18 books like The Wangs vs The World
Talent
An English grad student struggling with her dissertation about the intellectual history of inspiration desperately searches for a perfect case study to anchor her thesis, only to find it in the unlikeliest of places.
Shares: Humorous, Literary, Coming-of-age
Mona in the Promised Land
Unhappy with her own ethnic group, Mona Chang, a Chinese-American, decides to become a Jew. After all, if one has to live as a minority, choose the best. A witty look at ethnicity, multiculturalism and the melting pot. By the author of Typical American.
Shares: Chinese American families, Chinese Americans
The Kitchen God's Wife
Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past--including the terrible truth even Helen does not know. And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s,…
Shares: Chinese American families, Chinese Americans, United States
Asymmetry
Explores the imbalances that spark and sustain dramatic human relations, tracing the overlapping stories of a young American editor's relationship with a famous older writer, an unexpected New York romance during the early years of the Iraq War and an Iraqi-American man who is detained by immigration officers in Heathrow.
Shares: Literary, Family life, Coming-of-age
An Orchestra of Minorities
"A contemporary twist on the Odyssey, An Orchestra of Minorities is narrated by the chi, or spirit of a young poultry farmer named Chinonso. His life is set off course when he sees a woman who is about to jump off a bridge. Horrified by her recklessness, he hurls two of his prized chickens off the bridge. The woman, Ndali, is stopped in her tracks. Chinonso and Ndali fall in love but she is from…
Shares: Cultural Heritage, Literary, Coming-of-age
The kinship of secrets
"From the author of The Calligrapher's Daughter comes the riveting story of two sisters, one raised in the United States, the other in South Korea, and the family that bound them together even as the Korean War kept them apart"--
Shares: Cultural Heritage, Coming-of-age, United States
The Good Luck Of Right Now
When his mother dies, 38-year-old Bartholomew Neil, who doesn't know how to be on his own, discovers a letter in his mother's underwear drawer that causes him to write a series of highly intimate letters to actor Richard Gere, while embarking on a quest to find out where he belongs.
Shares: Humorous, Literary, Family life, Coming-of-age
The incendiaries
A young Korean-American woman at an elite American university is drawn into acts of domestic terrorism by a cult tied to North Korea and then disappears, leading a fellow student into an obsessive search for her.
Shares: Cultural Heritage, Literary, Coming-of-age
All the ugly and wonderful things
"As the daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. It's safer to keep her mouth shut and stay out of sight. Struggling to raise her little brother, Donal, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible adult around. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the starry night sky above the fields behind her house, until one night her star gazing…
Shares: Literary, Family life, Coming-of-age
Maria Chapdelaine
Tells of a French-Canadian family in early twentieth-century Quebec, where life is ruled by the harsh winters and a young woman must choose between the life she has always known and the possibility of a different, less difficult life.
Shares: Immigrants, Family life
Academy street
"A vibrant, intimate, hypnotic portrait of one woman's life, from an important new writer. Tess Lohan is the kind of woman that we meet and fail to notice every day. A single mother. A nurse. A quiet woman, who nonetheless feels things acutely--a woman with tumultuous emotions and few people to share them with. Academy Street is Mary Costello's luminous portrait of a whole life. It follows Tess…
Shares: Literary, Family life, Coming-of-age
Less
Receiving an invitation to his ex-boyfriend's wedding, Arthur, a failed novelist on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, embarks on an international journey that finds him falling in love, risking his life, reinventing himself, and making connections with the past.
Shares: Humorous, Literary
Precaution
The entire focus of this novel rests on the determined though sometimes woefully mistaken efforts of three British families--the Moseleys, the Jarvises, and the Chattertons--to arrange suitable marriages for their respective sons and daughters. The bulk of the early-nineteenth-century action is therefore played out through dinners, social calls, visits to summer resorts, and development of…
Shares: Family life, United States
Our young man
282 pages ; 20 cm
Shares: Literary, Coming-of-age
Brood
Two teenagers struggle with a horrific family legacy in the sequel to Chase Novak's novel, Breed. Thirteen years ago, a radical fertility doctor helped bring Adam and Alice Twisden into the world. The treatment came at a great cost: it turned the twins' parents into barbarous animals and threatens to transform the children, too. As Adam and Alice find themselves on the brink of maturity, they…
Shares: Family life, Coming-of-age
The little giant of Aberdeen County
When Truly Plaice's mother was pregnant, the town of Aberdeen joined together in betting how recordbreakingly huge the baby boy would ultimately be. The girl who proved to be Truly paid the price of her enormity; her father blamed her for her mother's death in childbirth, and was totally ill equipped to raise either this giant child or her polar opposite sister Serena Jane, the epitome of femine…
Shares: Coming-of-age, United States
Little Faith
"A Wisconsin family grapples with the power and limitations of faith when one of their own falls under the influence of a radical church"--
Lyle Hovde lives a mostly content life in rural Wisconsin with his wife, Peg, daughter, Shiloh, and six-year old grandson, Isaac. After a troubled adolescence, Shiloh has become deeply involved with an extremist church, and the devout pastor courting her is…
Shares: Literary, Family life, Coming-of-age
Cheaper by the Dozen (Cheaper by the Dozen #1)
A wonderful memoir of a large and wild family during the early part of the 20th century. The "progressive" parenting and lifestyle of the parents, the hilarious trials and tribulations of the children, and the many adventures through these very interesting decades provide an engrossing and endearing read.
Shares: Family life, United States