The Picture Bride

by Yi, Kŭm-i

November 16, 2022

The year is 1917 and a seventeen-year-old girl named Willow, who lives with her widowed mother and two younger brothers in a small, rural village in southeastern Korea, is asked by a traveling matchmaker if she wants to get married. The older woman shows Willow a photo of a young man and tells her he lives in Powa, a place the Americans call Hawai’i. She goes on to say that in Powa, you can “sweep up money with a dustpan”, that “clothes and shoes grow on trees, you only have to put them on”, and that “every season is late springtime.” More important to Willow than any of this, is... Read Full Review

Only a Monster

by Len, Vanessa

October 31, 2022

Call Number: YA

Joan believes herself to be a typical teenager. She spends her summers in London visiting her maternal grandmother, while her father visits his family in Malaysia. During this visit, she has been volunteering at Holland House, a historic home and museum in Kensington. Holland House is where she met Nick, the quiet and shy volunteer whom she really likes. It’s going to be a marvelous summer.

And then, over the course of a single day, Joan’s world is turned upside down. An unexpected occurrence mysteriously robs Joan of an entire afternoon and her grandmother is... Read Full Review

The Monster of Elendhaven

by Giesbrecht, Jennifer

October 17, 2022

A young man washes up in a harbor with no knowledge of who he is or where he came from. He doesn’t even have a name. He is tall, with dark hair and pale skin. He also possesses a strong sense of survival, driving him to do whatever is necessary to make his way on the dark and dangerous streets of Elendhaven.

Florian Leickenbloom is the antithesis of this mysterious young man. He knows his name and that he is the last surviving member of one of Elendhaven’s founding families. He is small and slight of stature with blonde hair. Florian lost his entire family, along with a majority of... Read Full Review

Bad Mexicans : race, empire, and revolution in the borderlands

by Hernández, Kelly Lytle

October 5, 2022

Call Number: 972.2 H557

The term “bad Mexicans” (malos Mexicanos) was not coined by Anglos from the United States, instead it originated with President Porfirio Díaz, the authoritarian President of Mexico who ruled for almost three decades beginning in 1876. It was a derogatory name for any person or group who opposed him.  At the expense of his own citizens and to the advantage of American investors, he encouraged and facilitated the investments to take place, which resulted in those American investors having control over major Mexican industries. Because of this situation, there developed a... Read Full Review

A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community

by Molina, Natalia

September 19, 2022

Call Number: 647.9509794 M722

When is a restaurant more than a place to eat? How and why does this happen?  Why is this significant? In the “Introduction: Placemaking in a New Homeland,” Natalia Molina, researcher and scholar, says it is because people recognize,  “ …  their home is about a feeling rooted to a particular place: a neighborhood, a park, a newsstand, a restaurant. The subjects of this story, most of them working-class immigrants who did not arrive in the United States speaking English, endeavored to make places of their own. They went to work, worshipped in church, attended school... Read Full Review