Tofu Quilt

Review
By BookDragon

One delicious free-verse memoir. . . . With an effortless sparseness, Russell’s details are what make Tofu Quilt so memorable: a nosy neighbor who determines a family’s worth by what they eat for dinner, celebrating a level-eight typhoon because it’s a day without homework, a much-begged for first cup of coffee that ruins a 9th birthday, a spoonful of vinegar at a wonton stand to aid digestion. With gentle humor, Russell even captures her own husband as the kwailo tourist who ‘kneels in the middle of our narrow street, / his rear stuck up in the air’ as he takes photos of their colorful clothes hung out to dry. You can’t help but giggle along. —BookDragon, The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program