Four top picks of fantastic recent books by Asian American writers.
Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the injustice and issues we face in the world today?
I arrived in Atlanta just days after the mass shooting of eight people at three massage parlor and spa locations including six Asian women. We didn’t visit the area where the hate crimes took place, but as we walked down Ponce de Leon Avenue I saw a large banner in support of the Asian community covering the side of a restaurant called 8ARM that said, “Protect Asian Lives, Respect Asian Women.”
Solidarity is a positive thing, but I was filled with sorrow to see the sign and to know that these words need to be said, just like the signs for Black Lives Matter displayed throughout the neighborhood of Old Fourth Ward in colorful graffiti or printed signs, on gas stations, in store windows, and on the t-shirts of the ATLians walking and jogging on the beltline. I already felt compassion and despair in response to this brutal killing, and proximity in this moment brought me one step closer to the victims. As a white American, I was also aware that I was incredibly far away from truly knowing the experience of Asian Americans and the BIPOC population.
The outpouring of solidarity for Asian Americans spurred by recent hate crimes follows on to the revolutionary wave of the Black Lives Matter movement and the resulting long overdue conversation about racism in this country and violence against the Black American community. In response to BLM and to the call to end Asian hate, I have tried to go beyond social media posting into meaningful action in the form of protest, volunteering, and donations to those working for social justice. Most of the time anything I can do feels small and useless in the face of the systemic transformation required, but still every action counts.
It’s difficult not to become exhausted when there is so much to struggle and strive for in social justice causes, the causes of impoverished and oppressed people around the world, the ominous continuation of climate change, the pollution of the oceans, and the tenuous position of the natural ecosystem as a whole. We all have different levels of energy we can give in different ways. Some days I work tirelessly on my pursuits to support entrepreneurs addressing climate change and provide affordable housing to people in poverty, or to gain grant funding that supports women of color, or to research and develop gender and race sensitive language for a market research study I’m creating. Other times, the systemic challenges of the world overwhelm me, and in those moments, I turn to books.
Sometimes the simple act of reading the stories of others can be the radical act of the day, can be a form of striving for change, can be a building block for deeper understanding and compassion.
If you are a white person, reading about the experiences of people of color facing racism in America can help inform and shine light on wrong thinking and implicit bias in new ways. If you are male, reading books written by females can help adjust your perspective and identify socially ingrained misinformation. Scientific studies have shown that reading improves empathy and social skills, so there we have it, reading can help us all become better people.
With this in mind, I thought I would share a few of my top recent reads that shed light on the Asian American experience. For the works of fiction, these books are what are called #ownvoices, which means that if the main character is a part of a marginalized group, the author themselves is a part of that group. The others are memoir and so depict the direct experience of the author. I’ll include a snippet on what each book is about and why I love it. Let me know if you’d like to see other issues-based reading lists!
Top Recent Reads: Asian American Experience
- On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong
- Ocean is a brilliant poet, and his debut novel reads like a long form poem. This was a book I had to put down at the end of each chapter, just to savor the beautiful language and imagery sharing the autobiographically informed story of Ocean’s grandmother in Vietnam, mother in Vietnam and America, and his own life as an immigrant child raised by these two women. As he delves deeper into the history of his family, he journeys into ever more vulnerable layers of himself (or the character) in the tender realization of his own sexuality and fraught, verging on dangerous, first love.
2. The Magical Language of Others, by E.J. Koh
- Koh’s memoir tells the story of her parents returning to Korea, leaving her in California as a young teen with her brother. The angry and abandoned voice of her teenage self is interspersed with love letters from her mother that were written in Korean, which she could not read at the time, then goes on to translate later in life. The resulting juxtaposition yields layers of heartbreaking truth about the complexity of mother/daughter relationships. Glimpses of earlier childhood memories and her parents harrowing escape during the Korean War round out this elegant rumination on family and language.
3. The Leavers, Lisa Ko
- This novel is also a debut and finalist for the National Book Award. Ko meticulously crafts two perspectives to live and breath in these pages, a 12 year old Chinese boy who is abandoned by his mother and adopted by a white suburban couple, and the mother who left him. This heartbreaking and beautiful depiction balances tensions of love and adventure, abandonment and forgiveness, while taking a deep look at the immigrant experience in the U.S. and lack of social mobility and stringent social norms in China. This story is as timely as it is revelatory.
4. Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit in, by Phuc Tran
- This is the first book by Tran who was a high school teacher who created a Ted Talk about his love of books, punk rock, and immigrant experience that was so good that he was asked to write a book about it. This is the kind of writer journey that gives me hope! Tran tells his story with candor and humor, aligning chapters to classic books. His earnestness is almost painful to read in this world of feigned nonchalance. The story of his family focuses on Tran’s experience embracing misfit status, while handling the effects of displacement on his parents and extended family. I found myself rooting for this skateboarding punk rock kid in a ripped band t-shirt with all my heart.
Follow on Twitter @BooksinContext, also on Medium @lisahanson.
