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Celebrate Asian-American Literature May, 2021
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The making of Asian America : a history
by Erika Lee
Describes the lasting impact and contributions Asian immigrants have had on America, beginning with sailors who crossed the Pacific in the 16th century, through the ordeal of internment during World War II and to their current status as “model minorities.”
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Obit : poems
by Victoria Chang
"After her mother died, poet Victoria Chang refused to write elegies. Rather, she distilled her grief during a feverish two weeks by writing scores of poetic obituaries for all she lost in the world. In Obit, Chang writes of "the way memory gets up aftersomeone has died and starts walking." These poems reinvent the form of newspaper obituary to both name what has died ("civility," "language," "the future," "Mother's blue dress") and the cultural impact of death on the living. Whereas elegy attempts to immortalize the dead, an obituary expresses loss, and the love for the dead becomes a conduit for self-expression. In this unflinching and lyrical book, Chang meets her grief and creates a powerful testament for the living"
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The gangster we are all looking for
by Thi Diem Thúy Lê
The intertwining lives of members of a Vietnamese family in America are seen through the perceptive eyes of a young girl who describes how she, her father, and four "uncles" are rescued from the sea to begin a new life in San Diego and chronicles her reunion with other members of the family and the traumas of the past that have shaped her life. Reprint. 17,500 first printing.
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Living for change : an autobiography
by Grace Lee Boggs
"More than a deeply moving memoir, this is a book of revelation. Grace Lee Boggs, Chinese American, middle class, highly educated, discovers through her encounters with remarkable rebels, blue collars as well as philosophers, where the body is buried: who is doing what to whom in our society. It is an adventure that is truly liberating".
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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. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and artmaking, and to family and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche--and of a writer's search to both uncover and speak the truth"
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Night sky with exit wounds
by Ocean Vuong
A debut collection of poems draws from personal traumas to offer observations on such themes as violence, poverty, depression, and queer sexuality
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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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Eat a peach : a memoir
by David Chang
The star of Ugly Delicious traces his upbringing as a youngest son in a deeply religious Korean-American family, his search for identity, his struggles with manic depression and his unlikely rise as one of his generation’s most influential chefs. Tour.
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Dear friend, from my life I write to you in your life
by Yiyun Li
A first nonfiction book by the award-winning author of Kinder Than Solitude presents a searing response to George Orwell's question, "Why write?" while exploring the influence of such writers as William Trevor, Katherine Mansfield and Marianne Moore on her literary career.
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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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Why we swim
by Bonnie Tsui
Sharing stories of Olympic champions, a Baghdad swim club, and modern-day Japanese samurai swimmers, a New York Times contributor investigates what about water—despite its dangers—draws us to it time and time again. 30,000 first printing.
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Double victory : a multicultural history of America in World War II
by Ronald T. Takaki
Arguing that many Americans fought in World War II for a "double victory"--one against fascism abroad, the other against racism at home--the author captures the voices of people who are often overlooked in traditional narratives of the conflict. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.
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Inheriting the war : poetry and prose by descendants of Vietnam veterans and refugees
by Laren McClung
"Descendants of Vietnam veterans and refugees confront the aftermath of war and, in verse and prose, deliver another kind of war story. Fifty years after the Vietnam War, this anthology by descendants of Vietnam veterans and refugees--American, Vietnamese, Vietnamese Diaspora, Hmong, Australian, and others--confronts war and its aftermath. What emerges is an affecting portrait of the effects of war and family--an intercultural, generational dialogue on silence, memory, landscape, imagination, Agent Orange, displacement, postwar trauma, and the severe realities that are carried home. Including such acclaimed voices as Viet Thanh Nguyen, Karen Russell, Terrance Hayes, Suzan-Lori Parks, Nick Flynn, and Ocean Vuong, Inheriting the War enriches the discourse of the Vietnam War and provides a collective conversation that attempts to transcend the recursion of history"
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The woman warrior : memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts
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
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Family in six tones : a refugee mother, an American daughter
by Lan Cao
The author of Monkey Bridge describes her experiences of being a refugee immigrant and mother, reflecting on how her family has been impacted by war while exploring how cultural differences have shaped her relationship with her American daughter.
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