The Art of the Hand-Sell: It’s Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month! – Literary Hub

May is Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month! You know what that means: an AAPIHM reading list. (NB: These are books that should be read/savored/returned to all year long.) I have asked a few trusty independent booksellers to recommend their favorite books by AAPI writers. They did not disappoint. Big love for the good people at Yu & Me Books (NY), Book Club Bar (NY), Loyalty (MD and DC), Wild Geese Bookshop (IN), Green Apple Books (CA), and Books Are Magic (NY) for this stellar reading list that spans time, continent, genre, and language of origin.

Although the past few years have not been easyparticularly for our communityits heartening to see the incredible work that folks are churning out. In some ways, this list is a testament to our resilience.

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Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know

This continues to be my favorite book of the year. The prose, laughter, honesty, and research it took to write this beautiful memoir has continued to stick with me long after I finished the book. I will sometimes take the subway or walk around and randomly think of passages I read. It has helped me gain a better understanding with the women in my family throughout the generations and has given me the space to accept myself. Its an incredible non-linear and realistic way to showcase grief, loss, and self love. It will continue to be one of my favorite books of all time!

Lucy Yu, Yu & Me Books

Daphne Palasi Andreades, Brown Girls

In her debut novel, Brown Girls, Daphne Palasi Andreades delivers a series of blue-flame vignettes told by the daughters of Queens immigrants who sing the borough electric. From the opening sentence, Andreades masterfully utilizes the inclusive, first-person plural form we, a distinct ensemble of voices that create an intimate portrait of the girls households and classrooms, their friendships and relationships, their hopes and dreams.

Most impressive is how vividly Andreades depicts the overwhelming pressures (and excitement) of girlhoodbrown girlhood, that is. As the characters come of age, they take the reader on an exhilarating ride through the dregs of Queens, where they are bound together via an endless patchwork of diverse backgrounds, stories and senses-rich experiences. A native of Queens and child of Filipino parents myself, Andreades beautifully underscores the nuances of first-generation immigrant life. Not only is Brown Girls a book that is rare and special: its urgent.

Alessandro Romero, Book Club Bar

Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn, A Fish Growing Lungs

Can you feel like you still know your true self after seven years of taking a pharmacopeias worth of pills for a condition you never even had? Alysia Li Ying Sawchyns readable collection of essays, A Fish Growing Lungs, synthesizes how we think about medicine, addiction, therapy, and judgmental bookstore shoppers. In Sawchyns hands, the heavy subject matter never veers bleak (often due to the playful formatting and arrangement of the essays themselves).

Grounded like hopeful seedlings, Sawchyn details her surroundings nimbly: her sections devoted to Florida fully capture the schismatic reality of living somewhere at once so idyllic and purgatorial, and her reverence for Tampas only gay/goth/industrial/medieval nightclub will have you yearning for release on the dance floor. Brave, brief, and singular in its honesty, Sawchyns A Fish Growing Lungs is an optimistic exploration on the search for authenticity in unlikely circumstances and unexpected places.

Mathuson Anthony, Book Club Bar

Monique Truong, The Book of Salt

Monique Truongs The Book of Salt is one of those novels Ive been selling since long before I became a booksellerit is perfect for readers of historical fiction, for foodies, for fans of Paris and the Lost Generation, for those interested in queer narratives and post-colonial immigrant stories alike. The novel is narrated by Bnh, a Vietnamese emigre to Paris who works as a live-in cook to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas at their famed house on 27 rue de Fleurus. (Though the pair did have a Vietnamese cook for a time, little is known about him, and Truong brings the mystery of who he might have been fully to life with achingly beautiful prose.)

We meet Bnh in 1934, as he accompanies Stein and Toklas to the ship that will return the pair to America, and the entire storyfrom Bnhs history as the shy youngest son of a devout Catholic Vietnamese family, disgraced and cast out after his love affair with another man is discovered, to his time as a cook abroad freighter ships, to his work in various kitchens across Paris before finding a permanent position, and a kind of home, with Stein and Toklasunfolds during this journey. Truong is a genius at crafting precise sensory detail, and The Book of Salt is evocative and visceral and heart-breaking in all the best ways.

Liv Stratman, Book Club Bar

Kim Fu, Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century

Kim Fus Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century is a delightfully weird and wonderful short story collection. With elements of sci-fi, horror, and magical realism, these stories exist in that state of lucid dreaming, where the distinction between fantasy and reality doesnt quite make sense. Or, as the narrator in Liddy, First to Fly says, The realm of pretend had only just closed its doors to us, and light still leaked through around the edges. Unsettling, haunting, and strangely seductive, you will not be able to look away from Fus precise yet lyrical writing. Fans of Black Mirror, Aimee Benders The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, or Samantha Schweblins Fever Dream will love this memorable and utterly unique collection.

Christine Bollow, Loyalty

Christina Soontornvat, A Wish in the Dark

As a musical theater nerd, I was instantly hooked on the premise of A Wish in the Darka twist on the Les Misrables story set in a fantasy world inspired by Thai culture; whats not to like about that? Absolutely nothing, as it turns outI love this book with my whole heart. This captivating middle grade novel takes place in a richly imagined magical world, yet its laced with real world issues like inequality, poverty, and juvenile incarceration without ever feeling like its Teaching a Lesson.

Impassioned protagonists Pong and Nok bear resemblance to familiar Les Miz characters, but have backstories, personalities, and charm thats entirely their own. Readers of any age will find themselves gripped by Soontornvats world-building, storytelling, and clear, lovely prose, and I promise youll join me in standing up and cheering for these plucky youngsters as they risk everything in a brave attempt to rectify injustice in their society.

Amy Andrews, Loyalty

C. Pam Zhang, How Much of These Hills is Gold

Children of immigrants will feel seen in How Much of These Hills is Gold. Zhangs powerful storytellingwith raw and graphic imagerydetails the struggles of the Gold Rush. Through the adventures of two siblings in the wild west, Zhang layers on themes of colonization and land ownership, tension between dreamers and pragmatics, and identity and the limits of shaping your own fate. On the surface, How Much of These Hills is Gold is an immigrant story of survival, belonging, and grappling with family history and secrets. At its core, this magical story is about resistance and defiance against white normativity and dominance in an unrelenting world.

Jaclyn Dean, Loyalty

Lesley Chow, Youre History

Prolific film critic Lesley Chow turns her astute ear and eye to pop music in this staggering collection of music criticism. Choosing to examine pop music and some of the women in pop who strike her as strange, Chow completely turns music criticisms historic disdain for pop music on its head by illuminating, layer by layer, the genius of artists such as Janet Jackson, Kate Bush, and TLC to name a few. Written in clear, beautiful language, Chows Youre History is a must-read for any fan of music.

Malik Thompson, Loyalty

Stacey Lee, Outrun the Moon

My three children are hapa, so Im always looking for more representation of Chinese and Asian characters in YA. Stacey Lee is one of the best historical fiction writers in YA, and Outrun the Moon is a devastatingly beautiful novel. Set during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the story follows the fierce and fabulous Mercy Wong, who poses as a Chinese heiress for a spot at an elite private school for girlsand then must step up to help her privileged classmates when the earthquake leaves them homeless and traumatized. Mercy is enough reason to read the book, but the story also boasts well-researched historical and cultural details about San Francisco, particularly its Chinatown, funny and kind supporting characters, and a lovely romance. A must-read for any historical fiction fan.

Sandie Angulo Chen, Loyalty

Urvashi Bahuguna, No Straight Thing Was Ever Made

No Straight Thing Was Ever Made by Urvashi Bahuguna is a heartbreakingly honest depiction of how mental health can consume any given moment or experience. For those of us who struggle, it is painfully relatable, but for those who love someone with mental illness, these essays can give invaluable perspective. The authors account of her eternal battle and how it presents to those around her is as beautifully written as it is painful to watch unfold. The ups and downs of mental illness are hard to explain to someone who doesnt relate and never simple or the same from person to person, but Bahuguna has put it on paper in a way that made me shout Yes! Thats exactly it! every few pages.

Amani Jackson, Loyalty

Belinda Huijuan Tang,A Map for the Missing

A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang (Penguin Press) releases on August 9th and is definitely one to go ahead and pre-order. It is one of the best novels I have read in a long time about leaving and returning home, the mysteries of our families and how to reconcile what we choose and what we dont when our desires are contradictory. It is a powerful, yet quietly told story. I was very surprised this is the authors first novel.

Tiffany Phillips, Wild Geese Bookshop

Kyle Lucia Wu, Win Me Something

This smart debut throbs with the ache of feeling like one doesnt belongabout a biracial woman who works as a nanny, Wus sharp and clear prose explores what it means to be part of a family.

Emma, Books Are Magic

E.J. Koh, The Magical Language of Others

Fifteen year old Eun Jis world is turned upside down when her parents leave her and her brother to live in California while they return to Korea for work. Her mother begins writing letters in Korean, which Eun Ji only really begins to understand years later as she tries to translate them in an attempt to better understand her mother, her family, and why her parents decided to leave their children on the opposite side of the world. This is a powerful story of familial love, heartache, and forgiveness, that acknowledges how feeble language can be when trying to articulate the depths of our emotions, yet blooms in the understanding that we try anyway.

Colleen, Books Are Magic

Yanyi, Dream of the Divided Field

In the way that bright lights hurt tired eyes, these poems carve from their raw material an aching tenderness of similarly piercing quality. They occupy the dreamlike space where memories dwell, where hopes and reveries reside as well. Dealing in the duality, and often cyclicality, of death and (re)birth, past and future, visibility and invisibilityand all the beauty and violence that falls in between these two moving pointsYanyi, with his razor-sharp lyricism, sculpts skin-like truths within the marble of the page.

Serena, Books Are Magic

Elaine Hsieh Chou, Disorientation

This novel is biting, hilarious, a little sad, and truly wild from start to finish. It has twist after twist and I found it truly hard to put down! Ingrid is an unlikely and flawed hero who you cant help but root for, and this books exploration of being Asian American (and an academic) is so wonderfully honest. Come for the incredible cover, stay for the fantastic content.

Jacs, Books Are Magic

Matt Ortile, The Groom Will Keep His Name

The Groom Will Keep His Name is absolutely THE BOOKas in, the book I want all of my friends to read ASAP, and quite possibly my favorite essay collection! Matt Ortiles writing is full of brilliant and witty and sensual commentary on being gay, being Filipino, being an immigrant, the city of New York as aspirational, the process of decolonizing identity and the American Dream, and navigating a multitude of identities in various spaces. There are essays here that feel especially relevant in this specific cultural moment, particularly the one about how we relate to history by rewriting and sanitizing it, but every essay touched me. This is a collection of essays but also a wildly smart and sharp manifesto. I cannot more highly recommend!

Julia, Books Are Magic

Mieko Kawakami, tr. Sam Bett and David Boyd, Breasts and Eggs

By luck, I was given a copy because it was damaged and couldnt be sold at the store. It was one of those reads that immediately absorbed me; in the end I self-declared it a feminist masterpiece. Originally it was published as a novella, then adapted to a novel because of the immense recognition it received in Japan. What I love about it, and from what I gather from other readers too, is that it so painstakingly encompasses womanhood.

Breasts and Eggs takes three related women who are each transfixed or even obsessed with a different part of their own womanhood: fertility, body image, and puberty. What Kawakami does so well is have an unbiased opinion throughout her storytelling. She doesnt judge a woman for wanting breast implants or unconventionally seeking out artificial pregnancy. If we could integrate Kawakamis thinking on women into our daily lives, the world would be a better place.

Jacque, Books Are Magic

Angela Mi Young Hur, Folklorn

For fans of Yaa Gyasis Transcendent Kingdom or Min Jin Lees Pachinko, Folklorn joins the ranks of contemporary classics re-shaping the canon of family saga and immigrant narratives. Excavating the illness and pain brought by generational trauma, Hur incorporates Korean folklore, parables, and reimagined myths into modern-day science, history and research, creating a dazzling experience rooted in the search for understanding and healing.

Colleen, Books Are Magic

Paul Tran, All the Flowers Kneeling

My purpose is precision. / Even when Im unclear Im deliberate. / When Im deliberate Im liberated.

Its hard for me to believe that this is a debut, given how skillful, expansive, and yes, deliberate Paul Trans writing is. What works so beautifully here is the way each piece plays with volumesome feel quiet, and others build into a piercing crescendo, all without saying a word aloud. Confronting themes of violence, survival, love, and more, All the Flowers Kneeling is an incredibly rich text. Gorgeous, evocative, and deeply affecting.

Julia, Books Are Magic

YZ Chin,Edge Case

I could not stop thinking about YZ ChinsEdgeCase.It follows Edwina, a young Malaysian woman working in tech in New York City who comes home one day after work, takeout sushi in hand, to discover that her husband has left her. The story floats between the present, as she desperately searches for where he is, the story of how they met and how their relationship began to crumble. Their immigration status is tentative, shes stuck in an awful tech job that oozes sexual harassment, racism, and classic tech-world toxicityand Edwina is convinced that the only way to get out of this awful situation is to find her husband again and convince him to stay. Chins writing is unflinching and sharp and will stay with you long after you finish the last page.

Eileen McCormick, Green Apple Books

Truong Tran, Book of the Other: Small in Comparison

Truong TransBook of the Otheris a searing and powerful look into the way institutional racism pervades communities, classrooms, and everyday life. This book peels back layer after layer until we discover our selves at its centeroften beautiful, often ugly, often both. This book takes to task, among many things, wokeness-as-social-currency, violent legacies of silence, and it reminds us that every one of us creates the world, both in our actions, as well as our inactions, for better or for worse. It reminds us that every single moment is a new one and with it comes a choice to change and grow and become better humans to one another. Its painful and intense and heartbreakingly urgent. Its fierce and beautiful and funny and sincere. Its filled with defeat and its filled with hope. Its difficult as the world. Do yourself a favor and please read this book.

Maxwell Shanley, Green Apple Books on the Park

Muriel Leung, Imagine Us, The Swarm

Sometimes collections extend outside of themselves, sometimes they spin and redirect back again into the reader, like light refracting off of all our hidden parts. Imagine Us, The Swarm was a collection I saw ricochet between the hearts of really great readers. Outside of having language that felt geologic, old, time-grown and witnessedthe collection also felt that it walked into the newer version of the world (one weve all have tried to grow accustomed to over the last few years).

I dont know if any of us can talk about what grief is without looking into the well of our memories, into our own histories of reaching pains and domesticated brutalities. This book is in the undercurrent. I couldnt put the book down, it is special. Leung offers us great work, from a great press. I think if you love poetry, you should read this book.

n.cuzzi, Green Apple Books

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The Art of the Hand-Sell: It's Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month! - Literary Hub