Asian American Heritage Month

	Celebrate Asian American Heritage Month with these recommended titles by, for and about Asian Americans. All of these library materials are owned by the Metropolitan Library System. Log on to CyberMars with your library card to reserve any titles that interest you, or ask a librarian for assistance.
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	Plum Wine: a Novel Angela Davis-Gardner (Univ. of Wisconsin Press/Terrace Books, c2006) Shelf Number: Fiction/DAV Barbara Jefferson, an American teaching at a Tokyo university, inherits a tansu chest filled with bottles of homemade plum wine wrapped in sheets of calligraphy-covered paper following the death of her friend and colleague Michiko. Barbara hires an enigmatic translator named Seiji to unravel the mysteries of Michiko’s life and the hidden world of the Hiroshima survivors.
	Secondhand World: a Novel Katherine Min (Knopf, c2006) Shelf Number: Fiction/MIN A fiercely determined and proud young woman growing up in a traditional Korean family, Isa repudiates her parents’ strict adherence to Korean values and customs to pursue her own sexual education. She runs away with an albino boy, and suspecting her mother’s involvement with another man, sets out to reveal the affair, with deadly consequences.
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	Snakeskin Shamisen Naomi Hirahara (Delta Trade Paperbacks, c2006) Shelf Number: Fiction/HIR When a close friend is found murdered shortly after winning a half-million dollars from a novelty slot machine, Japanese-American gardener Mas Arai discovers that a snakeskin shamisen, a traditional Okinawa musical instrument, could hold a clue to the killer’s identity and follows a trail that leads from the streets of L.A. to Okinawa in pursuit of the truth.
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	Tales of the Heike Haruo Shirane, Edt. (Columbia Univ. Press, c2006) Shelf Number: Fiction/TAL Intriguing, mini-sagas of samurai derring-do and nimble wit, with a distinctly Buddhist flavor. What distinguishes these tales is the poignant tension between the hero’s inspiring quest for glory and his ultimate realization that any transitory glory is only another form of attachment, the chief adversary of Buddhist enlightenment. An excellent introduction, tracing the genre’s historical context and a complete glossary of characters make this edition invaluable for aficionados of Japanese writing and all students of myth.
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	Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers Lois-Ann Yamanaka (Picador/Holtzbrinck, c2006) Shelf Number: Fiction/YAM Growing up in Hilo, Hawaii, in a family caught in the cultural gap between East and West, young Lovey Nariyoshi creates her own identity amid a world of pop culture and media that ignores the realities of the Japanese-American character.
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