I am not an immigrant nor a refugee nor a child thereof. No one has hurled racist slurs at me. I don’t know what it is like to leave my home behind for a new life far away, or to return to one’s home decades later only to find the neighbourhood changed. Still, Aoki’s descriptions of how these Los Angeles neighbourhoods have fluctuated and flowed throughout the decades, how various immigrant populations have made these neighbourhoods their own, creates a picture of the city that we seldom get to see. Aoki mixes wry commentary on Asian stereotypes with a careful delineation of differences among Vietnamese, Cambodian, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese culture, cuisine, music, language, etc.—again belying the simplistic narratives that often flatten and erase this beautiful diversity. Also, this book kept making me hungry. Seventeen-year-old Pakistani immigrant Zara Hossain has been leading a fairly typical life in Corpus Christi, Texas, since her family moved there for her father to work as a pediatrician. While dealing with the Islamophobia that she faces at school, Zara has to lay low, trying not to stir up any trouble and jeopardize their family’s dependent visa status while they await their green card approval, which has been in process for almost nine years.

Nineteen-year-old Tara Muvvala didn’t mean to lead a double life. But her bone-deep aversion to math + a soul-deep desire to please her mother = her failing math grade + exploding food vlog ‘this masala life’. It doesn’t matter who you are and who you identify as or where your diverse giftings may lie, Light From Uncommon Stars has something profound to say to you. The shadow of Godolia’s tyrannical rule is spreading, aided by their giant mechanized weapons known as Windups. War and oppression are everyday constants for the people of the Badlands, who live under the thumb of their cruel Godolia overlords. I think girl,” the woman said. She didn’t bother whispering. So what if the kid could hear? They were speaking Cantonese; the young ones were either Americanized or learning Mandarin.

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There is more about music in Light from Uncommon Stars than can be detailed in a single review; it is the bass note, the driving force of the novel, the cause of redemption, the cause of damnation, and the raison d’être of many characters. There are enough details about musical technique, music history, and lutherie in it to delight everyone from the entirely uninitiated to the classically trained. Aoki is an anti-snob. For her, aesthetic experience inheres not in the rarity of its object, but in the self-evident pleasurableness of an experience itself. Shizuka, an expert in classical violin, does not sneer when she discovers Katrina’s love of video game music; in fact, she appreciates it almost immediately. When Shizuka and Lan share an intimate moment, Shizuka hums a melody. Filled with mouthwatering descriptions of food and heart-swelling meditations on music, this novel is an unexpected gift.”— Kirkus, starred review Those four little words sear themselves into Rahul’s brain. While he’s not quite sure what that special thing is, he is convinced that once he finds it, bullies like Brent Mason will stop torturing him at school. And he won’t be worried about staring too long at his classmate Justin Emery. With his best friend, Chelsea, by his side, Rahul is ready to crush this challenge…. But what if he discovers he isn’t the bestat anything? Oh, Edwin… Settling on one name will be difficult, won’t it? What matters is that we’re together, and safe. And that means no more running through the halls. We don’t want anyone to get hurt, right?” By then, they had realized that they had put so much love into the shop, they had forgotten about having children to take over the business. Developers began to inquire. Some even offered a fair price. But Mrs. Thamavuong would look at their big donut and cry. Their entire lives were in that donut.

But Tiến still enjoys reading his favorite stories with his parents from the books he borrows from the local library. It’s hard enough trying to communicate with your parents as a kid, but for Tiến, he doesn’t even have the right words because his parents are struggling with their English. Is there a Vietnamese word for what he’s going through?Told from the point of view of Seema’s child at the moment of his birth and infused with the poetry of Wordsworth, Keats, and the Quran, Radiant Fugitives is an operatic debut from a bold new voice, exploring the tensions between ideology and practicality, hope and tradition, forgiveness and retribution for one family navigating a shifting political landscape. But how could the mere concept of mortality be enough to topple advanced civilizations? People live, people die, and so what?” Silently, Katrina put on her coat. She slid open her bedroom window. Outside, there was noise from a police helicopter, noise from some family next door. There was noise from the highway, from nice cars leaving and less-nice cars coming home. Yet, Katrina moved steadily, almost gracefully, as she gathered what she needed.

PDF / EPUB File Name: Light_from_Uncommon_Stars_-_Ryka_Aoki.pdf, Light_from_Uncommon_Stars_-_Ryka_Aoki.epub Katrina, who is a talented amateur violinist, soon comes into the orbit of Shizuka Satomi, a renowned violin teacher also known as the Queen of Hell. Shizuka is bound by a contract that obliges her to deliver seven souls to hell, and so far, she has delivered six. The demon overseeing Shizuka’s contract has begun to press her for the last soul; failure to deliver it would lead to her own damnation. In her hunt for the seventh soul, Shizuka happens upon Katrina. Katrina is an unlikely candidate for the last soul, an unvarnished talent without any of the sense of entitlement or thirst for glory that hell prefers in its victims, but Shizuka is somehow drawn to her, and begins to groom her for delivery to hell. Shizuka Satomi has sent the souls of six of her students to hell, choosing them carefully, training them as violinists, and then letting them play with her special, cursed dogwood bow so that their souls are consigned to damnation. When she hears teenager Katrina Nguyen playing in the park, she recognizes something in the girl’s playing: she’s far from being a virtuoso right now, but she has an instinct that can’t be taught. Shizuka takes her on as a student with every intention of feeding her soul to the devil in exchange for Shizuka’s own. Katrina is so much more than trans, of course, and Aoki makes sure to portray this as well. One of my favourite bits of characterization in this book is how Katrina navigates Shizuka’s unexpected largesse, from her initial reaction of suspicion to her eventual desire to “save” Shizuka from her inescapable deal. Katrina’s indifference to the curse Shizuka plans to bestow upon her reflects the philosophy she has developed that everything comes with a cost, and in many ways, her story is a journey of finding the unconditional love she has never felt before. The Thamavuongs spent three weeks with Lan and her family to teach them their basic operations and how to run their equipment. Then they handed their treasured recipe book and keys to Ms. Tran and retired, full of good memories and good American currency, to Laos and their beloved Vientiane.

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Then Katrina crawled atop her desk, and dropped to the ground. Mercifully, adrenaline overrode her pain. She reached up, slid the window closed, and looked at her phone.