Category Archives: Canadian Asian Pacific American
The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje
With utter certainty, I can claim that I’ve never ever been remotely disappointed by a Michael Ondaatje title. Until now, alas. Here’s my very best advice to you about this, his long-awaited new title, The Cat’s Table: read it page by page for yourself only; do not choose the audible option, even as the venerable Ondaatje himself narrates. Really. At least with this work, Ondaatje’s voice unfortunately expresses a sense of detachment so visceral that bonding with the book’s protagonist proves difficult at best …
Perhaps his distance might be explained in the “Author’s Note” at title’s end, in which Ondaatje insists, “Although the novel sometimes uses the colouring and locations of memoir and autobiography, The Cat’s Table is fictional – from the captain and crew and all its passengers on the boat down to the narrator.” That narrator, ironically, is also named Michael, also born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), also moved to England at the age of 11, and also grew up to be a writer with a Canadian address. As if to downplay those similarities (but why?), Ondaatje’s voice unintentionally results in a disengaged, aloof narration.
In Colombo late at night, Michael, the 11-year-old narrator here, boards the big ship Oronsay alone: “… it was explained to me that after I’d crossed the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea, and gone through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, I would arrive one morning on a small pier in England and my mother would meet me there.”
As the ship begins its journey, Michael is placed at Table 76 for his meals, also known as ‘the cat’s table’ – “the least privileged place,” he quickly learns. His tablemates include “two other boys roughly my age,” who become his adventurous companions throughout the voyage and beyond. One friendship will last a lifetime; the other will remain a spectral presence. Michael’s three-week passage will include other memorable characters – his beguiling distant cousin Emily, a mysterious criminal about whose offenses no one seems to be quite sure, late-night gambling bunkmates, and a young deaf girl who is magic on a trampoline. In between “Departure” and “Arrival,” Michael intersperses fragments from his adult life, fluidly passing from past, present, future, and back again, offering elliptical details of what followed that pivotal multi-sea crossing.
All my favorite literary elements are here: non-linear time, sparse but profound writing, characters with mysteries to be solved (or not), fateful reunions, etc. etc. If only had known to read, not listen; the iPod failed me for sure this time! So perhaps as I impatiently anticipate Ondaatje’s next book, I’ll have the time to re-read, re-discover. re-imagine Cat’s Table all for myself …
Readers: Adult
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
Before I let myself even open Michael Ondaatje’s newest title, The Cat’s Table, which hit shelves earlier this month, I was determined to read his previous novels that I had somehow missed. The realization that I have now earned access to Table is rather bittersweet as I know even more clearly that the wait for Ondaatje’s next book will be considerable (sniff, sniff).
Even more than his 1992 Booker Prize-winning The English Patient (which I feel I must now re-read), Anil’s Ghost proves to be a more lasting novel for me, as much for what appears on the printed page as what does not.
Anil Tissera, a forensic anthropologist, arrives in her native Sri Lanka after 15 years of living in the West, not so much because of family or cultural ties, but because she is sent by a Swiss human rights group to investigate the escalating numbers of alleged murders. The Sri Lankan government and various rebel factions have been carrying on a brutal, stealthy war for decades and the body count continues to multiply. Paired with a local archeologist, Sarath Diyasena, Anil is never quite sure whom she can trust. The two form an uneasy bond over a certain skeleton – dubbed Sailor (along with its companions, Tinker, Tailor, and Soldier) –whose murder Anil is determined to prove.
Fluidly passing back and forth from the present to disparate moments in the past, Ondaatje creates an elliptical landscape of a woman’s life in constant flux. Anil regularly discards parts of her life, from her given name (at 12, she buys her brother’s name from him for 100 rupees, a pen set, 50 cigarettes, “and a sexual favour”) to her married lover whom she leaves with a knife buried in his flesh with the admonition, “‘Remember this is what I did to you in Borrego Springs.’”
Her time in Sri Lanka will (predictably) be temporary; what she learns of her native country and especially its people – Sarath’s disgraced teacher-mentor, Sarath’s doctor brother Gamini, the sculptor Ananda and his disappeared wife – will eventually force her to flee. Her tenuous relationship with Sarath must come to an abrupt end, and she will again leave behind another unresolved life.
For every fact that Ondaatje (who is also Sri Lankan-born, and long Canadian-domiciled) presents, he invites new questions for which he does not offer clear answers. The ghosts throughout are many, not limited to Anil and her past selves, but even more the countless missing persons both named and unnamed. Part mystery, part thriller, perhaps even part memoir, Anil’s Ghost haunts long after the final page.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2000 Continue reading
Wanting Mor by Rukhsana Khan
Sometimes even the saddest tragedies can eventually lead to happy new beginnings … even if the journey is a bit circuitous and challenging, to say the least!
When Jameela, a young Afghan girl, loses her Mor (the Pushto word for mother) to illness, she can’t imagine that anything worse can happen. Her mother was the kindest, most loving presence in her life. Born with a cleft lip she keeps hidden as much as possible, Jameela was well aware she would never be considered attractive, but her mother always told her, “‘If you can’t be beautiful, you should at least be good.’” And ‘good’ Jameela continues to try to be.
Left alone with her drinking, gambling, disappearing father, she is suddenly uprooted without warning from their small home village to the big city of Kabul. Jameela is quickly put to work as a house servant, and is uprooted again when her father unexpectedly remarries. Her new stepmother is selfish and abusive, although her new stepbrother seems to have a generous heart and tries to teach Jameela to read. But the brief, almost-family-like respite for Jameela doesn’t last long: her irresponsible father is easily manipulated by his new wife to abandon Jameela in a crowded market intersection. With nowhere to go, no one to turn to, Jameela must rely on the kindness of strangers to survive, but eventually she finds a home, new friends, and for the first time in her life, she finally begins her education.
Rukhsana Khan based her latest novel for young readers on the true story of another young girl, Sameela, documented in a single paragraph in “a report on children in crisis that was issued by Afghanistan’s department of orphanages,” she explains in her ending “Author’s Note.” Khan sets her story in 2001 just after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, already a ravaged nation. “When countries go to war, it is always civilians, especially children, who suffer the most.” Such simple, heartbreaking truth indeed.
Access to education will ensure Jameela’s future. Khan’s book is yet further testimony that educating girls can and will make the most lasting, powerful difference in changing the persistent tragedies of the world. Khan’s title, is both homage to Jameela’s mother, but also a fervent prayer for more, for education, for a future, for peace. Indeed, educate girls and the impossible will become possible.
Click here to see Khan’s other titles on BookDragon.
Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult
Published: 2009 Continue reading
Watch This Space: Designing, Defending and Sharing Public Spaces by Hadley Dyer, illustrated by Marc Ngui
Coming from a family of urban planners and architects (Pops was head of urban planning graduate department at major university, baby bro is mega-award winning architect and professor at Harvard’s GSD, middle bro used to make all his ex-girlfriend’s architecture models when he got tired of computers – shhhh!) made me appreciate this lively, sassy, youth-empowering new title oh so much!
“You don’t have to buy something or pay an entry fee to be in a public space. You don’t need to be a member or explain why you’re there. Public spaces exist so everyone can use them. All you have to do is show up.” Could it be any more simple? And these public spaces need to be protected, especially for youth who need a place to just … “hang out.”
Author Hadley Dyer explains how “teens don’t have private places to call their own.” At home, parents make the decisions about who comes over, what kids can do. At school, teachers rule. But in public spaces, kids can be together to just do nothing. “Yet something is happening when you spend time in public spaces,” Dyer insists. “You’re figuring out how to get along with people, without adult interference. You’re sorting out who you are and how you fit in. You’re becoming part of a community.”
With Dyer’s chatty, welcoming narrative and Marc Ngui‘s entertaining drawings and layouts, Watch This Space covers the earliest public forums to the latest virtual social spaces, to sharing public spaces with everyone of all ages and backgrounds (not just your friends), to ultimately designing your own great public space.
Along the way, you’ll learn some fabulously fun facts … like why agoraphobia means a fear of public or open spaces, why we’re still watching gory gladiator deaths, what the Serengeti and Old Quebec’s Historic District have in common, how you can take walking tours of major cities without even leaving your desk, why suburbs are more dangerous than crowded cities, the #1 killer of under-18s, what you might expect to pay if you get caught smuggling gum into Singapore, why the no jyuku sha community in Osaka, Japan prefers the great outdoors, where the largest skateboarding park can be found, and just so much more, more, more.
The book debuts next week. Order a copy, then go to your favorite public space and share that copy with lots of others … if you don’t use it, you could lose it!
Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Egg on Mao: The Story of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship by Denise Chong
Denise Chong has built an award-winning career capturing ordinary people living extraordinary lives. The Concubine’s Children (1994) told of her own family’s fractured journey from China to Canada and The Girl in the Picture (2000) detailed the harrowing story of the young girl whose screaming, naked image became a devastating symbol of the Vietnam War.
In her latest book, Egg on Mao: The Story of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship, Chong bears witness to the life of a Chinese bus mechanic who risked everything in an effort to change his country’s repressive regime.
On June 4, 2009, three friends – Lu Decheng, Yu Zhijian, and Yu Dongyue – were reunited in Washington, DC, to mark the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. All three had spent the majority of the past two decades in scattered prisons, united by a single pledge to each another: “I must leave this prison alive and with my sanity.” Those of us fortunate enough to live in a free country can hardly comprehend that throwing paint-filled eggs on a poster could result in endless years of subhuman imprisonment.
Part biography, part history, part testimony, Egg on Mao closely follows the story of Lu Decheng, one of the three reunited friends. Chong weaves together several narrative strands: Lu’s early life in his riverside village in Hunan Province (modestly famous as the birthplace of fireworks); his fateful act of political protest during a pivotal moment in modern history that traps him in the Chinese prison system; and his subsequent survival and release, with his humanity somehow intact.
Growing up under a crushing Communist system that remained unchallenged even after Mao’s 1976 death, Lu was mostly raised by his beloved grandmother. Officially classified as a “martyr’s widow,” which accorded her certain privileges under the fickle regime, Grandmother Lu repeatedly emphasized the need for people to maintain the ability to “think for themselves.” Her dangerous but truthful talk of high-ranking thievery, deceit, and execution shaped Lu’s defiant views. …[click here for more]
Review: Christian Science Monitor, October 21, 2009
Readers: Adult
Published: 2009 Continue reading
The Octonauts & the Great Ghost Reef by Meomi
First a little note about the creators: Meomi is a dynamic design duo made up of Vicki Wong, based in Vancouver, and Michael Murphy, who calls Los Angeles home. Together, they also happen to write adorable, colorful kiddie books … and this is their fourth Octonauts adventure. [Somehow I missed the others, but better late than never, right?] Pretty soon, Meomi will be internationally famous as they designed the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic mascots. You can say you saw them here first!
So the Octonauts are eight animal friends – including an otter, sausage dog, and of course an OCTopus – who wander around in their Octopod having lots of underwater adventures. Their latest peregrination takes them to a mysteriously abandoned, colorless city with a lone last inhabitant, an old turtle named Mr. Slowstache. With his home about to collapse, Mr. Slowstache asks the Octonauts to help him find a new abode, which proves no easy task.
But then Dr. Shellington, the nerdy sea otter, discovers that the city is built on top of a coral reef – which means it’s alive! The Octonauts get busy and restore the almost-suffocated reef, bringing back the technicolor balance and natural harmony once again.
While the kids are going to love the vibrant colors and the cuddly critters, parents can also share in an important message: even when you’ve screwed up Mother Nature, you still have another chance to make things right. Just make sure not to wait too long … we don’t have too many restorative chances left!
Readers: Children
Published: 2009 Continue reading
Claire and the Bakery Thief and Claire and the Water Wish by Janice Poon
City-girl Claire reluctantly moves to the country, where her parents open an all-organic bakery. During her first summer in the country, she saves her kidnapped mother with the help of her new best friend Jet. When the school year begins, she helps expose toxic dumping by a nearby company and becomes a local hero. Poon uses a combination of diary entries and storyboard graphics to vividly capture Claire’s adventures.
Readers: Middle Grade
Published: 2008, 2009 Continue reading
Skim by Mariko Tamaki, illustrated by Jillian Tamaki
Meet Kimberly Keiko Cameron, aka “Skim,” a wannabe witch navigating her angst-filled teenage life in a 1990s Toronto high school. In this book created by cousins Mariko and Jillian, making their fabulous collaborative debut, Skim manages to survive the first half of 10th grade – not an easy feat, dealing with her parents’ separation, suicide, depression, questions of homosexuality, challenging friendships, and maybe falling in love.
Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult
Published: 2008 Continue reading
Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam
Vincent Lam’s first book of fiction, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, comes to the United State an already proven deal. The story collection won Canada’s prestigious Giller Prize in 2006, the first time a premiere work ever had the honor, and Bloodletting was a best-seller in that country. Weinstein Books was so sure about the book that the new publishing house not only made Bloodletting its first acquisition but also will publish Lam’s forthcoming first novel.
Bloodletting is worthy of all that attention.
An emergency physician in Toronto, Lam writes from experience, and with accuracy and confidence. He even includes an 11-page medical glossary. The loosely connected, layered stories of Bloodletting follow four young doctors-in-training into their medical careers – two successful, one not and one prematurely stunted. …[click here for more]
Review: San Francisco Chronicle, September 12, 2007
Readers: Adult
Published: 2007 (United States) Continue reading
Swimming in the Monsoon Sea by Shyam Selvadurai + Author Interview [in The Bloomsbury Review]
Searching for Home
Shyam Selvadurai Debuts Swimming in the Monsoon Sea
While ‘home’ today for Shyam Selvadurai is undoubtedly Toronto, Canada, the ‘home’ that he plumbs for his books remains Sri Lanka, where he was born and lived until the age of 19. Selvadurai’s latest, Swimming in the Monsoon Sea – his first for young adult readers – returns to the Sri Lanka of his youth, a time before the bloody riots between majority Buddhist Sinhalese and minority Hindu Tamils precipitated the immigration of Selvadurai’s mixed Sinhalese/Tamil family to Canada two decades ago.
While Selvadurai originally thought he might find a life in the theater, the resounding success in 1994 of his first book, Funny Boy, about a young boy’s growing up gay in Sri Lanka where homosexuality is still illegal, cemented Selvadurai’s writing career. He followed in 1998 with Cinnamon Gardens, exploring the intertwined lives of the residents in a Colombo suburb of 1920s Ceylon which was then not-yet-independent Sri Lanka. Earlier this year, he edited the much acclaimed anthology, Story-Wallah: Short Fiction from South Asian Writers, capturing the diasporic South Asian experience through voices as diverse as Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Michael Ondaatje and many others.
Debuting this fall, Selvadurai’s lush Swimming centers on 14-year-old Amrith, an orphan lovingly raised within the family of his mother’s schoolfriend, and what will mostly likely be the last summer of childhood when a new relationship with a mysterious cousin from Canada changes his life forever. …[click here for more]
Author interview: The Bloomsbury Review, January/February 2006
Tidbit: Shyam Selvadurai was a guest at SALTAF 2005 (South Asian Literary and Theater Arts Festival), a much-anticipated, highly-attended annual fall event sponsored by the Smithsonian APA Program and NetSAP-DC. Mark your calendars for SALTAF 2009 on November 7, 2009!
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2005 Continue reading
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