Meet Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. Public Libraries, CA Review count: 91 From her oeuvre: Linda Ching Sledge’s A Map of Paradise Gail Tsukiyama’s Night of Many Dreams Ha Jin’s Waiting

---

Shirley Quan, born in Hollywood and raised in Los Angeles, has been reviewing mostly Asian American fiction for LJ for more than ten years, a gig she got into, she says, "with the hope of getting to read the next Amy Tan novel." After 15-plus years at Orange County Public Libraries, she oversees all the collections for the county libraries as Bibliographic Services Collection Management Supervisor. Clearly an avid consumer of books, she says, "I didn’t fully embrace my culture [as a second-generation Chinese American] until reading Ben Fong-Torres’s The Rice Room. It was the first book where I saw a Chinese American author use phrases from the Toisan/Cantonese language/culture…I think Amy Tan opened the door to the Asian experience to much of the world via The Joy Luck Club and the movie. This was great, but Mandarin speakers tend to be the ‘new’ Chinese Americans. They have a completely different culture and experience here than the Chinese Americans who first settled in the U.S." Although she reviews a lot of literary fiction that's recommended for academic libraries, she’s a chick-lit reader, too. "I like reading about sassy, single, successful women with attitude, who discover a little romance. It gives me hope!" She’s also got a thing for Hawaii: "I love hearing the sound of Hawaiian pidgin spoken by locals on the mainland, and I have a small collection of Hawaiian music." Beyond that archipelago and the printed word, Shirley is an avid fan of the pig. Her affinity—which stems from the fact that it "is such an underappreciated animal, often thought of as fat, lazy, and dirty"—takes the form of a collection boasting 100-plus figurines (see photo, right). Lucky for Shirley she's a librarian and knows how to work shelf space.