Books to Celebrate the Lunar New Year
Check out these new novels and non-fiction exploring Asian and Asian-American heritage!
February 6, 2024
In honor of Lunar New Year, we invite you to explore and celebrate the richness of Asian and Asian American heritage!
These compelling stories provide a literary journey that spans continents, generations, and the intricate tapestry of shared traditions. Delve into narratives that explore identity, family, and culture.
Included in this list:
Check out our lists from previous years: 2022 | 2023
Biography and Memoir
Mott Street
A Chinese American Family’s Story Of Exclusion And Homecoming
Ava Chin
Mott Street follows Chinese American writer Ava Chin, who grew up estranged from her father, as she seeks the truth about her family history–and uncovers a legacy of exclusion and resilience that speaks to the American experience past and present. Chin’s ancestors became lovers, classmates, sworn enemies, and, eventually, through her birth, kin-all while converging at a single Chinatown address.
A Living Remedy
Nicole Chung
When Nicole Chung graduated from high school, she couldn’t hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found a sense of community she had always craved as an Asian American adoptee – and a path to the life she’d long wanted. But the middle class world she begins to raise a family in – where there are big homes, college funds, nice vacations – looks very different from the middle class world she thought she grew up in, where paychecks have to stretch to the end of the week, health insurance is often lacking, and there are no safety nets. When her father dies at only sixty-seven, killed by diabetes and kidney disease, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of financial instability and lack of access to healthcare contributed to his premature death. And then the unthinkable happens – less than a year later, her beloved mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the physical distance between them becomes insurmountable as Covid descends upon the world. Exploring the enduring strength of family bonds in the face of hardship and tragedy, A Living Remedy examines what it takes to reconcile the distance between one life, one home, and another – and sheds needed light on some of the most persistent and tragic inequalities in American society.
50 Pies, 50 States
An Immigrant’s Love Letter To The United States Through Pie
Stacey Mei Yan Fong
An Asian immigrant and home baker presents a love letter to her adopted country with recipes for pies from every state such as Mississippi Mud Pie and Kentucky Derby Pie.
A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs
A Memoir Of Uyghur Exile, Hope, And Survival
Gulchehra Hoja
An award-winning Uyghur journalist based in the United States, whose own family members disappeared into concentration camps, exposes the systematic destruction of culture and human rights by the Chinese government in the East Turkestan region.
I Would Meet You Anywhere
Susan Kiyo Ito
A memoir about one woman’s search for her birth parents, exploring complicated relationships with family, the legacy of WWII internment on generations of Japanese Americans, and the challenges adoptees often face in learning their own histories.
Beyond The Story
10-Year Record Of Bts
BTS, Myeongseok Kang
After taking their first step into the world on June 13, 2013, BTS will celebrate the 10th anniversary of their debut in June 2023. They have risen to the peak as an iconic global artist and during this meaningful time, they look back on their footsteps in the first official book. In doing so, BTS nurtures the power to build brighter days and they choose to take another step on a road that no one has gone before. BTS shares personal, behind-the-scenes stories of their journey so far through interviews and more than three years of in-depth coverage by Myeongseok Kang, who has written about K-pop and other Korean pop culture in various media. Presented chronologically in seven chapters from before the debut of BTS to the present, their vivid voices and opinions harmonize to tell a sincere, lively, and deep story. In individual interviews that have been conducted without a camera or makeup, they illuminate their musical journey from multiple angles and discuss its significance.
Biting The Hand
Growing Up Asian In Black And White America
Julia Lee
A passionate, no-holds-barred memoir about the Asian American experience in a nation defined by racial stratification When Julia Lee was fifteen, her hometown went up in smoke during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The daughter of Korean immigrant store owners in a predominantly Black neighborhood, Julia was taught to be grateful for the privilege afforded to her. However, the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of Rodney King, following the murder of Latasha Harlins by a Korean shopkeeper, forced Julia to question her racial identity and complicity. She was neither Black nor white. So who was she? This question would follow Julia for years to come, resurfacing as she traded in her tumultuous childhood for the white upper echelon of elite academia. It was only when she began a PhD in English that she found answers–not in the Bront�s or Austen, as Julia had planned, but rather in the brilliant prose of writers like James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. Their works gave Julia the vocabulary and, more important, the permission to critically examine her own tortured position as an Asian American, setting off a powerful journey of racial reckoning, atonement, and self-discovery that has shaped her adult life.
Tenderheart
A Cookbook About Vegetables And Unbreakable Family Bonds
Hetty Lui McKinnon
Heritage and food have always been linked for Hetty McKinnon. Growing up as part of a Chinese family in Australia, McKinnon formed a deep appreciation for her bi-cultural identity, and for her father, who moved to Sydney as a teenager and learned English by selling bananas at a local market. As he brought home crates full of produce after work, McKinnon learned about the beauty and versatility of fruits and vegetables. Tenderheart is the happy outcome of McKinnon’s love of vegetables. From Miso Mushroom Ragu with Oven-Baked Polenta to Celery and Vermicelli Spring Rolls and Sweet Potato and Black Sesame Marble Cake, Tenderheart features 21 essential fruits and vegetables that become the basis for 150 recipes. A tender tribute to her father and his experience as an immigrant, McKinnon explores how food connects us to our loved ones, even when they are no longer with us – and gives us the tools to make recipes that are healthful, economical, and bursting with flavor.
Rental Person Who Does Nothing
Shoji Morimoto
Shoji Morimoto was constantly being told that he was a ‘do-nothing’ because he lacked initiative. Dispirited and unemployed, it occurred to him that if he was so good at doing nothing, perhaps he could turn it into a business. And with one tweet, he began his business of renting himself out to do nothing. Morimoto, aka Rental Person, provides a fascinating service to the lonely and socially anxious. Sitting with a client undergoing surgery, accompanying a newly-divorced client to her favourite restaurant, visiting the site of a client’s suicide attempt are just a few of his thousands of true life adventures. He is dependable, non-judgmental and committed to remaining a stranger and the curious encounters he shares are revelatory about both Japanese society and human psychology. In Rental Person Who Does Nothing, Morimoto chronicles his extraordinary experiences in his unique line of work and reflects on how we consider relationships, jobs and family in our search for meaningful connection and purpose in life.
A Man Of Two Faces
A Memoir, A History, A Memorial
Viet Thanh Nguyen
With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.
Meet Me Tonight In Atlantic City
Jane Wong
In the late 1980s on the Jersey shore, Jane Wong watches her mother shake ants from an MSG bin behind the family’s Chinese restaurant. She is a hungry daughter frying crab rangoon for lunch, a child sneaking naps on bags of rice, a playful sister scheming to trap her brother in the freezer before he traps her first. Jane is part of a family staking their claim to the American dream, even as this dream crumbles. Beneath Atlantic City’s promise lies her father’s gambling addiction, an addiction that causes him to disappear for days and ultimately leads to the loss of the restaurant. In her debut memoir, Jane Wong tells a new story about Atlantic City, one that resists a single identity, a single story as she writes about making do with what you have–and what you don’t. What does it mean, she asks, to be both tender and angry? What is strength without vulnerability–and humor? Filled with beauty found in unexpected places, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City is a resounding love song of the Asian American working class, a portrait of how we become who we are, and a story of lyric wisdom to hold and to share.
Realistic Fiction
What You Are Looking For Is In The Library
Michiko Aoyama
What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it. A restless retail assistant looks to gain new skills, a mother tries to overcome demotion at work after maternity leave, a conscientious accountant yearns to open an antique store, a recently retired salaryman searches for newfound purpose. In Komachi’s unique book recommendations they will find just what they need to achieve their dreams. What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is about the magic of libraries and the discovery of connection. This inspirational tale shows how, by listening to our hearts, seizing opportunity and reaching out, we too can fulfill our lifelong dreams. Which book will you recommend?
A Quitter’s Paradise
Elysha Chang
Eleanor is doing just fine. Yes, she’s keeping secrets from her husband. Sure, she quit her PhD program and is now conducting unauthorized research on illegitimately procured mice. And, true, her mother is dead, and Eleanor has yet to go through her things. But what else is she supposed to do? What shape can grief take when you didn’t understand the person you’ve lost? Resisting at every turn, Eleanor tumbles blindly down a path toward confronting her present. As Eleanor’s avoidance of her feelings results in a series of outrageous — often hilarious — choices, her actions begin to threaten all she holds most dear. Meanwhile, glimpses of Eleanor’s childhood and family history in Taiwan unfurl, revealing long-held secrets, and Eleanor starts to realize that she will never be able to escape her grief, or her family, despite her wildest attempts. But will she be brave enough to withstand the reckoning she’s hurtling toward?
The Motion Picture Teller
Colin Cotterill
Thailand, 1996: Supot, a postman with the Royal Thai Postal Service, hates his job. The only bright light in his life is watching classic movies with his best friend, Ali, the owner of a video store. These cinephiles adore the charisma of the old Western stars, particularly the actresses, and bemoan the state of modern Thai cinema-until a mysterious cassette, entitled Bangkok 2010, arrives at Ali’s store. Bangkok 2010 is a dystopian film set in a Thailand run by chauvinistic Security Council officers-and Supot and Ali, immediately obsessed, agree it’s the most brilliant Thai movie they’ve ever seen. But nobody else has ever heard of the movie, the director, the actors, or any of the crew. Who would make a movie like this and not release it, and why? Feeling a powerful calling to solve the mystery of Bangkok 2010, Supot journeys deep into the Thai countryside and discovers a curse around the motion picture, one that keeps Bangkok 2010 from ever being viewed. But does that mean its story can never be told? Colin Cotterill, author of the award-winning Dr. Siri Paiboun series, presents a complex, captivating narrative, interposed with fascinating flashes of Bangkok 2010’s gritty screenplay, as the two intertwined tales of a Thailand in deep conflict begin to meet in the middle.
The Apology
Jimin Han
In South Korea, a 105-year-old woman receives a letter. Ten days later, she has been thrust into the afterlife, fighting to head off a curse that will otherwise devastate generations to come. Hak Jeonga has always shouldered the burden of upholding the family name. When she sent her daughter-in-law to America to cover up an illegitimate birth, she was simply doing what was needed to preserve the reputations of her loved ones. How could she have known that decades later, this decision would return to haunt her–threatening to tear apart her bond with her beloved son, her relationship with her infuriatingly insolent sisters, and the future of the family she has worked so hard to protect? Part ghost story and part family epic, The Apology is an incisive tale of sisterhood and diaspora, reaching back to the days of Japanese colonialism and the Korean War, and told through the singular voice of a defiant, funny, and unforgettable centenarian.
Yellowface
R. F. Kuang
What’s the harm in a pseudonym? Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American–in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel.
The Leftover Woman
Jean Kwok
An evocative family drama and a riveting mystery about the ferocious pull of motherhood for two very different women in New York City.
Paper Names
Susie Luo
Set in New York and China over three decades, Paper Names explores what it means to be American from three different perspectives. There’s Tony, a Chinese-born engineer turned Manhattan doorman, who immigrated to the United States to give his family a better life. His daughter, Tammy, who we meet at age nine and follow through adulthood, and who grapples with the expectations of a first generation American and her own personal desires. Finally, there’s Oliver, a handsome white lawyer with a dark family secret and who lives in the building where Tony works. A violent attack causes their lives to intertwine in ways that will change them forever.
The Chinese Groove
Kathryn Ma
Eighteen-year-old Shelley, born into a much-despised branch of the Zheng family in Yunnan Province and living in the shadow of his widowed father’s grief, dreams of bigger things. Buoyed by an exuberant heart and his cousin Deng’s tall tales about the United States, Shelley heads to San Francisco to claim his destiny, confident that any hurdles will be easily overcome by the awesome powers of the “Chinese groove,” a belief in the unspoken bonds between countrymen that transcend time and borders.
Honeybees And Distant Thunder
Riku Onda
In a small coastal town just a stone’s throw from Tokyo, a prestigious piano competition is underway. Over the course of two feverish weeks, three students will experience some of the most joyous–and painful–moments of their lives. Though they don’t know it yet, each will profoundly and unpredictably change the others, forever.
The Queens Of New York
E.L. Shen
Best friends Jia Lee, Ariel Kim, and Everett Hoang are inseparable. But this summer, they won’t be together. Everett, aspiring Broadway star, hopes to nab the lead role in an Ohio theater production, but soon realizes that talent and drive can only get her so far. Brainy Ariel is flying to San Francisco for a prestigious STEM scholarship, even though her heart is in South Korea, where her sister died last year. And stable, solid Jia will be home in Flushing, juggling her parents’ Chinatown restaurant, a cute new neighbor, and dreams for an uncertain future. As the girls navigate heartbreaking surprises and shocking self-discoveries, they find that even though they’re physically apart, they are still mighty together.
Banyan Moon
Thao Thai
Three Vietnamese American women mourning the death of the family matriarch recount their lives and childhoods at a crumbling, gothic manor called Banyan House, where the secrets of her grandmother’s past come to light.
Holding Pattern
Jenny Xie
Holding Pattern is a novel about immigration and belonging, mother-daughter relationships, and the many ways we can learn to hold each other. At 28, Kathleen Cheng returns home to live with her single mother, Marissa, an immigrant from China. Her mother, to Katheen’s surprise, is in love, and Kathleen helps her mother plan her wedding to a tech entrepreneur. Kathleen takes a job working for an unusual start-up, and as mother and daughter peel back the layers of their history, they come to a new understanding of how they can propel each other forward, and what they’ve done to hold each other back.
Days At The Morisaki Bookshop
Satoshi Yagisawa
Twenty-five-year-old Takako has enjoyed a relatively easy existence, until the day her boyfriend Hideaki, the man she expected to wed, casually announces he’s been cheating on her and is marrying the other woman. Suddenly, Takako’s life is in freefall. She loses her job, her friends, and her acquaintances, and spirals into a deep depression. In the depths of her despair, she receives a call from her distant uncle Satoru. An unusual man who has always pursued something of an unconventional life, especially after his wife Momoko left him out of the blue five years earlier, Satoru runs a second-hand bookshop in Jimbocho, Tokyo’s famous book district. Takako once looked down upon Satoru’s life. Now, she reluctantly accepts his offer of the tiny room above the bookshop rent-free in exchange for helping out at the store. The move is temporary, until she can get back on her feet. But in the months that follow, Takako surprises herself when she develops a passion for Japanese literature, becomes a regular at a local coffee shop where she makes new friends, and eventually meets a young editor from a nearby publishing house who’s going through his own messy breakup. But just as she begins to find joy again, Hideaki reappears, forcing Takako to rely once again on her uncle, whose own life has begun to unravel. Together, these seeming opposites work to understand each other and themselves as they continue to share the wisdom they’ve gained in the bookshop.
Science Fiction
Before We Say Goodbye
Toshikazu Kawaguchi
The fourth novel in the internationally bestselling Before the Coffee Gets Cold Series. The regulars at the magical Cafe Funiculi Funicula are well acquainted with its famous legend and extraordinary time-travel offer. Many patrons have reunited with old flames, made amends with estranged family and visited loved ones. But the journey is not without risks, and there are rules to follow. In the tradition of Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s sensational Before the Coffee Gets Cold Series, readers will once again be introduced to a new set of visitors: the husband with something important left to say; the woman who couldn’t bid her dog farewell; the woman who couldn’t answer a proposal; and the daughter who drove her father away. Featuring signature heartwarming characters and wistful storytelling, in the beautifully haunting Before We Say Goodbye, Kawaguchi asks: Who would you visit if you could travel through time?
Land Of Milk And Honey
C Pam Zhang
Lured to a decadent, enigmatic colony of the superrich in a near future in which food is disappearing, a Chinese American chef discovers the meaning of pleasure and the ethics of who gets to enjoy it, altering her life and, indirectly, the world.
Natural Beauty
Ling Ling Huang
In this sly, surprising, and razor-sharp debut novel, a virtuoso pianist gives up her future as a musician to work at a high-end wellness store in New York City where the pursuit of beauty comes at a staggering cost. Our narrator is the youngest student at the Conservatory. She produces a sound from the piano no one else does, employing a special technique she learned from her parents-also stunningly talented musicians-who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future as a pianist and accepts a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City. Holistik is known for its remarkable products and outrageous procedures: remoras that suck cheap Botox from the body, eyelash extensions made of spider silk, emotional support ducklings bred to imprint on their owners. Every product is ethically sourced and made with nothing but the highest quality ingredients. Our narrator’s new job is a coveted one among New York’s beauty-obsessed, and it affords her entry into a new world of privilege. She becomes transfixed by Helen-a model, and the niece of Holistik’s charismatic owner-and the two strike up a close friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, Holistik plies our narrator with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, lighten her hair, and change her eye color. But beneath these fancy creams and tinctures lies a terrible truth that threatens to consume her. After all, beauty is nothing without ugliness.
She Is A Haunting
Trang Thanh Tran
Seventeen-year-old bisexual Jade Nguyrn is spending the summer in Vietnam at the French colonial house her estranged father is fixing up as a vacation rental, but unbeknownst to her family, the house and its ghosts have other plans.
What We Kept To Ourselves
Nancy Jooyoun Kim
1999: The Kim family is struggling to move on after their mother, Sunny, vanished a year ago. Sixty-one-year-old John Kim feels more isolated from his grown children, Anastasia and Ronald, than ever before. But one evening, their fragile lives are further upended when John finds the body of a stranger in the backyard, carrying a letter to Sunny, leaving the family with more questions than ever about the stranger’s history and possible connections to their mother. 1977: Sunny is pregnant and has just moved to Los Angeles from Korea with her aloof and often-absent husband. America is not turning out the way she had dreamed it to be, and the loneliness and isolation are broken only by a fateful encounter at a bus stop. The unexpected connection spans the decades and echoes into the family’s lives in the present as they uncover devastating secrets that put not only everything they thought they knew about their mother but their very lives at risk.
The Fetishist
Katherine Min
On a cold, gloomy night, twenty-three-year-old Kyoko stands in the rain with a knife in her hoodie’s pocket. Her target is Daniel, who seduced Kyoko’s mother then callously dropped her, leading to her death. But tonight, there will be repercussions. Following the unsuspecting Daniel home, Kyoko manages to get a rash kidnapping plot off the ground . . . and then nothing goes as planned. The Fetishist is the story of three people–Kyoko, a Japanese American punk-rock singer full of rage and grief; Daniel, a philandering violinist forced to confront the wreckage of his past; and Alma, the love of Daniel’s life, a Korean American cello prodigy long adored for her beauty, passion, and talent, but who spends her final days examining if she was ever, truly, loved. An exuberant, provocative story that confronts race, complicity, visibility, and ideals of femininity, The Fetishist was written before the celebrated author’s untimely death in 2019. Startlingly prescient, as wise and powerful as it is utterly delightful, this novel cements Katherine Min’s legacy as a writer with a singular voice for our times
Romance
Good Fortune
C. K. Chau
When Elizabeth Chen’s ever-hustling realtor mother finally sells the beloved if derelict community center down the block, the new owners don’t look like typical New York City buyers. Brendan Lee and Darcy Wong are good Chinese boys with Hong Kong money. Clean-cut and charismatic, they say they are committed to cleaning up the neighborhood. To Elizabeth, that only means one thing: Darcy is looking to give the center an uptown makeover. Elizabeth is determined to fight for community over profit, even if it means confronting the arrogant, uptight man every chance she gets. But where clever, cynical Elizabeth sees lemons, her mother sees lemonade. Eager to get Elizabeth and her other four daughters ahead in the world (and out of their crammed family apartment), Mrs. Chen takes every opportunity to keep her investors close. Closer than Elizabeth likes. The more time they spend together, the more conflicted Elizabeth feels…until a shocking betrayal forces her to reconsider everything she thought she knew about love, trust, and the kind of person Darcy Wong really is.
Lunar Love
Lauren Kung Jessen
Olivia Huang Christenson is excited-slash-terrified to be taking over her grandmother’s matchmaking business. But when she learns that a new dating app has taken her Po Po’s traditional Chinese zodiac approach and made it about “animal attraction,” her emotions skew more toward furious-slash-outraged. Especially when L.A.’s most-eligible bachelor Bennett O’Brien is behind the app that could destroy her family’s legacy… Liv knows better than to fall for any guy, let alone an infuriatingly handsome one who believes that traditions are meant to be broken. As the two businesses go head to head, Bennett and Liv make a deal: they’ll find a match for each other-and whoever falls in love loses. But Liv is dealing with someone who’s already adept at stealing business ideas… so what’s stopping him from stealing her heart, too?
The Do-Over
Suzanne Park
Bestselling author Lily Lee is on a short deadline to deliver her new career guide How to Land the Perfect Job, and she’s been interviewing at all the top companies around town. But when she’s offered a coveted position at her dream company, the employer’s background check reveals she never actually finished her college degree. Unbelievably, her worst nightmare has come true. Lily returns to her alma mater to relive her senior year of college, after walking across the stage at graduation a decade earlier. Just as she starts getting used to the idea of being a student again, things get even more weird and chaotic when she discovers her computer science TA is her old college boyfriend, Jake Cho. As Lily and Jake reconnect, she sees that her late-blooming ex has done well for himself: the handsome, charming grad student appears to have his life together, while Lily’s on the brink of losing her reputation and her book deal. Told in present day with glimpses of the past, The Do-Over is a delightfully warm and hopeful story about second chances in life and love, and how the future might not be a straight line, but we still end up exactly where we’re supposed to be.
The Second You’re Single
Cara Tanamachi
Freelance writer Sora Reid believes in inertia. She’s the odd one out in a close-knit family of go-getters, including her Japanese-American mom, who hints about her need to lose weight, and her soon-to-be married, overachieving younger sister, who needs her to have a date for the wedding, since a wedding party couples’ dance with their Scottish great uncle Bob simply won’t do. For Sora, minimal input, minimal expectations is the way to go. She’d rather stay at home with her insufferable neighbor and her adorable pitbull. The one thing that disrupts her inertia: an intense dislike for Valentine’s Day. What is it with the commercial love machine? Why do we pin our hopes on one romantic day, when staying home with a package of bacon and a bottle of tequila would be way better? Sora’s been betrayed and disappointed more than once and her heart is starting to feel like her Grandma Mitsuye’s antique Japanese ceramic bowl, with its many gold-filled cracks. When her pledge to stay single in February inspires readers to #gosolo, Sora has a responsibility to empower her readers. But relationships aren’t built to last, so it shouldn’t be that hard. Right? Enter Jack Mann. A muscle-bound baker who looks like he lifts logs on the weekends, Sora hasn’t thought of Jack since they were in elementary school together. When they see each other at the local grocery store and the attraction hits hard, Sora knows she has to shut it down, quick. She can’t #gosolo AND get the guy. She can’t let down her readers. And relationships always end, so why should Jack be any different-even though he’s confounding all her long-held expectations of love?
Historical Fiction
The Porcelain Moon
Janie Chang
In 1918 France, in the final days of the First World War, Pauline Deng, a young Chinese woman escaping an arranged marriage, is taken in by secretive Camille Roussel and becomes bound to this woman forever when they are forced to make a terrible decision.
Straw Dogs Of The Universe
Ye Chun
A Chinese railroad worker and his young daughter–sold into servitude–in 19th century California search for family, fulfillment, and belonging in a violent new land. “Heaven and earth do not pick and choose. They see everything as straw dogs.” A sweeping historical novel of the American West from the little-seen perspective of those who helped to build it, Straw Dogs of the Universe traces the story of one Chinese father and his young daughter, desperate to find him against all odds. After her village is devastated by famine, 10-year-old Sixiang is sold to a human trafficker for a bag of rice and six silver coins. Her mother is reluctant to let her go, but the promise of a better life for her beloved daughter ultimately sways her. Arriving in America with the profits from her sale and a single photograph of Guifeng, her absent father, Sixiang journeys across an unfamiliar American landscape in the hopes of reuniting her family. As she makes her way through an unforgiving new world, her father, a railroad worker in California, finds his attempts to build a life for himself both upended and defined by along-lost love and the seemingly inescapable violence of the American West. A generational saga ranging from the villages of China to the establishment of the transcontinental railroad and the anti-Chinese movement in California, Straw Dogs of the Universe considers the tenacity of family ties and the courage it takes to survive in a country that rejects you, even as it relies upon your labor.
The House Of Doors
Tan Twan Eng
1921 Penang. When a famed writer and old friend of her husband’s arrives for an extended stay, Lesley makes a dangerous decision to confide in him about life in the Straits, including her relationship with a charismatic Chinese revolutionary—a confession that has devastating consequences.
Dust Child
Nguyen Phan Que Mai
An American GI, two Vietnamese bargirls, and an Amerasian man are forced to make decisions during and after the Viet Nam War that will reverberate throughout one another’s lives.
Wandering Souls
Cecile Pin
A boldly imagined debut novel about three Vietnamese siblings who seek refuge in the UK, expanding into a luminous meditation on ancestry and love. After the last American troops leave Vietnam, siblings Anh, Thanh, and Minh begin a perilous journey to Hong Kong with the promise that their parents and younger siblings will soon follow. But when tragedy strikes, the three children are left orphaned, and sixteen-year-old Anh becomes the caretaker for her two younger brothers overnight. In the years that follow, Anh and her brothers resettle in the UK and confront their new identities as refugees, first in overcrowded camps and resettlement centers and then, later, in a modernizing London plagued by social inequality and raging anti-immigrant sentiment. Anh works in a clothing factory to pay their bills. Minh loiters about with fellow unemployed high school dropouts. Thanh, the youngest, plays soccer with his British friends after class. As they mature, each sibling reckons with survivor’s guilt, unmoored by their parents’ absence. With every choice they make, their paths diverge further, until it’s unclear if love alone can keep them together. Told through lyrical narrative threads, historical research, voices from lost family, and notes by an unnamed narrator determined to chart their fate, Wandering Souls captures the lives of a family marked by war and loss yet relentless in the pursuit of a better future. With urgency and precision, it affirms that the most important stories are those we claim for ourselves, establishing Cecile Pin as a masterful new literary voice.
Lady Tan’s Circle Of Women
Lisa See
Sent into an arranged marriage, Tan Yunxian, forbidden to continue her work as a midwife-in-training as well as see her forever friend Meiling, is ordered to act like proper wife and seeks a way to continue treating women and girls from every level of society in fifteenth-century China.
The Brightest Star
Gail Tsukiyama
Arriving in Hollywood to become an actress, Anna May Wong discovers her beauty and talent aren’t enough to overcome the racism that relegates her to supporting roles and, over the years, fights to win lead roles, accept risque parts, and keep her illicit love affairs hidden-even as she finds global stardom.