SJPL Picks: AAPI VoicesLike this list

50 items

• Gingko Season

  a Novel

  Xu Elegant, Naomi,

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  After suffering her first big heartbreak two years earlier, Penelope Lin has built a quiet life with no romantic entanglements. She spends her days cataloging a museum’s vast collection of Qing Dynasty bound-foot shoes and in the comfortable company…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• My Other Heart

  Strenner, Emma Nanami,

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  In June 2000, Mimi Truang is on her way home to Vietnam when her toddler daughter vanishes in the Philadelphia airport. Seventeen years later, two best friends graduate from high school in the WASP-y town of Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania. Kit is half…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Good Soil

  the Education of An Accidental Farmhand

  Chu, Jeff,

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  In his late thirties, Jeff Chu left his job as a magazine writer and enrolled at Princeton Seminary's "Farminary," a 21-acre farm where students learn to work the earth while interrogating life's biggest questions. Now he unfolds what he learned…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Flirting With Disaster

  a Novel

  Kumar, Naina,

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  "It's been years since Meena separated from her husband, Nikhil. Now a high-powered lawyer on Capitol Hill and ready to move on (at least, she thinks so) with another successful lawyer, Shake, Meena has returned to Texas. This time, finally to…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Mỹ Documents

  a Novel

  Nguyen, Kevin,

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  When a series of violent, senseless attacks across America create a national panic, a government policy forces Vietnamese Americans into internment camps. Informed by real-life events from Japanese incarceration, the Vietnam War, and modern-day…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Manor of Dreams

  a Novel

  Li, Christina,

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  A haunting novel about the secrets that lie in wait in the crumbling mansion of a former Hollywood starlet, and the intertwined fates of the two Chinese American families fighting to inherit it.

• Bibliophobia

  a Memoir

  Chihaya, Sarah,

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  Have you ever read a book and felt so gutted by it that you knew you'd never recover? That it made you sit differently in your own skin? A book that complicated everything you believed in and changed the way you read the world around you forever?…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

  a Novel

  Baker, Kylie Lee,

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  Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner, washing away the remains of brutal murders and suicides in Chinatown. But none of that seems so terrible when she’s already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: her sister, Delilah, being pushed in front of…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The True Happiness Company

  a Memoir

  Dinavahi, Veena,

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  In this wrenching, darkly funny memoir, a young Indian American woman’s quest for mental health is derailed by a charismatic alternative therapist who pulls her into his Mormon self-help cult.

• The Phoenix Pencil Company

  a Novel

  King, Allison,

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  In this dazzling debut novel, a hidden and nearly forgotten magic—of Reforging pencils, bringing the memories they contain back to life—holds the power to transform a young woman’s relationship with her grandmother, and to mend long-lost connections…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• It Rhymes With Takei

  Takei, George, 1937-

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  George Takei has shown the world many faces: actor, author, outspoken activist, helmsman of the starship Enterprise, living witness to the internment of Japanese Americans, and king of social media. But until October 27, 2005, there was always one…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Family Recipe

  a Novel

  Huynh, Carolyn,

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  Siblings competing to inherit their father's Vietnamese sandwich franchise and unravel family mysteries in this stunning family dramedy. To receive their inheritance, the four daughters must revitalize run-down shops in old-school Little Saigon…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Gaysians

  Curato, Mike,

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  A heartwarming graphic novel following four gay Asians navigating love, identity, and friendship--a celebration of queer chosen family.

• Homeseeking

  Chen, Karissa,

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  Haiwen is buying bananas at a 99 Ranch Market in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Silver and Smoke

  a Novel

  Hoang, Van, 1989-

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  More like sisters than best friends, Issa Bui and Olivia Nong grew up dreaming of becoming movie stars. But for young Vietnamese women in 1930s Hollywood, the MGM back lot seems unreachable. Undeterred, Issa draws upon her shaman blood to contact…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• There's Something About Mira

  a Novel

  Dev, Sonali,

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  Mira Salvi has the perfect life--a job she loves, a fiancé everyone adores, and the secure future she's always imagined for herself. Really, she hasn't a thing to complain about, not even when she has to go on her engagement trip to New York alone.…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Julie Chan Is Dead

  a Novel

  Zhang, Liann,

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  A young woman steps into her deceased twin's influencer life, only to discover dark secrets hidden behind her social media façade..

• The Satisfaction Café

  a Novel

  Wang, Kathy,

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  Joan’s life is a series of unexpected events: she never thought she would live in California, nor did she expect her first marriage to implode—especially as quickly and spectacularly as it did. She definitely did not expect to fall in love with an…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Flashlight

  a Novel

  Choi, Susan, 1969-

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  One night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the beach. He's carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later Louisa is found washed up by the tide, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old. In chapters that shift from one member to the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• You'll Never Believe Me

  a Life of Lies, Second Tries, and Things I Should Only Tell My Therapist

  Ferrell, Kari,

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  Adopted at a young age by a Mormon family in Utah, Kari struggled with questions of self-worth and identity as one of the few Asian Americans in her insulated community, leading her to run with the 'bad crowd' in an effort to fit in. Soon, stealing…Read moreRead more of this annotation