34 books for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (and all months). Literary Hub

Follow PHEBINHVANHOC on

YOU ARE READING: 34 books for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (and all months). Literary Hub AT PhebinhvanhocEN

Yes, it may seem a little late in May for an Asian-Pacific-American Heritage Month reading list. this is partly due to my extreme procrastination, partly due to the fact that I kept wanting to add more names, but mostly because I think everyone should be reading these books all the time. I give you this list at the end of apahm in the hope that you will continue to listen and search for these voices for a long time.

You are reading: Books for asian american heritage month

novels

ma ling,separation (chopper)

You’ve probably heard a lot about how this is the perfect pandemic novel. yes, in these pages, you will find a horrendous virus making its way through the world in a way not unlike what we are experiencing right now. except for the ling ma split, the virus turns people into zombies, not so much dangerous as incredibly banal. that’s part of what’s so creepy; the “fever-ridden” are stuck mindlessly in their daily routines (a particularly unsettling scene includes watching a feverish family set the table, go through the motions of eating, cleaning the dishes, rinsing, and repeating), which they go through until their bodies settle. rot. Our heroine is a woman in her twenties who works at a publishing company in New York City. in many ways, the novel is about being disillusioned with this place. it’s also about immigration and the occasional emptiness of homesickness, religion, and the things we do to assimilate into a new culture.

julie otsuka, the buddha in the attic (anchor)

we start here: “in the boat we were mostly virgins. we had long black hair and wide flat feet and we weren’t very tall. some of us had eaten nothing but rice porridge as children and were slightly bow-legged, and some of us were fourteen and still children.” This is the opening passage of Julie Otsuka’s groundbreaking (and Pen/Faulkner Award-winning). this is how we are introduced to our narrators, a group of Japanese “image brides”. We follow them as they migrate to California. We watch helplessly as they meet their promised husbands, as they try to assimilate into America and raise children across a cultural divide. his use of “we” is brilliant here; it mimics the immigrant experience, the way “others” are often seen as equals. it also touches on the automatic camaraderie and security we can find among those who share our stories. the most penetrating part of this novel comes at the end (spoiler alert), when there is a sudden shift in the narrative. the “we” abruptly becomes the white Americans left to tell the story, after their Japanese neighbors are sent to internment camps. the buddha in the attic is both a witty and intimate portrait of individual lives and an indictment of history that will leave you, well, speechless.

k-ming chang, bestiary (one world)

k-ming chang’s debut novel is a wild romp. follows three generations of Taiwanese-American women, infusing their lives with the fantastic. Inside the bestiary, you’ll find: a child-hungry tiger woman, a pregnant woman with snakes, and a grandmother’s letters appearing through holes in the yard. k-ming chang operates with the touch of a poet, and the images she conjures up here have real staying power.

charles yu, inner chinatown (vintage)

Winning the 2020 National Book Award, Charles Yu’s wildly inventive novel flips the script on Hollywood and the way it doesn’t see us. Structured as a script, Inner Chinatown follows Willis Wu, AKA Generic Asian Man, AKA Dishonored Son; the list goes on. always the background character, never the respected and famous hero. This is a story for anyone who doesn’t always feel like the protagonist of his own life.

vuong ocean, on earth we are briefly beautiful (penguin press)

The first novel by renowned poet Ocean Vuong takes the form of a letter. it’s written for the speaker’s mother, which is heartbreaking because she can’t read English. on earth we are briefly beautiful warrens into unspoken family history and the complicated bond between a single mother and her son. it is the exploration of language by a poet. (a line that stuck with me: “it’s not fair that the word laugh gets caught up in the slaughter.” seriously, you should also go back and read night sky with exit hounds, ocean vuong’s critically acclaimed collection of poetry also). a strange love story. it also becomes a mirror of the world, asking us to reflect on class and race. (honestly, just reading jia tolentino’s review in the new yorker made me cry).

weike wang, chemistry (vintage)

one of my best friends sent me this first novel when it first came out several years ago. she called me up and said, “you’re going to love chemistry. it’s like the speculation department, but for us.” what he means by this, I think, is that it is a beautifully written novel, told in bits and pieces, from the perspective of a wryly funny but ultimately very endearing narrator. our narrator is a Chinese-American scientist who is forced to reexamine her life and her notions of love and family. the author, weike wang, received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from harvard (an asian parent’s dream!) before turning to writing (a nightmare!). she floats fragments of her prior knowledge of her in an extremely satisfying way; she’s a master at taking fun science facts and twisting them around so they say something about our humanity.

c pam zhang, how much of these hills is gold (river head)

You don’t necessarily picture Chinese Americans in the Wild West, do you? C Pam Zhang’s debut follows two newborn brothers trying to do the right thing for their family while also simply trying to survive in a harsh place. how much of these hills is gold is an exploration of omission and the things that keep us going. Situated in the context of the gold rush and at the same time delving into the intimacies of the family, this novel masterfully uses its cinematographic lens. she defies the structure and stereotype of westerns while capturing the spirit of adventure like never before. Is it corny to say you struck gold with this one?

rachel khong, goodbye vitamin (picador)

reader, meet ruth. His fiancée just called off her engagement. She returns home, only to discover that her father is battling Alzheimer’s. who knew that a novel about things so dark could also be so much fun? Rachel Khong strikes the perfect balance here. goodbye, vitamin is presented to us as ruth’s diary, and we are very lucky for that, because she proves to be an astute and generous observer of everyday life. (“Today you asked why people say no clouds, but not cloudy”). each entrance is a small emotion. In simple prose, she uncovers the beauty in things we often overlook and captures how it feels to see people we’ve admired reduced to a more human scale.

viet thanh nguyen, the supporter (grove press)

viet thanh nguyen’s pulitzer prize-winning novel, the sympathizer centers on a double agent, “many of two minds,” an immigrant who is 1) building a new life among other refugees in los angeles and 2) in secretly informing his communist superiors in vietnam. You’ll be happy to spend your time investigating the duality of this fascinating character, while taking a look at the Vietnamese refugee community in California. The Sympathizer is an engaging novel that will force you to confront long-ignored perspectives of refugees against the backdrop of this terrible war. (bonus: the follow up, the committed one, came out earlier this year).

susan choi,trust exercise (henry holt)

In Susan Choi’s National Book Award-winning exercise in confidence, we’re introduced to the world of a competitive performing arts high school in suburban America in the 1980s. She gets the details right. she perfectly captures the way she feels to be in high school, agonizing over little pressures and social cues. And then, halfway through the novel, Susan Choi throws a wrench at things. the world she created comes apart at the seams in a brilliant way. (I dare not spoil it, in case you managed to avoid finding out what the twist is!), but I will say this: the exercise of trust is at the heart of how we experience and remember these formative years.

celeste ng, everything I never told you (penguin)

“lydia is dead. but they do not know this yet.” That’s the chilling intro we have for the family at the heart of Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You. what will keep you reading is not the how of her actual death; the story isn’t even really about her. it’s about her family, the implosion. If you’ve read Celeste Ng’s other wildly popular novel (also adapted for the screen with Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington), Little Fires Everywhere, you know she’s the queen of unsettling plots, yes, but also of detail and character nuances. . celeste ng somehow makes the little things we don’t notice about the people we love the saddest things about them.

r. or kwon,arsonists (riverhead)

This novel contains a cult. do I have your attention? I was sold based solely on that description, but what I found in these pages is so much more, so let me start again: This crackling debut novel is about a young woman at a prestigious university who is drawn into a North Korean cult. . it is about the limits of faith and guilt. In these pages, you’ll find a grieving daughter, a desperate outcast lover, and a charismatic cult member who forces students to commit violent acts. is a fascinating novel that will have you too under its spell.

megha majumdar, a fiery (knopf)

In just 289 pages, megha majumdar offers you a whole world. it is a world of corruption and injustice, but it is populated by people who have made great sacrifices and sincerely hope. His shocking debut novel opens with a terrorist attack on a train in India. For a careless comment on Facebook, an innocent young woman is accused of the crime. From prison, Jivan tells us her story. and not just the story of the day on the train, but the whole story of her. we heard about the injustices her family faced growing up in poverty, the pride her father took in her literacy (my heart!), her aspirations to become a teacher. jivan is the connective tissue of this story, but what makes this novel feel so alive is the chorus of voices that also enter: pt sir, jivan’s former gym teacher who is trying to move up in the world to through the partying and charming right, a “hijra” (a transgender woman) who dreams of becoming a movie star. the convergence of stories, of past personalities and overlapping lives, is at the heart of a burning.

eric nguyen, things we lost in the water (knopf)

Things We Lost in the Water tells the story of a Vietnamese family, now in America, missing one of its members. While Huong and Ella’s children try to make New Orleans a home, Ella Cong’s husband remains in Vietnam. eric nguyen is very good at telling details that will break your heart (huong still sends letters to her husband. one of his sons, binh, goes by ben. there is a kind of tug-of-war of tension about assimilation that he picks up very okay.) this novel asks hard questions about what exactly binds us to the people we love and the people we used to be.

memories

michelle zauner, crying at h mart (knopf)

You may know her as the amazing artist, the Japanese breakfast, but surprisingly, this memoir doesn’t really focus on her fame or her music. she is not a celebrity who says everything. It’s a wonderful portrait of a Korean American growing up one of the only Asians in her class in Oregon. she too is an excavation of adolescence, an ode to her mother, and a love letter to the ways we can still feel connected to people after they’re gone. (10/10 would recommend listening to the new Japanese breakfast album alongside this one; they balance beautifully.)

maxine hong kingston, the warrior woman (vintage)

Once, I was talking to a family friend about mythology. there were the Greek myths, and the Roman myths, and the gods who slept in those stories. And then we go into Chinese mythology, and I’ll never forget what she said, which was, “Our gods are our ancestors. our mythology is in our ghost stories.” the warrior woman begins with a familiar ghost story; It is the story that haunts all the others. this memory echoes with the sacrifices that others have made; it seems to channel towards a fine and inevitable point: maxine hong kingston telling us her story, a mixture of fairy tale and “story-speakers”, oral traditions transmitted. Perhaps what I like most about this memoir is that it chooses its audience so specifically: “Chinese-Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar from childhood, poverty, crazy things? , a family, your mother who marked your growth with stories, what is Chinese from? she does not speak for all of us, but she turns to us. at every reread, she catches me off guard in the best way.

look jacob, good talk (a world)

mira jacob’s innovative graphic memoir speaks to the elephant in the room. Prompted by conversations with her bold and inquisitive half-Jewish, half-Indian son, Mira Jacob touches on race, color, sexuality, interracial relationships, love and much more. Good small talk provides a vital starting point for these seemingly inaccessible or uncomfortable conversations, and we are all very fortunate that mira jacob has created the space for them to happen in her beautiful setting.

ali wong, dear girls (random house)

if you love ali wong’s stand-up specials, you’ll probably also love his book, dear girls, aimed at his two young daughters (although they shouldn’t read it before the age of 21) . , as she states many times in the first few pages, because the book contains quite obscene things). covers more or less the same material as baby cobra and hard-knock wife (how to catch a man, how to tell if a Chinese restaurant is legit, what they do I won’t tell you giving birth, etc.), but then ali wong does what he does best: surprise you. there are some surprisingly moving moments (still funny, but there’s a definite change of tone) that she wasn’t necessarily expecting. shares stories about her liberating study abroad trip during college, what it’s like to bomb honestly over and over again on stage, and most poignantly, how grateful she is to her parents and family for their sacrifice, understanding, and unconditional love. .

t kira madden, long live the tribe of fatherless girls (bloomsbury)

Kira Madden’s memoir is a raw and honest look at growing up queer and biracial in Boca Raton, Florida. it’s also about class (crazy, yes, like the shoes), crime, beauty, addiction, death, assault, and the healing camaraderie one finds among those who can share their experiences. Kira Madden’s distinctive voice is a buoy, something to hold on to as it carries you through the storms of adolescence and adulthood.

yiyun li, dear friend, from my life I write to you in your life (random house)

Honestly, it was really hard to choose which book by yiyun li to include in this list. her novel, where reasons end, is also a heartbreak and a half. but I do think we should start here, with her memoir which is also an ode to the writers she has loved. (Hello, katherine mansfield!) She plays with her work, filling in the gaps in her own life with her words, finding the connections between one world of covers and another. she asks a very relatable question: why, oh why, do we write? This book lover’s memoir will sing to the book nerd inside her.

george takei, they called us enemies (top shelf)

george takei is an icon. We know him from his famous time aboard the Enterprise spaceship in Star Trek. we would recognize his voice anywhere. (even just seeing his name probably conjures up the “oh my” meme in your mind). but they called us enemies it’s not about that. In these graphic memoirs, George Takei tells a different story: of his immigrant family, of the vicious institutionalized racism they faced, of being held in a Japanese internment camp as a child. it’s a powerful story, in which he puts a familiar and beloved face on the horrors to which this country has subjected hundreds of thousands of people. They Called Us Enemies is a necessary and humanizing addition to this not often talked about chapter in American history.

essays

esmé weijun wang, the reunited schizophrenias (gray wolf)

esmé weijun wang’s collection of essays is a kaleidoscopic look at mental health and lives affected by schizophrenias. Each essay addresses a different aspect of the topic, but you’ll want to read them together to gain a holistic perspective. throughout, she brilliantly dissects the language around mental health. (we never forget that a writer guides us). She walks us through the technical confusion, breaks down the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s (DSM-5) clinical definition. she also gets very personal and tells us how she came to her own diagnosis and how it has affected her daily life (her relationships, her ideas about motherhood). this collection is a vital addition to the conversation about mental health, an amazing first step in ending the stigma.

jia tolentino, mirror trick (random house)

I’ve always felt that jia tolentino’s clean and thoughtful prose falls like the first cup of coffee in the morning. (something to wake you up; something necessary). If you’ve loved Jia Tolentino’s writings in The New Yorker, you’ll probably also enjoy his collected essays, whose topics run the gamut. she covers the history of the internet, her brief stint as a reality TV contestant, our obsession with sweetgreen (me and my kale caesar salad felt watched), con artists, college campus sexual assaults, and much more. they read like the kind of conversations you might have with a close friend, and there’s something reassuring about that bit of acknowledgment, the moment when you’re reading an essay and think: yes, exactly, but she says it much more eloquently. .

alexander chee, how to write an autobiographical novel (sailor books)

From the author of the heartbreaking novel, Edinburgh, comes a collection of essays on writing, identity, and love. but how to write an autobiographical novel is much more than a set of handcrafted essays. it is an act of generosity. alexander chee shares all aspects of himself. we got to know him as a Korean-American, a gay man, a mainer, a New Yorker, a writer, a waiter, a teacher. take note: this collection serves as a building block of the form.

cathy park hong, minor feelings (one world)

Beloved poet Cathy Park Hong doesn’t mince words in her collection of essays, Minor Sentiments, a scathing examination of the racism plaguing our country. her voice is fresh, bold and fun, a welcome guide through the American conscience. she pushes and prods at uncomfortable feelings: guilt, shame, smallness. she details the exhaustion that comes with justifying her very existence. make way: minor feelings take up space in the most deserved and rewarding way. (Additional good news: Greta Lee is adapting this collection for television.)

stories

anthony vasna so, after parties (ecco)

Anthony Veasna So’s short story, “Three Women of Chuck’s Donuts,” appeared in the New Yorker nearly a year and a half ago. I remember it clearly because it stopped me in my tracks in a way no New York tale had done in a long time. this is a collection that will stop you in your tracks. Here Anthony Veasna invites you into the world of Cambodian-American youth, finding his footing in California. A father owns a mechanic shop and supports his Khmer community, a queer couple struggles with love while one of them tries to start a “safe space” app, a young woman is believed to be the reincarnation of a beloved matriarch. afterparties feels like its own place complete, with loosely linked storylines and supporting characters disappearing from the pages only to reappear center stage in the next piece; it’s a neighborhood you get to know and love.

jenny zhang, bitter heart (lenny)

On page one of Jenny Zhang’s collection of short stories, she details living in an apartment so cramped that her characters had grown accustomed to waking up surrounded by squashed cockroaches, having to hold their bowel movements until they reached the gas station. across the street. so, you know almost from the start that you’re getting a smart, brash, unapologetic, sometimes gross, always honest storyteller. biting hilarity makes the moments of tenderness here all the more surprising and touching.

te-ping chen, land of great numbers (sailor)

you could travel in an armchair to china with this collection. te-ping chen paints each image with careful strokes. Having spent several years as a journalist in China, her observation experience is clear in her descriptions of places and the way she is able to place people on the page. but then he changes the rules for you: he turns the painting around and calls it something else. The Land of Big Numbers is a delight to read for the way he lays down the rules of reality and then pushes us into the realm of magic.

xuan juliana wang, home remedies (hogarth)

the characters of home remedies are more important than life. They are true Americans. They are full-fledged millennials. they are the reckless youth. they are children of parents who can no longer relate. Xuan Juliana Wang is a refreshing voice that perfectly captures what it feels like to play on the edge of what is expected and what is possible. she finds strength in growing pains.

hisaye yamamoto, seventeen syllables (rutgers university press)

Hisaye Yamamoto’s seventeen syllables are an underrated gem! Originally published in 1988, this collection of stories covers 40 years of Yamamoto’s incisive and cutting work. In these pages, you’ll find some of the Japanese immigrant experience, World War II internment camps, the gap between generations, and some of the details of Japanese poetry (for which the collection is named).

poetry

franny choi, soft science (books by alice james)

The first page of this collection is a glossary of terms. a ghost is defined as “the outline of silence”. a mouth dreams of being the sea, while the sea “does not dream; you only dream.” that’s how we got into the franny choi collection. throughout the series, the speaker changes from cyborg to flesh and blood human and vice versa. Sometimes we’re not sure who we’re listening to, and it’s in this confusion that Franny Choi deftly melds the experience of being a machine and being a woman (specifically a woman of color). that is to say: the language that is given to us, the expectations placed on us. the obedience others feel they deserve. but there is also definitely a joy in his poetry. (see: “slid right into the borg” and “it’s all fun and games until someone regains consciousness”) is a triumphant joy.

monica sok, a nail from which the afternoon hangs (barrancas del copper press)

In this stunning collection, Monica Sok evokes a host of voices: from victims of genocide to children of refugees. she is a master in weaving all the threads: of lives, of fables, of myths that we make. A Nail from which the Night Hangs is as much a work of great imagination as it is a condemnation of America’s role in Cambodian deaths. it all rings true.

anthologies

Indigenous Literatures of Micronesia ed. by evelyn flores and emelihter kihleng (university of hawaii press)

Three years ago, the University of Hawaii Press published a vital anthology celebrating Micronesian voices. this is a beautiful, polyphonic work, featuring poetry, short stories, personal essays, and even excerpts from plays by over 70 (!) Micronesian writers. this anthology is the first of its kind and is undeniable proof that we need more.

go home! ed. by rowan hisayo buchanan (feminist press)

“go home!” yes, we Asian-Americans know the invective well. (Also see the less aggressive but equally offensive: “But Where Are You Really From?”) This amazing anthology, compiled in collaboration between Feminist Press and Asian American Writers Workshop, responds to that racist demand by presenting the many definitions Home . inside, you’ll find viet thanh nguyen building a house of language and storytelling, esmé weijun wang finding solace in food (her descriptions of taiwanese beef noodle soup will make your mouth water), alexander chee’s first foray into the village western in the 1990s, t kira madden heating up campbell soup and taking care of her mother. In essays, poetry, and short fiction, these writers from the Asian diaspora defy stereotypes and demand to be seen.

Other content

34 books for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (and all months). Literary Hub

Leave a Reply Cancel reply