape people.
Kyle Lucia Wu was born and raised in a small town in New Jersey. She is the author of Win Me Something, an NPR Best Book of the Year. A former Asian American Writers' Workshop Margins Fellow, her work has been published in Literary Hub, Joyland Magazine, Catapult, and BOMB Magazine. She is the Managing Director of Kundiman and teaches creative writing at Fordham University and The New School.