Haunted

North Korea's government propaganda is infamous -- but Shin Dong-hyuk had never even heard of Kim Il sung.  He was born in a prison camp, but after 20 some years of enduring beatings, starvation, and psychological horrors, Shin escapes.  Journalist Blaine Harden attempts to tease out Shin's story in Escape From Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey From North Korea to Freedom in the West.  A quick and engaging read, one is left with a sense that even though Shin is physically free from his tormentors, he is a complex person who may never be truly liberated from his past.  HM

Food As Identity

Wonder bread, Ding Dongs, potato chips, and Popsicles -- these are the constant cravings of Bich Minh Nguyen in her coming-of-age tale, Stealing Buddha's Dinner: A Memoir. A Vietnamese refugee in 1980s Grand Rapids, Nguyen struggles to reconcile her Asian family life with the Western culture surrounding her. Quickly, she comes to identify "being American" with eating American junk food, and finds herself torn between fried shrimp cakes and Kit Kats. Honored as a Michigan Notable Book in 2008, Stealing Buddha's Dinner is a fascinating look at childhood and the creation of identity through the eyes of an outsider. HM

buzzzz for Little Bee...

recommended read and a starred review by Booklist---Little Bee, smart and stoic, knows two people in England, Andrew and Sarah, journalists she chanced upon on a Nigerian beach after fleeing a massacre in her village, one grisly outbreak in an off-the-radar oil war. After sneaking into England and escaping a rural “immigration removal” center, she arrives at Andrew and Sarah’s London suburb home only to find that the violence that haunts her has also poisoned them. In an unnerving blend of dread, wit, and beauty, Cleave slowly and arrestingly excavates the full extent of the horror that binds Little Bee and Sarah together. A columnist for the Guardian, Cleave earned fame and notoriety when his first book, Incendiary, a tale about a terrorist attack on London, was published on the very day London was bombed in July 2005. His second ensnaring, eviscerating novel charms the reader with ravishing descriptions, sly humor, and the poignant improvisations of Sarah’s Batman-costumed young son, then launches devastating attacks in the form of Little Bee’s elegantly phrased insights into the massive failure of compassion in the world of refugees. Cleave is a nerves-of-steel storyteller of stealthy power, and this is a novel as resplendent and menacing as life itself.---Seaman, Donna Copyright 2008 BooklistDistributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc. CKW