|
Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month Fiction
|
|
|
|
|
When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East
by Quan Barry
Tasked with finding the reincarnation of a great lama across windswept Mongolia, young monk Chulun and his estranged identical twin, Mun, who can hear each other’s thoughts, traverse through this land, making a journey where faith, love and brotherhood haunts them.
|
|
|
If I Had Your Face
by Frances Cha
In Seoul, South Korea, four young women make their way in a world defined by impossibly high standards of beauty, secret salons catering to wealthy men, strict social hierarchies and K-pop fan mania.
|
|
|
The School for Good Mothers
by Jessamine Chan
After one moment of poor judgment involving her daughter Harriet, Frida Liu falls victim to a host of government officials who will determine if she is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion.
|
|
|
Fiona and Jane
by Jean Chen Ho
Two best friends since elementary school, both Taiwanese Americans, navigate their grown-up lives and discover their friendship strained by distance and unintended betrayals after Fiona Lin moves to New York and Jane Shen stays in California.
|
|
|
The Kiss Quotient
by Helen Hoang
A 30-year-old math whiz with Asperger's tries to make her love life as rich as her career by hiring an escort to help her with her lack of knowledge and experience in the dating department.
|
|
|
A River of Stars
by Vanessa Hua
Betrayed by the boss who is also the father of her unborn child, an undocumented Chinese factory worker is forced to flee and reinvent herself in San Francisco's Chinatown in the desperate hopes of securing American citizenship for her baby.
|
|
|
The Fervor
by Alma Katsu
A new psychological and supernatural twist on the horrors of the Japanese American internment camps in World War II.
|
|
|
Portrait of a Thief
by Grace D. Li
A Chinese American art history major at Harvard, Will Chen is offered a (very illegal) chance to reclaim five priceless treasures China lost centuries ago and assembles a team of fellow students, chosen for their skills and loyalty, to help him on his mission and make history.
|
|
|
Natalie Tan's Book of Luck & Fortune
by Roselle Lim
Inheriting her grandmother's restaurant in a crumbling San Francisco Chinatown neighborhood, Natalie receives some advice from the local seer that will help her struggling community, but she isn't sure she wants to help them try to turn things around.
|
|
|
Crazy Rich Asians
by Kevin Kwan
Envisioning a quality-time summer vacation in the humble Singapore home of a boy she hopes to marry, Chinese American Rachel Chu is unexpectedly introduced to a rich and scheming clan that viciously competes against other wealthy families and strongly opposes their son's relationship with an American girl.
|
|
|
Pachinko
by Min Jin Lee
In early 1900s Korea, prized daughter Sunja finds herself pregnant and alone, bringing shame on her family until a young tubercular minister offers to marry her and bring her to Japan, in the saga of one family bound together as their faith and identity are called into question.
|
|
|
Severance
by 1983- Ma, Ling
A survivor of an apocalyptic plague maintains a blog about a decimated Manhattan before joining a motley group of survivors to search for a place to rebuild, a goal that is complicated by an unscrupulous group leader.
|
|
|
A Burning
by Megha Majumdar
An opportunistic gym teacher and a starry-eyed misfit find the realization of their ambitions tied to the downfall of an innocent Muslim girl who has been wrongly implicated in a terrorist attack.
|
|
|
Arsenic and Adobo
by Mia P. Manansala
Returning home to help save her Tita Rosie’s failing restaurant, Lila Macapagal is shocked when her ex-boyfriend, a notoriously nasty food critic, dies suddenly, moments after they had a confrontation, leaving her the only suspect.
|
|
|
The Bad Muslim Discount
by Syed Masood
A homesick Pakistani immigrant chafing against the strictures of his family’s new devout Muslim life in California and a young woman who barely escaped war-torn Baghdad upend their community in the aftermath of a fateful chance encounter.
|
|
|
A Place for Us
by 1991- Mirza, Fatima Farheen
A story of family identity and belonging follows an Indian family through the marriage of their daughter, from the parents' arrival in the United States to the return of their estranged son
|
|
|
Things We Lost to the Water
by Eric Nguyen
Leaving Vietnam behind, Huong and her two sons adapt to life in New Orleans in different ways as they search for identity as individuals and as a family until disaster strikes the city, forcing them to find a new way to come together.
|
|
|
New Waves
by Kevin Nguyen
Fed up with discriminating bosses, an Asian-American customer service representative and a talented African-American programmer conspire to steal their employer’s user database before an unexpected setback exposes a secret double life.
|
|
|
The Sympathizer
by 1971- Nguyen, Viet Thanh
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.
|
|
|
The Swimmers
by Julie Otsuka
When a crack appears in the pool, a fellowship of swimmers who take comfort in their laps are cast out, including Alice, who, slowly losing her memory, is reunited too late with her estranged daughter, in this intimate story of mothers and daughters, and the sorrows of implacable loss.
|
|
|
The Farm
by Joanne Ramos
Ensconced within a Hudson Valley retreat where expectant birth mothers are given luxurious accommodations and lucrative rewards to produce perfect babies, a Filipino immigrant is forced to choose between a life-changing payment and the outside world
|
|
|
Green Island
by Shawna Yang Ryan
A young woman born as her father goes missing during the 1947 uprising in Taipei describes his homecoming a decade later and how he unwittingly drew her into the uneasy and dangerous political atmosphere of the times.
|
|
|
Gold Diggers
by Sanjena Sathian
A satirical coming-of-age story follows the experiences of an Indian-American teen in the Bush-era Atlanta suburbs, who joins his crush’s plot to use an ancient alchemical potion to meet high parental expectations, triggering devastating consequences.
|
|
|
Home Remedies
by Xuan Juliana Wang
A debut collection of 12 stories reflecting the current freedom-seeking generation of Chinese youth ranges from the experiences of a first-generation Chinese-American family to the pressures on a pair of divers at the Beijing Olympics.
|
|
|
Joan Is Okay
by Weike Wang
An ICU physician at a busy NYC hospital, 30-something Joan, a workaholic with little interest in having friends, let alone lovers, is required to take mandatory leave until the day she must return to the city to face a crisis larger than anything she’s encountered before.
|
|
|
Sharks in the Time of Saviors
by Kawai Strong Washburn
When a child falls overboard and is returned safely to his mother by a shark, his miraculous rescue is hailed as a sign from ancient Hawaiian gods, complicating his family’s troubles amid a collapsing sugarcane industry.
|
|
|
Run Me to Earth
by Paul Yoon
Three children orphaned in 1960s Laos meet a dedicated doctor who enlists them as motorcycle couriers in his effort to rescue civilians and find medical supplies.
|
|
|
Interior Chinatown
by Charles Yu
A stereotyped character actor stumbles into the spotlight before uncovering surprising links between his family and the secret history of Chinatown.
|
|
|
How Much of These Hills is Gold
by C Pam Zhang
Two orphaned Chinese immigrant siblings flee the threats of their gold rush mining town across an unforgiving landscape where their survival is tested by family secrets, sibling rivalry and disparate goals.
|
|
|
|
|
|