May is Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, which is dedicated to celebrating and learning about AAPI cultures, history and achievements. On campus, celebrations for this month are hosted through several events and programs with the Asian Pacific Student Programs (APSP). APSP also provides resources and support to the Asian and Pacific Islander communities on campus.
Cities across the United States celebrate this month by hosting cultural events for the local community. Some of these events include featured speakers at the Inlandia Institute at Riverside Main Library and The Los Angeles Public Library’s plethora of events and guest speakers to celebrate Los Angeles’s large Asian and Pacific Islander communities. In honor of the diversity of AAPI cultures, here are nonfiction and fiction recommendations for readers who want to celebrate the month through literature!
Nonfiction
“Crying at H-Mart” by Michelle Zauner: This is a memoir by Korean American author and musician, Michelle Zauner, also known as Japanese Breakfast. This memoir explores her relationship with her Korean mother, culture and her identity as a half-Korean and half-white American. This book also talks in detail about Korean cuisine.
“Strangers in the Land” by Michael Luo: This book details the immigrant experience of Chinese Americans during the nineteenth century. This book covers the history of Chinese Americans and the racism they experienced through exclusionary laws and anti-Asian violence.
“No Country for Eight-Spot butterflies” by Julian Aguon: This book was written by a Chamorro climate activist, focusing on a series of memoir-like essays about resistance, resilience and the collective power facing the ongoing struggle with climate disaster. It can also be seen as a manifesto or a call for justice. In a poetic-like prose form, Aguon tells stories from his childhood in Guam and the climate violence against Indigenous peoples.
“Horse Barbie” by Geena Rocero: This memoir tells the story of a transgender Filipina pageant queen, from her time in pageants in Manila to being an immigrant in America. It explores the risk of living a double life as a transgender woman trying to hide her identity for survival versus embracing her identity.
“The Woman Warrior” by Maxine Hong Kingston: A memoir written by a Chinese American writer that tells the two worlds she lived in during her childhood: California and China, told through her immigrant mother. This book mixes autobiography and Chinese folktales.
“Citizen 13660” by Miné Okubo: Okubo was an artist and writer from Riverside, and her work is a part of the University of California, Riverside’s archives. This graphic novel tells the firsthand experience of Japanese-American incarceration during World War II by a Nisei, also known as second-generation Japanese immigrants.
“The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir” by Kao Kalia Yang: A memoir about a Hmong refugee family’s firsthand account of escaping the war in Laos during the 1970s. It follows the family narrowly escaping to Thailand and settling in an unfamiliar Minnesota. Yang writes from the perspective of having been born in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. Overall, the memoir is a love letter to the author’s deceased grandma.
“Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter” by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner: A collection of poems about the trauma of colonialism, racism, forced migration, the legacy of American nuclear testing and the long-lasting effects it had on the Marshall Islands. This collection explores both the negative history of nuclear testing and the matrilineal traditions of Marshallese culture.
Fiction
“When the Emperor Was Divine” by Julie Otsuka: A novel written by a Sansei, third generation Japanese American, writer about a Japanese American family’s time during Japanese American Incarceration during World War II. This novel tells a story through a non-linear structure and uses symbols, like water and dreams.
“House of Monstrous Women” by Daphne Fama: A horror novel set in 1986 during the People Power Revolution in the Philippines, where a young woman plays a dangerous game at a childhood friend’s maze-like home. The main character, Josephine, learns her childhood friend is a witch, and has to play to win or she will die.
“The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan: Set in San Francisco, the novel tells the story of four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters. It explores their complex relationships and struggles stemming from their cultural and generational differences.
“House of Many Gods” by Kiana Davenport: A love story set in Hawaii and Russia through Ana, a Native Hawaiian physician, and Nikolai, a Russian filmmaker. A novel about loss, remembrance, the search for family and identity.
“Love A to Z” by S.K. Ali: A young adult romance about two Muslim teenagers, one part-Chinese and the other part-Pakistani, falling in love despite facing adversity. Written through a series of journal entries and humorous dialogue, this novel explores themes such as islamophobia, social justice, love and identity.
