“The power of visibility can never be underestimated.”― Margaret Cho
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (AAPI Month), which recognizes the contributions and achievements of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States. This month is an opportunity to celebrate the rich culture and history of AAPI communities, as well as to reflect on the challenges they’ve historically faced and continue to face.
We believe book club can be a powerful tool for change, visibility, and healing and one way to honor AAPI Month is to read books by AAPI authors. Reading books by AAPI authors can help us better understand their experiences and perspectives, and can also support AAPI voices in the literary world. We’ll be sharing reading inspiration dedicated to AAPI books, authors, readers, and book clubs throughout the month on the blog, social media, and in our newsletters. Learn more from book club communities like Moon Rabbit Reads, AAPI Love, AAPINH Book Club which gather to amplify Asian voices and experiences.
Read on for a curated recommended reading list of highly-anticipated new releases and beloved classics by AAPI authors to add to your book club reading list. If you have a Bookclubs account, add the books to your Books I Want to Read shelf or recommend them to one of your clubs. If you don’t have a Bookclubs account yet, it’s easy and free to get started here!
Yellowface by RF Kuang
Release date: May 16, 2023
Yellowface marks the literary debut from the bestselling fantasy author of Babel and the Poppy War series. Kuang puts issues such as cultural appropriation and the lack of diversity in publishing under fire in this satirical novel about a white woman who becomes a bestselling author after publishing the stolen manuscript of her late friend and rising Asian American writer.
Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor
Release date: January 10, 2023
Deftly shifting through time and perspective in contemporary India, Age of Vice is an epic, action-packed story propelled by the seductive wealth, startling corruption, and bloodthirsty violence of the Wadia family — loved by some, loathed by others, feared by all.
Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong
Release date: May 16, 2023
Jane Wong's debut memoir with her family book club. It's a resounding love song of the Asian American working class, and in sharing the story of her childhood, much of which takes place in her parent's Chinese restaurant in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Wong paints a portrait of how we all become who we are.
She Is A Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran with Book Club Discussion Guide
Release date: February 28, 2023
In this gorgeously written, deeply haunting ghost story, debut author Trang Thanh Tran explores complex family dynamics and exhilarating romance as a teen girl tries to save her family and herself from a deadly haunted house
Brown Boy: A Memoir by Omer Aziz
Release date: April 4, 2023
In Brown Boy, Omer Aziz has written a book that eloquently describes the complex process of creating an identity that fuses where he's from, what people see in him, and who he knows himself to be. Weaving together his powerful personal narrative with the books and friendships that move him, Aziz wrestles with the contradiction of feeling like an Other and his desire to belong to a Western world that never quite accepts him. He poses the questions he couldn't have asked in his youth: Was assimilation ever really an option? Could one transcend the perils of race and class? And could the collective West ever honestly confront the darker secrets that, as Aziz discovers, still linger from the past?
Victory City by Salman Rushdie
Release date: February 7, 2023
The epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it over the centuries—from the transcendent imagination of Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie. “A major accomplishment by one of our greatest living writers . . . It does not resemble any other novel I could name.”—Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours
A Living Remedy: A Memoir by Nicole Chung
Release date: April 4, 2023
Nicole Chung couldn't hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found community and a path to the life she'd long wanted. But the middle-class world she begins to raise a family in - where there are big homes, college funds, nice vacations - looks very different from the middle-class world she thought she grew up in. Exploring the enduring strength of family bonds in the face of hardship and tragedy, A Living Remedy examines what it takes to reconcile the distance between one life, one home, and another - and sheds needed light on some of the most persistent and grievous inequalities in American society.
Where Reasons End: A Novel by Yiyun Li
Release date: January 12, 2021
Yiyun Li meets life’s deepest sorrows as she imagines a conversation between a mother and child in a timeless world. Composed in the months after she lost a child to suicide, Where Reasons End trespasses into the space between life and death as mother and child talk, free from old images and narratives. Deeply moving, these conversations portray the love and complexity of a relationship. Written with originality, precision, and poise, Where Reasons End is suffused with intimacy, inescapable pain, and fierce love.
The Perfumist of Paris by Alka Joshi
Release date: March 28, 2023
From the author of Reese's Book Club Pick The Henna Artist, the final chapter in Alka Joshi’s New York Times bestselling Jaipur trilogy takes readers to 1970s Paris, where Radha’s budding career as a perfumer must compete with the demands of her family and the secrets of her past.
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Release date: April 12, 2016
Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Sympathizer is the breakthrough novel of the year. With the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Saul Bellow, The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a "man of two minds," a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who arranges to come to America after the Fall of Saigon, and while building a new life with other Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles is secretly reporting back to his communist superiors in Vietnam. The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.
The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Release date: October 22, 2019
With accomplished precision and gentle eloquence, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the crosscurrents set in motion when immigrants, expatriates, and their children arrive, quite literally, at a cultural divide. Imbued with the sensual details of Indian culture, these stories speak with passion and wisdom to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner. Like the interpreter of the title story, Lahiri translates between the strict traditions of her ancestors and a baffling new world.
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong
Release date: March 2, 2021
Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative--and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world.
The Memory Police: A Novel by Yoko Ogawa
Release date: July 28, 2020
A haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance, from the acclaimed author of The Housekeeper and the Professor. On an unnamed island, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses. . . . Most of the inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few able to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young writer discovers that her editor is in danger, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards, and together they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past. Powerful and provocative, The Memory Police is a stunning novel about the trauma of loss.
Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea by Rita Chang-Eppig
Release date: June 6, 2023
Rita Chang-Eppig's rip-roaring Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea is a debut novel about a legendary Chinese pirate queen, inspired by a real historical figure. Outlawed author Anna North hails protagonist Shek Yeung as “a pirate queen, a mother, a ruthless killer, a loyal friend, and an unforgettable heroine whose journey will keep readers hooked from beginning to end.”
Horse Barbie: A Memoir by Geena Rocero
Release date: May 30, 2023
In Horse Barbie, model-turned-producer Geena Rocero pens a heartfelt memoir of her life as a prominent and successful trans pageant queen from the Philippines who went back into the closet to model in New York City — until she realized she felt most powerful living her truth as the iconoclast she’d always been. When she moved to the United States, Rocero was able to change her name and gender marker on her documents, but in order to survive, she went stealth and hid her trans identity, gaining one type of freedom and truth at the expense of another. The tenuous double life finally led Geena to a breaking point when she had to decide how to reclaim her power and truth. It's a radiant testimony from an icon who sits at the center of transgender history.
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
Release date: May 2, 2023
From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning epic of love, faith, and medicine set in Kerala, South India following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret. Through this story of land and family, spanning the years 1900 to 1977, you will witness unthinkable changes, joy, and triumph as well as hardship and loss, and the constant pull of faith and love. Now an Oprah's Book Club Pick with a discussion guide!
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Diverse author reading inspiration:
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- Must Read Books for International Women's Day
- 12 Debut Authors to Read With Your Book Club
- 5 must-reads for Native American Heritage Month
- The best books for Latinx and Hispanic Heritage Month
Find a public book club focusing on books by diverse authors:
- Book clubs reading books by women
- Book clubs reading books by BIPOC or other underrepresented authors
- Book clubs reading books by queer and LGBTQ+ authors
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