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Our Top Picks

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Adult Non-Fiction Books (Ages 17 & Up)

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All Inclusive:

  • Asian American Sexual Politics: The Construction of Race, Gender and Sexuality by Rosalind S. Chou

  • Opening the Gates to Asia A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion By Jane H. Hong

  • From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement by Paula Yoo

  • Living for Change by Grace Lee Boggs

  • The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century by Grace Lee Boggs

  • Samurai among Panthers: Richard Aoki on Race, Resistance, and a Paradoxical Life by Diane C. Fujino

  • Immigrant, Inc. by Richard T. Herman and Robert L. Smith

  • Passing It On by Yuri Kochiyama

  • The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives by Viet Thanh Nyguyen

  • Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism, Second Edition by Rosalind S. Chou

  • A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South by Stephanie Hinnershitz

  • Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture by Robert G. Lee

  • Yellow Peril!: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear by John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Ye

  • Stuck: Why Asian Americans Don't Reach the Top of the Corporate Ladder by Margaret M. Chin

  • America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States by Erika Lee

  • The Making of Asian American: A History by Erika Lee

  • Asian American Dreams by Helen Zia

  • Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong

  • The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You by Dina Nayeri

  • Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White by Frank H. Wu

  • The Oxford Handbook of Asian American History by Yoo

  • Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Asian American Writers Frank Chin, Jeffery Paul, Chan Lawson, Fusao Inada, Shawn Wong

  • Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans by Ronald Takaki

  • YELL-Oh Girls! Emerging Voices Explore Culture, Identity, and Growing Up Asian American by Vickie Nam

  • Asian American Matters: A New York Anthology by Asian American and Asian Research Institute - The City University of New York

  • Serve the People: Making Asian America in the Long Sixties by Karen L. Ishizuka

  • Asian Religions in America: A Documentary History by Thomas A. Tweed and Stephen Prothero
     

Bangladeshi American:

  • America the Beautiful by Sri Chinmoy and Sanjay Rawal

 

Cambodian American:

  • Cambodian American Experiences: Histories, Communities, Cultures and Identities by Jonathan H. X. Lee

  • Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind by Loung Ung

  • Lulu in the Sky: A Daughter of Cambodia Finds Love, Healing, and Double Happiness by Loung Ung

 

Chamorro American:

  • An American Shame: The Abandonment of an Entire American Population by Ralph Bates

 

Chinese American:

  • At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943 by Erika Lee

  • Ghosts of Gold Mountain by Gordon H. Chang

  • The Chinese in America by Iris Chang

  • The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad by Gordon H. Chang

  • Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton: Lives of Mississippi Delta Chinese Grocers by John Jung

  • Southern Fried Rice: Life in A Chinese Laundry in the Deep South by John Jung

  • Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow Souh by Adrienne Berard

  • The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White by James W. Loewen

  • Lotus among the Magnolias: The Mississippi Chinese by Robert Seto Quan

  • Building Tradition: Pan-Asian Seattle and Life in the Residential Hotels by Dr. Marie Wong

  • American Chinese Restaurants: Society, Culture and Consumption by Jenny Banh and Haiming Liu

  • Holding Up More Than Half the Sky: Chinese Women Garment Workers in New York City, 1948-92 by Xiaolan Bao

  • The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston

  • Driven Out: The Forgotten War against Chinese Americans by Jean Pfaelzer

  • Zhi Lin: In Search of the Lost History of Chinese Migrants and the Transcontinental Railroads by Rock Hushka

  • Chinese Gold: The Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region by Sandy Lydon

  • Chinese America: The Untold Story of America's Oldest New Community by Peter Kwong and Dusanka Miscevic

  • How to American: An Immigrant's Guide to Disappointing Your Parents by Jimmy O. Yang

  • Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir by Eddie Huang

  • Hollywood Chinese: The Chinese in American Feature Films by Arthur Dong

  • Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown by Nayan Shah

  • The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston

 

Filipino American:

  • Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines by Warwick Anderson

  • America Is in the Heart: A Personal History by Carlos Bulosan

  • Amboy: Recipes from the Filipino-American Dream by Alvin Cailan and Alexandra Cuerdo

 

Hawaiian American:

  • From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii by Haunani-Kay Trask

  • Hawaiki Rising: Hōkūle‘a, Nainoa Thompson, and the Hawaiian Renaissance by Dr. Sam Low

  • Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen by Liliuokalani

  • Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism by Noenoe K. Silva

  • Reclaiming Kalākaua: Nineteenth-Century Perspectives on a Hawaiian Sovereign by Tiffany Lani Ing

  • The Diaries of Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii, 1885–1900 by David W. Forbes

  • Waterman: The Life and Times of Duke Kahanamoku by David Davis

 

Hmong American:

  • The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman

  • Staring Down the Tiger: Stories of Hmong American Women by Pa Der Vang

  • The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang

 

Indian American:

  • Congressman from India by Dalip Singh Saund (autobiography of the very first Asian American congressman in US)

  • Becoming American, Being Indian: An Immigrant Community In New York City by Madhulika S. Khandelwal

  • Ethnic Church Meets Megachurch: Indian American Christianity in Motion by Prema A. Kurien

  • Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality and the Law in the North American West by Nayan Shah

  • Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling

 

Japanese American:

  • The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885-1924 by Yuji Ichioka

  • By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans by Greg Robinson

  • Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family by Yoshiko Uchida

  • The Japanese in the Monterey Bay Region: A Brief History by Sandy Lydon

  • Heartbeat of Struggle by Diane C. Fujino

 

Korean American:

  • The Golden Mountain: The Autobiography of a Korean Immigrant, 1895-1960, 2nd Revised Edition by Easurk Charr

  • The Korean Frontier in America: Immigration to Hawaii, 1896–1910 by Wayne Patterson

  • Crying in H-Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner

 

Laotian American:

  • Remission: Finding Light in the Midst of Social Darkness by Chay Douangphouxay

 

Marshallese American:

  • Iep Jaltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner

 

Pakistani American:

  • Threading My Prayer Rug: One Woman’s Journey from Pakistani Muslim to American Muslim by Sabeeha Rehman

 

Samoan American:

  • The Story of Laulii: Daughter of Samoa by Alex Willis

  • American Samoa: 100 Years Under the United States Flag by J. Robert Shaffer

 

Taiwanese American:

  • My Country Versus Me: The First-Hand Account by the Los Alamos Scientist Who Was Falsely Accused of Being a Spy by Wen Ho Lee

  • A Convenient Spy: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage by Dan Stober

  • Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience by Carolyn Chen

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Vietnamese American:

  • Mango and Peppercorns: A Memoir of Food, an Unlikely Family, and the American Dream by Tung Nguyen, Katherine Manning, Lyn Nguyen

 

Adult Fiction Books (Ages 17 & Up)

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Bengali American:

  • The Atlas of Reds and Blues: A Novel by Devi S. Laskar

 

Chinese American:

  • The Joy Luck Club: A Novel by Amy Tan

  • How Much of These Hills Is Gold: A Novel by C Pam Zhang

  • A Free Life by Ha Jin

  • Mambo in Chinatown: A Novel by Jean Kwok

  • Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok

  • Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

  • Days of Distraction: A Novel by Alexandra Chang

 

Filipino American:

  • The Mango Bride by Marivi Soliven

  • America Is Not the Heart: A Novel by Elaine Castillo

  • Monstress: Stories by Lysley Tenorio

 

Hmong American:

  • The Bride Price by Mai Neng Moua

 

Indian American:

  • Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

  • The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

 

Japanese American:

  • No-No Boy by John Okada

 

Korean American:

  • Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee

  • Honolulu by Alan Brennert (historical fiction)

  • Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung

 

Laotian American:

  • How to Pronounce Knife: Stories by Souvankham Thammavongsa

 

Micronesian American:

  • The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara

 

Japanese American:

  • The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka (historical fiction)

 

Pakistani American:

  • American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar

  • The Bad Muslim Discount A Novel By Syed M. Masood

 

Vietnamese American:

  • The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize) by Viet Thanh Nguyen (historical fiction)

  • On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel by Ocean Vuong

  • The Gangster We Are All Looking For by Le Thi Diem Thúy

  • The Reeducation of Cherry Truong by Aimee Phan

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