Back Asian American & Pacific Islander Non-Fiction | Book List

SelectReads News
Simple News Pro
  Asian American & Pacific Islander Non-Fiction  
Asian American Histories of the United States

Catherine Ceniza Choy - ‎Beacon Press
Format: Paperback

Original and expansive, Asian American Histories of the United States is a nearly 200-year history of Asian migration, labor, and community formation in the US. Reckoning with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the surge in anti-Asian hate and violence, award-winning historian Catherine...

Read More check catalog
 
 
Beautiful Country: A Memoir

Qian Julie Wang - Doubleday
Format: Book

In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country.” Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian’s parents were professors; in America,...

Read More check catalog
 
 
The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

Thi Bui - Abrams ComicArts
Format: Book

Exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family's daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves. At the heart...

Read More check catalog
 
 
Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America

Julia Lee - Henry Holt and Co.
Format: Book

In the vein of Eloquent Rage and Minor Feelings - 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...

Read More check catalog
 
 
Concepcion: An Immigrant Family's Fortunes

Albert Samaha - Riverhead Books
Format: Book

Nearing the age at which his mother had migrated to the US, part of the wave of non-Europeans who arrived after immigration quotas were relaxed in 1965, Albert Samaha began to question the ironclad belief in a better future that had inspired her family to uproot themselves from their...

Read More check catalog
 
 
Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS - Dey Street Books
Format: Book

"This is not a book about the politics of immigration. This book - at its core - is not about immigration at all. This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but in the unsettled, unmoored psychological state that undocumented immigrants like myself find ourselves...

Read More check catalog
 
 
Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam

Thien Pham - First Second
Format: Book

Thien's first memory isn't a sight or a sound. It's the sweetness of watermelon and the saltiness of fish. It's the taste of the foods he ate while adrift at sea as his family fled Vietnam. After the Pham family arrives at a refugee camp in Thailand, they struggle...

Read More check catalog
 
 
From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement

Paula Yoo - Norton Young Readers
Format: Book

America in 1982. Japanese car companies are on the rise and believed to be putting American autoworkers out of their jobs. Anti-Asian American sentiments simmer, especially in Detroit. A bar fight turns fatal, leaving Vincent Chin - a Chinese American man - beaten to death...

Read More check catalog
 
 
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

Cathy Park Hong - One World
Format: Book

Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively confronts this thorny subject, blending memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose the truth of racialized consciousness in America. Binding these essays together is Hong's theory of "minor feelings."...

Read More check catalog
 
 
Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming

Ava Chin - Penguin Press
Format: Book

As the only child of a single mother in Queens, Ava Chin found her family history was shrouded in mystery. She had never met her father, and her grandparents' stories didn't match the history she read at school. Mott Street traces Chin's quest to understand her Chinese American...

Read More check catalog
 
 
Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In

Phuc Tran - Flatiron Books
Format: Book

In 1975, during the fall of Saigon, Phuc Tran immigrates to America along with his family. By sheer chance they land in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a small town where the Trans struggle to assimilate into their new life. In this coming-of-age memoir told through the themes of great books...

Read More check catalog
 
 
They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us

Prachi Gupta - Crown
Format: Book

How do we understand ourselves when the story about who we are supposed to be is stronger than our sense of self? What do we stand to gain - and lose - by taking control of our narrative? These questions propel Prachi Gupta's heartfelt memoir and can feel particularly fraught for immigrants...

Read More check catalog
 
 
The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition

Thenmozhi Soundararajan - North Atlantic Books
Format: Paperback

Caste - one of the oldest systems of exclusion in the world - is thriving. Despite the ban on Untouchability 70 years ago, caste impacts 1.9 billion people in the world. Every 15 minutes, a crime is perpetrated against a Dalit person. The average age of death for Dalit women is just...

Read More check catalog
 
 
Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life

ALICE WONG - Vintage
Format: Paperback

In Chinese culture, the tiger is deeply revered for its confidence, passion, ambition, and ferocity. That same fighting spirit resides in Alice Wong. Drawing on a collection of original essays, previously published work, conversations, graphics, photos, commissioned art by disabled and Asian...

Read More check catalog