Asian Heritage Month Giveaway

The Hachette Book Group is celebrating Asian Heritage Month with another great giveaway and I am one that will never turn down a chance to do a contest.  So we’re giving away another 5 sets of books.  Check out these great titles:

Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee

“Competence can be a curse.” So begins Min Jin Lee’s epic novel about class, society, and identity. Casey Han’s four years at Princeton have given her many things: “a refined diction, an enviable golf handicap, a popular white boyfriend, an agnostic’s closeted passion for reading the Bible, and a magna cum laude degree in economics. But no job and a number of bad habits.”

Casey’s parents, who live in Queens, are Korean immigrants working in a dry cleaner, desperately trying to hold onto their culture and identity. Their daughter, on the other hand, has entered into the upper echelon of rarified American society via scholarships. But after graduation, Casey’s trust-fund friends see only opportunity and choices while Casey sees the reality of having expensive habits without the means to sustain them. As Casey navigates Manhattan, we see her life and the lives of those around her: her sheltered mother, scarred father, her friend Ella who’s always been the good Korean girl, Ella’s ambitious Korean husband and his Caucasian mistress, Casey’s white fiancé, and then her Korean boyfriend, all culminating in a portrait of New York City and its world of haves and have-nots.

Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunée

When Kim Sunée was three years old, her mother took her to a marketplace, deposited her on a bench with a fistful of food, and promised she’d be right back. Three days later a policeman took the little girl, clutching what was now only a fistful of crumbs, to a police station and told her that she’d been abandoned by her mother.

Fast-forward almost 20 years and Kim’s life is unrecognizable. Adopted by a young New Orleans couple, she spends her youth as one of only two Asian children in her entire community. At the age of 21, she becomes involved with a famous French businessman and suddenly finds herself living in France, mistress over his houses in Provence and Paris, and stepmother to his eight year-old daughter.

Kim takes readers on a lyrical journey fromKorea to New Orleans to Paris and Provence, along the way serving forth her favorite recipes. A love story at heart, this memoir is about the search for identity and a book that will appeal to anyone who is passionate about love, food, travel, and the ultimate search for self.

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer Lee

If you think McDonald’s is the most ubiquitous restaurant experience in America, consider that there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Wendys combined. New York Times reporter and Chinese-American (or American-born Chinese). In her search, Jennifer 8 Lee traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Jenny Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jews and Chinese food, and weaves a personal narrative about her own relationship with Chinese food. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles speaks to the immigrant experience as a whole, and the way it has shaped our country.

Transparency by Frances Hwang

With a deceptively simple yet graceful style, and in the tradition of Lara Vapnyar, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Gish Jen, Frances Hwang captures the thousand minor battles waged in the homes of immigrants–struggles to preserve time honored traditions or break free of them, to maintain authority or challenge it, and to take advantage of modern excesses without diluting one’s ethnic identity.

In “Garden City,” a weary Chinese couple, struggling to evict their deadbeat tenant, is forced to face the aftermath of their teenage son’s death from cancer. And in “The Old Gentleman,” a daughter becomes alienated from her father when he finds love–or what he thinks could be love–in his old age. Frances Hwang is a powerful talent, and TRANSPARENCY not only showcases her myriad gifts, but also announces the arrival of an exciting new voice.

Strangers from a Different Shore by Ronald Takaki

In a blend of narrative history, personal recollection, and oral testimony, Ronald Takaki presents a sweeping history of Asian Americans. He writes of the Chinese who laid tracks for the transcontinental railroad, of plantation laborers in the canefields of Hawaii, of “picture brides” marrying strangers in the hope of becoming part of the American dream. He tells stories of Japanese Americans behind the barbed wire of U.S. internment camps during World War II, Hmong refugees tragically unable to adjust to Wisconsin’s alien climate and culture, and Asian-American students stigmatized by the stereotype of the “model minority.” This powerful and moving work, now updated with a new preface and new closing chapter, has resonance for all Americans, who together make up a nation of immigrants from other shores.

So here’s the details for the contest:
As with all of my contests, there’s a question for you to answer.  If you want a chance for the books, you should have to work a little for it, right?  Either way, it’s an easy question.  All I’m asking is for you to answer one of these questions: Are you fascinated with any of the Asian cultures and why?  Have you ever traveled to Asia?

I have 5 sets of these books to give away.  So there’ll be 5 lucky commentators at the end of the month.  The contest will run from May 1st to midnight on May 31st.  I’ll contact the winners on June 1st and they’ll have one week to get back to me.  I do apologize to my international readers, the contest is only open to US and Canadian residents.

As always, if you want more chances to win, you can post about today’s contest on your blog, social network, or anywhere you can. Digg it, stumble it, twit it, share it with the world. Wherever you share it, make sure you add a link to it along with your answer (yes LE is now on Twitter as well!). The more places you share it, the more entries you get.

Join the Literary Escapism Facebook page and you’ll get an additional entry (for each page).  Make sure you leave a comment so I know that’s why you’re joining.  Only new readers to the group will be considered.

For 2 additional entries, subscribe to Literary Escapism’s newsletter in the sidebar. This is for new subscribers only.

For 2 more entries, purchase anything through LE’s Amazon store sometime during May and send a copy of the receipt VIA email for your purchase to: myjaxon AT gmail DOT com.  I’ll give 2 entries for every book purchased.

I’ll determine the winner with help from the Research Randomizer. All entries must be in by midnight on May 31st.