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Notable Books by Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders
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The white tiger : a novel by Aravind AdigaWhen he relocates to New Delhi to take a new job, Balram Halwai is disillusioned by the city's materialism and technology-spawned violence, a circumstance that forces him to question his loyalties, ambitions, and past.
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In the country : stories by Mia AlvarA collection of short stories depicts the Filipino experience, including a man who smuggles pharmaceuticals from New York to Manila for his sick father, and a struggling writer and college student who is jealous of her brothers exciting life.
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How to write an autobiographical novel : essays
by Alexander Chee
In a series of essays that illustrate how we form our identities in life and in art, a best-selling author and activist, examining some of the his most formative experiences and those of our nation’s history, shows how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. Original. 25,000 first printing.
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The woman warrior : China men
by Maxine Hong Kingston
A first-generation Chinese-American woman recounts growing up in America within a tradition-bound Chinese family and confronted with Chinese ghosts from the past and non-Chinese ghosts of the present in The Woman Warrior and describes the Chinese experience in the U.S. through incidents from her childhood, the history of early Chinese immigrants, and Chinese myths and tales in China Men. 12,500 first printing.
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The sympathizer
by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Follows a Viet Cong agent as he spies on a South Vietnamese army general and his compatriots as they start a new life on 1975 Los Angeles.
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Minor feelings : an Asian American reckoning by Cathy Park Hong"Asian Americans inhabit a purgatorial status: neither white enough nor black enough, unmentioned in most conversations about racial identity. In the popular imagination, Asian Americans are all high-achieving professionals. But in reality, this is the most economically divided group in the country, a tenuous alliance of people with roots from South Asia to East Asia to the Pacific Islands, from tech millionaires to service industry laborers. How do we speak honestly about the Asian American condition--if such a thing exists? 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 togetheris Hong's theory of "minor feelings." As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these "minor feelings" occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality--when you believe the lies you're told about your own racial identity. With sly humor and a poet's searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today.
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The god of small things
by Arundhati Roy
In 1969 Kerala, India, Rahel and her twin brother, Estha, struggle to forge a childhood for themselves amid the destruction of their family life, as they discover that the entire world can be transformed in a single moment. Winner of the Booker Prize. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.
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They called us enemy
by George Takei
Presents a graphic memoir detailing the author's experiences as a child prisoner in the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II, reflecting on the choices his family made in the face of institutionalized racism
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Sigh, gone : a misfit's memoir of great books, punk rock, and the fight to fit in by Phuc Tran"For anyone who has ever felt like they don't belong, Sigh, Gone shares an irreverent, funny, and moving tale of displacement and assimilation woven together with poignant themes from beloved works of classic literature. 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 such as The Metamorphosis, The Scarlett Letter, The Iliad, and more, Tran navigates the push and pull of finding and accepting himself despite the challenges of immigration, feelings of isolation, teenage rebellion, and assimilation, all while attempting to meet the rigid expectations set by his immigrant parents. Appealing to fans of coming-of-age memoirs such as Fresh Off the Boat, Running with Scissors, or tales of assimilation like Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Displaced and The Refugees, Sigh, Gone explores one man's bewildering experiences of abuse, racism, and tragedy and reveals redemption and connection in books and punk rock. Against the hairspray-and-synthesizer backdrop of the '80s, he finds solace and kinship in the wisdom of classic literature, and in the subculture of punk rock, he finds affirmation and echoes of his disaffection. In his journey for self-discovery Tran ultimately finds refuge and inspiration in the art that shapes--and ultimately saves--him"
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On earth we're briefly gorgeous : a novel
by Ocean Vuong
A first novel by the award-winning author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds is written in the form of a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read about the impact of the Vietnam war on their family
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A little life : a novel
by Hanya Yanagihara
Moving to New York to pursue creative ambitions, four former classmates share decades marked by love, loss, addiction and haunting elements from a brutal childhood. By the author of The People in the Trees.
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Interior Chinatown
by Charles Yu
Every day Chinatown resident Willis Wu enters the Golden Palace restaurant as a bit player in a theatrical production, but after stumbling into the spolight he is suddenly launched into a world that shows him the history of China and the legacy of his own family and what it means for his place in America
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