10 Books To Read for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month by supporting AAPI writers. Discover their books at local stores, online retailers such as Amazon and Bookshop.org, or borrow from the library.
But first, what is AAPI Heritage Month? AAPI Heritage Month, observed in May, celebrates the accomplishments and contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States. It is a time to recognize the rich history, diverse cultures, and the important role that individuals of AAPI descent have played in shaping the nation. Through various events, activities, and educational initiatives, AAPI Heritage Month aims to promote awareness, understanding, and appreciation of the AAPI community's influence on American society.
Roughhouse Friday: A Memoir by Jaed Coffin
Roughhouse Friday is a deeply honest and vulnerable memoir that explores the themes of violence, masculinity, and emotional vulnerability. It's a meditation on our inescapable longing for love and the extreme measures we sometimes need to take to uncover the truth of what's inside us.
Ma and Me by Putsata Reang
Putsata Reang's family fled Cambodia's war when she was a baby. Saved by her mother from abandonment, she worked hard to succeed as a journalist. Her journey includes struggles with her mother over her identity and marriage, detailed in "Ma and Me," exploring generational trauma and cultural pressures.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity.
Stay True: A Memoir by Hua Hsu
In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken—with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity—is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes ’zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn’t seem to have a place for either of them.
Moon in Full: A Modern Day Coming-of-Age Story by Marpheen Chann
Moon in Full, a contemporary coming-of-age story, shines light on one young man's search for truth and compassion in a complicated era as it unwinds the deep-seated challenges we all face finding our authentic voice and true identities. Author Marpheen Chann's heart-warming journey weaves through housing projects and foster homes; into houses of worship and across college campuses; and playing out in working-class Maine where he struggles to find his place. Adopted into in a majority white community, Chann must reconcile his fears and secret longings as a young gay man with the devoutly religious beliefs of his new family. Chann, a second-generation Asian American, recounts what he has learned, what he has lost, and what he has found during his evolution from a hungry refugee's son to religious youth to advocate for acceptance and equality.
Crying in H Mart: A Memoir
by Michelle Zauner
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
by Cathy Park Hong
Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative—and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world.
Afterparties: Stories
by Anthony Veasna So
A vibrant story collection about Cambodian-American life—immersive and comic, yet unsparing—that offers profound insight into the intimacy of queer and immigrant communities. Seamlessly transitioning between the absurd and the tenderhearted, balancing acerbic humor with sharp emotional depth, Afterparties offers an expansive portrait of the lives of Cambodian-Americans. As the children of refugees carve out radical new paths for themselves in California, they shoulder the inherited weight of the Khmer Rouge genocide and grapple with the complexities of race, sexuality, friendship, and family.
The Making of Asian America: A History
by Erika Lee
The Making of Asian America shows how generations of Asian immigrants and their American-born descendants have made and remade Asian American life, from sailors who came on the first trans-Pacific ships in the 1500 to the Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. Over the past fifty years, a new Asian America has emerged out of community activism and the arrival of new immigrants and refugees. But as Lee shows, Asian Americans have continued to struggle as both “despised minorities” and “model minorities,” revealing all the ways that racism has persisted in their lives and in the life of the country.
We Are Here: 30 Inspiring Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Who Have Shaped the United States by Naomi Hirahara , Smithsonian Institution, et al.
There are more than 23 million people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent living in the United States. Their stories span across generations, as well as across the world. We Are Here highlights thirty Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and the impact they’ve had on the cultural, social, and political fabric of the United States.
