Recommended Reading: New and Upcoming Books from Asian and Asian American Writers
We’ve been thinking about the rise of anti-Asian racism and xenophobia in America, especially since the introduction of Covid-19, and what our role is in combating it. We believe it is everyone’s responsibility to resist anti-Asian racism whenever it arises, but beyond that, we must leave no doubt in the minds of Asian friends and family and neighbors and colleagues that we love and value them. So friends, let us address you directly, please hear us when we say: we love you, we value you, we appreciate and respect you. We are here to support you in whatever ways we can.
Part of showing our love and support means acknowledging that you are more than the work you’ve produced, but another part, which we’d like to do here, involves helping to celebrate your artistic achievements! We’re so grateful that you have shared your stories with us, and we’re excited to share this list of Own Voices fiction and poetry books by Asian writers, which are all new or forthcoming.
written by Nika Jonas and Serena Morales
Fiction:
How Much of These Hills Is Gold
by C Pam Zhang
Siblings Lucy and Sam are suddenly left alone in an unknown and unwelcoming landscape when their father dies suddenly after immigrating to the American west. As the two search for a place to bury their father, Zhang’s dazzling language and rich imagination shine through in what is a truly fierce debut.
The Mountains Sing
by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
A breathtaking multigenerational saga following the Trần family through Vietnam’s turbulent 20th century. Quế Mai’s poetic eye illuminates the complex realities of living with devastating conflict and loss. The Mountains Sing is a vivid, mesmerizing, and essential feat of storytelling.
Days of Distraction
by Alexandra Chang
Composed of short sections that stretch no more than a page, this novel reflects on gender, race, relationships, and technology through a young woman’s struggle to redefine herself. A striking coming-of-age story written with emotional clarity, humor, and a keen understanding of the grey areas we sometimes find ourselves in.
New Waves
by Kevin Nguyen
In this blistering satire of start-up culture, customer service rep Lucas’s life is turned upside down when his best friend Margot dies suddenly in a car crash and, after hacking into her computer, he begins to question how well he really knew her. Technology, race, and young adulthood converge as Nguyen’s piercing observations invite readers to consider the place of technology in our lives.
Interior Chinatown
by Charles Yu
Written in the form of a screenplay, Interior Chinatown takes the real world one step further into fantasy to enormous effect. In this alternate world, Charles Yu’s critiques of Asian stereotyping, Hollywood, and assimilation come to life. Combining the artistic with the political for a bold and often funny social commentary, this novel is Yu at his best.
Run Me to Earth
by Paul Yoon
Spanning the decades, this heartbreaking novel follows three orphans in 1960s Laos as their paths diverge through war and its devastating aftermath. Paul Yoon’s graceful and understated prose amplifies the novel’s emotional impact, highlighting the ways in which past traumas cling to the present.
Amnesty
by Aravind Adiga
When Danny, an undocumented immigrant living in Sydney, Australia, learns that one of his clients was murdered and he thinks he might have information, he is faced with a choice: go to the police and risk deportation or stay quiet and let the murder go unsolved? This propulsive novel follows Danny over the course of a single day, vividly capturing the catch-22 faced by so many who are forced to find refuge elsewhere..
The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida
by Clarissa Goenawan
In this atmospheric novel, a group of friends sift through Miwako’s hidden past in the wake of a tragedy. Clarissa Goenawan crafts a tender portrait of a compelling and complex set of characters. It is not light reading, though: this novel contains descriptions of suicide and sexual assault.
The Majesties
by Tiffany Tsao
A thriller in reverse, The Majesties begins with Gwyndolen in the hospital trying to understand why her sister Estelle poisoned their entire family. As she traces her memories of their prominent family back, a complex web of relationships, secrets, and betrayals emerges.
Starling Days
by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
When Mina is found on a bridge one night, the police call her husband, Oscar, for fear that she planned to jump, which she’s adamant wasn’t the case. Until then, Mina had always been able to manage her mental illness, so the two pick up and move to London for a fresh environment. An unsettling and beautifully wrought novel.
Parade
by Hiromi Kawakami
Over noodles one afternoon, Tsukiko tells her former teacher the story of how two tengu, winged creatures from Japanese folktales, appeared to her and begun to follow her. An ethereal and beautifully formed novella.
Poetry:
Galleons
by RIck Barot
In these referential and lyrical poems, Barot confronts the locality where continued colonial violence and erasure touch our present lives. Written with immense sensitivity and perceptiveness, this collection contextualizes his family’s experience as Filipino-American immigrants, engaging in the rigorous work of reclamation and recovery. In them, the great beast of history is put into relief against the great beauty of mundanity.
More Than Organs
by Kay Ulanday Barrett
In More Than Organs, Barrett envisions a radical future for brown, queer, trans and non-binary folks, in particular, those who are sick or disabled. The book pays respect to those who have lost all or parts of themselves to violence, erecting a universe in which QTPOC can not just live, but thrive. A resounding and intimate survival song about love, desire, identity, and kinship.
A Nail the Evening Hangs On
by Monica Sok
Sok’s illuminating debut navigates the intergenerational trauma of the Khmer Rouge regime, as inherited by the poet, a diasporic Cambodian-American and daughter of refugees. Drawing from myth and collective memory, from both historical and personal narratives, this collection honors the poet’s familial tradition of weaving through her own weaving, and reconstruction, of various histories, identities, and memories.
Obit
by Victoria Chang
In Obit, Chang invents a new poetic form to explore loss, called obits—rectangular prose poems repurposed from newspaper obituaries. The poems explore the many tensions propelled by grief, the ways that we must go on living, although many parts of ourselves and our lives have passed, or expired. This collection is trenchant and precise and beautiful, beautiful twice!
All Heathens
by Marianne Chan
A tender debut charting the poet's path as she navigates her own Filipino heritage, drawing from the circumnavigation routes of Magellan, and her own experiences with diaspora and discovery. Using persona and anecdote, the poet confronts issues pertaining to language, gender, catholicism, migration, family, and colonialism.
Bring Now the Angels
by Dilruba Ahmed
A skilled, complex, and intricate collection about life and all its painful contradictions, least of which include loss. Some losses explored here include loss of a parent, the natural world, a country and culture. Here, clarity is ushered through Ahmed’s startling imagery, as well as through the intimate language of grief and healing, hopelessness and faith, which she uses to explore matters of: illness, death, corruption, greed, motherhood, and environmental harm.
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See our full list, including fiction, poetry, and nonfiction
Forthcoming:
Fleche by Mary Jean Chan (out April 10)
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo (out April 14)
DMZ Colony by Don Mee Choi (out April 17)
How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa (out April 21)
Braised Pork by An Yu (out April 24)
My Baby First Birthday by Jenny Zhang (out May 12)
Sansei and Sensibility by Karen Tei Yamashita (out May 15)
Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup (out May 20)
This is One Way to Dance by Sejal Shah (out June 1)
The Groom Will Keep His Name by Matt Ortile (out June 2)
A Burning by Megha Majumdar (out June 2)
The Blue Sky by Galsan Tschinag (out June 9)
The Color of Air by Gail Tsukiyama (out July 7)
Well Behaved Indian Women by Saumya Dave (out July 14)
Two Trees Make a Forest by Jessica J. Lee (out August 4)
World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (out August 11)
A House is a Body by Shruti Swamy (out August 11)
Bestiary by K-Ming Chang (out September 8)
