The Asian & Asian American Experiences
The Asian American experience is rooted in the Asian homeland, but is naturally influenced across generations by living with other Asians and other ethnic Americans. Many Asian Americans may feel more connected to America than their cultural country of origin because they were born and raised in the United States.
Into The Riverlands by Nghi Vo
The Empress of Salt and Fortune Wandering cleric Chih of the Singing Hills travels to the riverlands to record tales of the notorious near-immortal martial artists who haunt the region.
On the road to Betony Docks, they fall in with a pair of young women far from home, and an older couple who are more than they seem. As Chih runs headlong into an ancient feud, they find themselves far more entangled in the history of the riverlands than they ever expected to be.
Accompanied by Almost Brilliant, a talking bird with an indelible memory, Chih confronts old legends and new dangers alike as they learn that every story-beautiful, ugly, kind, or cruel-bears more than one face.
The novellas of The Singing Hills Cycle are linked by the cleric Chih, but may be read in any order, with each story serving as an entry point.
Cultural-Specific Details
Some books feature fictional and non-fictional portraits of Asians, but that doesn’t mean they are from a particular culture. These books can definitely be included in your collection. The book should contain a wealth of culture-specific details.
Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho
Best friends since second grade, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen explore the lonely freeways and seedy bars of Los Angeles together through their teenage years, surviving unfulfilling romantic encounters, and carrying with them the scars of their families’ tumultuous pasts.
Fiona was always destined to leave, her effortless beauty burnished by fierce ambition–qualities that Jane admired and feared in equal measure. When Fiona moves to New York and cares for a sick friend through a breakup with an opportunistic boyfriend, Jane remains in California and grieves her estranged father’s sudden death, in the process alienating an overzealous girlfriend. Strained by distance and unintended betrayals, the women float in and out of each other’s lives, their friendship both a beacon of home and a reminder of all they’ve lost.
In stories told in alternating voices, Jean Chen Ho’s debut collection peels back the layers of female friendship–the intensity, resentment, and boundless love–to probe the beating hearts of young women coming to terms with themselves, and each other, in light of the insecurities and shame that holds them back.
Spanning countries and selves, Fiona and Jane is an intimate portrait of a friendship, a deep dive into the universal perplexities of being young and alive, and a bracingly honest account of two Asian women who dare to stake a claim on joy in a changing, contemporary America.
Literature as a Disruptor
Examining the last 50 years of Asian and Asian American literature, the reader encounters a culmination of literature and a way of thinking about it that has rapidly increased in content, complexity, and contradiction. In an academic context, Asian and Asian American literature was disruptive in that it introduced an entirely new set of authors and texts to consider. and an integral part of the emergence of cultural consciousness.
Violets by Kyung-Sook Shin
By Man Asian Literary Prize winner Kyung-Sook Shin, ‘a moving delve into a lonely psyche’ that follows a neglected young woman’s search for human connection in contemporary Seoul (YZ Chin).
San is twenty-two and alone when she happens upon a job at a flower shop in Seoul’s bustling city center. Haunted by childhood rejection, she stumbles through life–painfully vulnerable, stifled, and unsure. She barely registers to others, especially by the ruthless standards of 1990s South Korea.
Over the course of one hazy, volatile summer, San meets a curious cast of characters: the nonspeaking shop owner, a brash coworker, quiet farmers, and aggressive customers. Fueled by a quiet desperation to jump-start her life, she plunges headfirst into obsession with a passing magazine photographer.
In Violets, best-selling author Kyung-Sook Shin explores misogyny, erasure, and repressed desire, as San desperately searches for both autonomy and attachment in the unforgiving reality of contemporary Korean society.
Partial Inclusion, Partial Exclusion
Asian Americans are partly excluded and partly included in all strata of American life, including literature. During the 19th century and much of the 20th century, Asian Americans were excluded from American life and culture, and this exclusion ultimately led to a relatively unified and consistent definition of Asian American literature.
Queer Southeast Asia edited by Shawna Tang & Hendri Yulius Wijaya
Tang (ed.) and Wijaya (ed.) present a range of new and established scholarly voices, including local activists directly involved in developments in Southeast Asia.
This groundbreaking collection presents the current state of play and longstanding LGBTQ+ debates in this often-overlooked region of Asia. The diversity of both the subject and the region is reflected in the broad scope of topics addressed, from the impact of Japanese queer popular culture on queer Filipinos, to the politics of public toilets in Singapore, and the impact of digital governance on queer communities across ASEAN.
Taken in combination, these investigations not only highlight the operations of queer politics in Southeast Asia, but also present a concrete basis to reflect on queer knowledge production in the region.
A vital resource for students and scholars of gender and sexuality in Southeast Asia, or any Queer or LGBTQ+ studies looking beyond the West.
Asian and Asian American lesbian literature sits in a place of power and honor within LGBTQ+ literature.
