PEOPLE Picks Our Favorite Memoirs, Fiction and Nonfiction Books by Asian Authors
Read great fiction, nonfiction and memoirs by and about people with Asian American heritage
Reading is a great way to broaden your experience of the world, no plane ticket or post-travel laundry pile required.
Books from authors with a wide array of backgrounds can help you learn more about a particular period in history that may not have piqued your interest during school days, explore a facet of the human experience that differs from your own or even deepen your understanding of your own background or family.
And if you need an excuse to add even more books to your TBR pile, May is a great time to pick up some books by Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander authors. AAPI Heritage Month is observed throughout May in the United States to recognize the contributions and influence of AAPI Americans to the rich fabric of our society.
Below, PEOPLE staff chose a few of our favorite books by AAPI authors. With fiction, nonfiction, memoir and just about every genre represented, we're sure you'll find something to love here too.
'Real Americans' by Rachel Khong
We've read versions of this story before, but not like this: Poor girl meets rich boy, they fall in love, and well, happily-ever-after doesn't quite arrive. Lily isn’t just poor; she’s the daughter of Chinese immigrants who moves to an isolated island with her son Nick after breaking contact with her ex Matthew. Her ex comes from the kind of money that's also a virus. When Nick sets off to find his long-lost father, this compelling book becomes an epic investigation into class, belonging and inheritance.
Related: PEOPLE's Best Books of April 2024: Salman Rushdie's Memoir and New Romance from Emily Henry
'Memory Piece' by Lisa Ko
This strangely beautiful novel follows three outcasts whose artistic collaboration draws them together as teens in the 1980s. As time goes on and the world pulls them in different directions, their paths diverge. By the 2040s, they're forced to confront their values, the meaning of success and what they really hold dear when the world isn't what it once was.
'Exhibit' by R.O. Kwon
When Jin Han meets Lidija Jung at a lavish party, both of their worlds change irrevocably. Jin, a photographer, is unmoored in her work, her marriage to her college love Philip and her sense of identity. Lidija is an enigmatic, injured ballerina on hiatus. The two forge a deep connection that twines them closer and closer in this bewitching novel that reveals the depths of desire, ambition and how much we can risk before losing everything.
'Yellowface' by R.F. Kuang
Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu are on parallel tracks, at first. But Athena’s star is on the rise, and nobody wants to read June's work. That is, until Athena dies in a freak accident and June steals Athena's just-finished manuscript, a novel about Chinese laborers during World War I. And yeah, June edits and sells it as her own. Then she lets her publisher rebrand her as the ambiguously ethnic Juniper Song. Who's she hurting as long as the untold stories get told... right? This funny, immersive novel asks who gets to own stories, and it's a delightful, necessary read.
'Sunshine Nails' by Mai Nguyen
Vietnamese refugees Debbie and Phil Tran have made a home for themselves in Toronto on the backs of their family nail salon. Then, their landlord jacks up the rent, an uber-chic nail salon chain opens across the street and they're suddenly at risk of losing everything. Their daughter, Jessica, is back home after a breakup and losing her job, so they enlist her and their son, Dustin, and niece, Thuy, in a little light sabotage. A delicious romp rife with the blurry lines between right and wrong.
'Dial A. For Aunties' by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Meddy Chan doesn't mean to kill her blind date. And when she calls her mother for help, and her mother brings along her busybody aunties to pitch in, everything gets hilariously complicated.
What do you get when you take a dead body in a cake cooler, add a whole bunch of slapstick attempts to cover it up at the hoity-toity island wedding the Chan family is catering and then blend in Meddy's biggest heartbreak showing up on the scene? A book more delectable than one of the Chan wedding cakes.
'Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming' by Ava Chin
In this resonant, deeply researched memoir, Ava Chin traces her origins as the daughter of a single mother in Queens back to the building in Manhattan's Chinatown where so much of her family's legacy lived. She follows the journey of family members who emigrated from the Pearl River Delta, delves into their backbreaking work on the transcontinental railroad and the brutal racism of frontier towns, then onward to the merchants, “paper son” refugees, activists and heads of the Chinese tong her relatives became, including how they struggled under and resisted the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. An essential read.
'Dear Girls' by Ali Wong
In this hilarious collection of essays from Beef actress Ali Wong, she shares the wisdom she’s learned from her life in comedy and tells some poignant and gut-busting stories from her life. Those include the rollercoaster that can be dating in New York City, reconnecting with her roots (and drinking snake blood) in Vietnam, growing up as a wild child in San Francisco and of course, parenting her two daughters. Read it with, or gift it to, a meaningful woman in your own life.
'Pachinko' by Min Jin Lee
In the early 1900s, a young Sunja, the favored daughter of a disabled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger in Korea. He promises to give her everything, but when she discovers she is pregnant—and that her lover is married—she won't be bought.
Instead, she accepts a proposal from a gentle, sickly minister who's heading to Japan. But rejecting her son's powerful father and leaving her home has far-reaching ramifications in this sweeping, moving novel that carries us through generations and environs.
'Out' by Natsuo Kirino
A brutal murder in the sleepy Tokyo suburbs, an attempted cover-up and a journey into the dark underbelly of Japanese society, this book has everything thriller fans could possibly want. It's darkly funny, starkly current and a wild ride of a tale chronicling how far friends will go for each other when the going gets rough.
'Set On You' by Amy Lea
Curvy fitness influencer Crystal Chen is all about breaking down stereotypes and not breaking in front of the trolls, but she's feeling a little romantically fragile after her latest breakup. So she turns to her happy place: the gym. But then firefighter Scott Ritchie enters the scene, and the two of them find themselves in a battle of wills over the squat rack — and let's be honest, there's more going on between them than favoring the same equipment.
So when they run into each other at their grandparents' engagement party, Crystal and Scott find themselves drawn even closer together, until a viral photo threatens to tear them apart. If you're a sports rom-com fan, you'll love this one.
'The Duke Who Didn't' by Courtney Milan
Miss Chloe Fong is not here to play. After she gave her childhood sweetheart, Jeremy Wentworth, an ultimatum three years ago she hasn't heard from him since. But now he's returned and he's determined to win her back and own his true nature as an indefatigable trickster.
There's just one problem: He's neglected to mention that he's the Duke of Lansing and owns her entire village. As you might expect, the path to love definitely does not run smooth for them.
'When Dimple Met Rishi' by Sandhya Menon
Post-graduation, Dimple Shah is ready to get away from her family and spend the summer at a program for aspiring web developers, where she'll finally get a respite from her mom harping on her finding the perfect Indian husband. Right?
Rishi Patel, on the other hand, is a romantic, so he's fully on board when his parents reveal that his future wife is going to be at the same summer program he is. The Shahs and Patels have something up their sleeves, and how it plays out is up to their kids. A will-they, won't-they that's perfect for the first gasp of summer.
'Interior Chinatown' by Charles Yu
Actor Willis Wu is basically a prop in human form on the procedural cop show Black and White. He usually plays Generic Asian Man, or sometimes Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son on a really good day. He harbors big dreams of playing Kung Fu Guy — the pinnacle of acting success for guys like him.
That is, until he finds himself unexpectedly in the spotlight, which draws a beam to his own legacy, the secret history of Chinatown and more than Wu ever expected to discover. Film buffs and fans of moving, personal stories will love this one.
'A Living Remedy' by Nicole Chung
This lyrical, thought-provoking memoir asks a lot of the same questions many of us have found ourselves mulling over. Who is the "middle class" really? Who gets to define the "American dream?" And what does it mean to be there for each other, really there, in a society that's increasingly fragmented?
Chung takes us to staggering depths of grief in this incisive look at the inequality that reaches to the very bedrock of American society and what community actually means.
'The Sympathizer' by Viet Thanh Nguyen
This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has the propulsive pacing and suspense of a thriller with the sweeping scope of a masterful historical fiction and a wholly original plot to boot. It follows a communist double agent, a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who makes his way to Los Angeles after the Fall of Saigon. But while he seems like he's working with other Vietnamese refugees to help them create a life for themselves in their new country, he's secretly reporting back to the communists. Read this first, then watch the new HBO show of the same name.
'Know My Name' by Chanel Miller
Then known as Emily Doe, many remember Chanel Miller's shocking victim impact statement on the heels of Brock Turner's sentencing to just six months in county jail after sexually assaulting her. In this searing, revelatory memoir, Miller writes about her trauma, feeling ashamed and isolated in the aftermath and what she learned about our country, our culture and our criminal justice system.
'Little Fires Everywhere' by Celeste Ng
Two families from different economic backgrounds in Shaker Heights, Ohio are brought together by their children and after a legal case involving an adoption takes over the local gossip, they find themselves at the center of it. This gripping book later became a miniseries on Hulu starring Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon.
'Happiness Falls' by Angie Kim
After her father disappears and her nonverbal younger brother, Eugene, returns from a hike with him covered in blood, it sends Mia's tight-knit Korean American family into a nightmare. It's part mystery, part family drama and part exploration of who we believe and who we don't and the role our existing biases play.
'I Love You So Mochi' by Sarah Kuhn
Fashionista Kimi loves transforming everyday objects into bold fashion statements, but her mother disapproves of her projects. After they get into an explosive fight and Kimi's estranged grandparents invite her to spend spring break in Kyoto, she jumps at the chance to get away from it all.
In Japan, she loses herself in the city's art, food and cultural wonders and meets Akira, a med student who also works as a mochi mascot. Soon enough, Kimi isn't escaping her life back home so much as broadening her understanding of what she left behind and who she could become.
'The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts' by Maxine Hong Kingston
Growing up, Kingston's California surroundings and the fierce women warriors in her mother's "talk stories" clash with each other and the female oppression that birthed them. As she learns to fill in the confounding gaps in her mother's tales with stories of her own, she forges fractured memories into a beautiful, transcendent understanding of one woman's past and present and how they illustrate a larger whole.
'Being Mortal' by Atul Gawande
Mortality is the human condition, and many of us approach the conclusion of our lives in fear, isolation and surrounded by a medical establishment more concerned with safety than fulfillment. In this eye-opening, compassionate book, Gawande, a practicing surgeon, offers a different path forward: A freer, more socially engaging way to treat the elderly and how to make a person's last days or weeks not only peaceful, but more dignified.
'Dogeaters' by Jessica Hagedorn
If you put Filipino tradition and American pop culture in a blender, you'd get the Manila of this rollicking novel which sees a grab bag of characters — including movie stars, service people, a young addict and the richest man in the country —embroiled in a dizzying series of events that end in a beauty pageant, a film festival and an assassination.
'The Namesake' by Jhumpa Lahiri
Even as they long for the Calcutta they left behind, the Ganguli family is trying to assimilate in America. They name their firstborn Gogol, a window into all the challenges of honoring their traditions in a new and often unfamiliar country. And as Gogol finds his own meandering way, in all of the poignant, heartbreaking and funny moments that entails, you'll find yourself rooting for them all.
'Native Speaker' by Chang-rae Lee
Henry Park has spent his whole life trying to embody the essence of his adopted America and as he does, his Korean heritage feels less and less solid too. Cultivating a stiff upper lip, remembering everything he's been taught and keeping to himself make him an excellent spy, but aren't very helpful in his marriage to an American woman, or grieving his son's death. When he gets an assignment that tests his loyalties, he has to decide who he wants to be — both inside and out.
'Beautiful Country' by Qian Julie Wang
When Qian, 7, arrives in New York City in 1994 her world changes immediately. Her parents were professors in China, but their "illegal" status means their new life is one of scarcity, cobbling together a living in sweatshops and taking out their stress on each other. Qian finds refuge (and English) in her school library, finding joy in small pleasures like pizza and trash-picking and glimpses of the glittering city of our silver screens.
But when her Ma Ma collapses, revealing a long-held illness, and Ba Ba retreats to his own counsel, she's got to find her own way. A beautiful, glistening memoir of a very American kind of family.
'No-No Boy' by John Okada
First published in 1957, No-No Boy initially came out to little acclaim, with many Americans all too eager to put World War II and the Japanese internment in the past. But in the mid-1970s, a new generation of Japanese American writers and scholars recognized the novel's importance and elevated it to its rightful place in the Asian American literature canon.
It tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictionalized version of the real-life "no-no boys." Yamada, like his brethren, answered "no" twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and pledge loyalty to the United States. That earns him two years in prison and alienation from his community when he returns home. It's a stereotype-shattering account of a part of history none of us should forget, written in prose that makes sure we don't.
'Minor Feelings' by Cathy Park Hong
Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong's blend of memoir, history and cultural criticism is so much fun, readers may not even notice having their unconscious assumptions challenged along the way. The title stems from Park's childhood as the daughter of Korean immigrants growing up steeped in "minor feelings" of shame, suspicion and melancholy. She later realized that these “minor feelings” come up when you realize you've been fed untruths about your own identity.
This book explores such topics as family and friendship, art and politics, identity and the individual and may lead you to ask some difficult questions, yourself.
'Land of Milk and Honey' by C Pam Zhang
After the world falls prey to widespread famine and food becomes little more than sustenance, one chef mourns the loss of the flavors that inspired her, as well as her career. When she's hired to cook for an isolated colony of the global elite, both her tastebuds and her body's appetites reawaken.
But as she learns more about her mysterious employer and his alluringly daredevil daughter, the chef is lured into a world where decadence isn't dead, but neither is greed. This dark, sumptuous and ultimately hopeful take on climate change is delectable.
'The Making of Asian America' by Erika Lee
No people is a monolith, and that goes for the AAPI community in the U.S. This well-researched book highlights generations of Asian immigrants and their contributions to the Asian American experience, from sailors who manned the first trans-Pacific ships in the 1500s to the Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II and so many more. A fascinating read.
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