Celebrating AANHPI Heritage Month
- Kai Bee
- May 30
- 11 min read
Updated: Jun 4
Stories have always been a way that humans come to understand eachother, through digesting the lived experiences of those that differ from our own in ways big and small. Today we can recognize our histories that shape our present day lives. This May, in honor of AANHPI Heritage Month, we're highlighting a range of voices across the Asian diaspora. We invite you to spend time with these books that begin to breach the rich complexity of this community, to assure that these stories do not go unheard of.
You can shop these books from our online store using the button below each book. If a book is out of stock, you can special order it from Belonging Books, or support us through our Bookshop.org page.
Table of Contents:
Contemporary & Literary Fiction: Identity, Diaspora, and Lives
These character driven novels explore themes that matter to us at Belonging Books such as belonging, family, race, and the complexities of navigating life between different worlds.
Happiness Falls
Angie Kim
“We didn’t call the police right away.” Those are the electric first words of this extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing.
Read More
Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything—which is why she isn’t initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don’t return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia’s brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.
Interior Chinatown
Charles Yu
Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man.
Read More
Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it?
Memory Piece
Lisa Ko
In the early 1980s, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong, and Ellen Ng are three teenagers drawn together by their shared sense of alienation and desire for something different.
Read More
“Allied in the weirdest parts of themselves,” they envision each other as artistic collaborators and embark on a future defined by freedom and creativity.
By the time they are adults, their dreams are murkier.
Homeseeking
Karissa Chen
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.
Read More
To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back.
Suchi was seven when she first met Haiwen in their Shanghai neighborhood, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossomed into soul-deep love, but when Haiwen secretly enlisted in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, she was left with just his violin and a note: Forgive me.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
Kiran Desai
When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that served only to drive Sonia and Sunny apart.
Read More
A sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is a love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, and the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists.
Rental House
Weiki Wang
Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences:
Read More
Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,” says her father), while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign” wife.
Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate, and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?
Homeseeking
Karissa Chen
A long-married couple is forced to confront their friend's painful past when a church revival comes to a nearby town...
Read More
A woman in an arranged marriage struggles to connect with the son she hid from her husband for years ... A well-meaning sister unwittingly reunites an abuser with his victims.
The Immortal King Rao
Vauhini Vara
In a future in which the world is run by the Board of Corporations, King’s daughter, Athena, reckons with his legacy -
Read More
-literally, for he has given her access to his memories, among other questionable gifts.
With climate change raging, Athena has come to believe that saving the planet and its Shareholders will require a radical act of communion—and so she sets out to tell the truth to the world’s Shareholders, in entrancing sensory detail, about King’s childhood on a South Indian coconut plantation.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong
Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born:
Read More
a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation.
Romance, Family Drama, & Comedy
If you gravitate towards love stories, or cultural commentary delivered with humor, give one of these picks a chance!
Lies and Weddings
Kevin Kwan
Rufus Leung Gresham, future Earl of Greshambury and son of a former Hong Kong supermodel has a problem:
Read More
the legendary Gresham Trust has been depleted by decades of profligate spending, and behind all the magazine covers and Instagram stories of manors and yachts lies nothing more than a gargantuan mountain of debt.
Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors
Sonali Dev
It is a truth universally acknowledged that only in an overachieving Indian American family can a genius daughter be considered a black sheep.
Read More
Dr. Trisha Raje is San Francisco’s most acclaimed neurosurgeon. But that’s not enough for the Rajes, her influential immigrant family who’s achieved power by making its own non-negotiable rules:
· Never trust an outsider
· Never do anything to jeopardize your brother’s political aspirations
· And never, ever, defy your family
Trisha is guilty of breaking all three rules.
How to End a Love Story
Yulin Kuang
Helen Zhang hasn’t seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years since the tragic accident that bound their lives together forever.
Read More
Now a bestselling author, Helen pours everything into her career. She’s even scored a coveted spot in the writers’ room of the TV adaptation of her popular young adult novels, and if she can hide her imposter syndrome and overcome her writer’s block, surely the rest of her life will fall into place too. LA is the fresh start she needs. After all, no one knows her there. Except…
Grant
Yin Yang Love Song
Lauren Kung Jessen
Chinese herbalist Chryssy Hua Williams never actually believed in the Hua family curse. But after Break-Up #9, Chryssy stopped laughing.
Read More
Now she and her aunties run a special healing retreat center for the broken-hearted. After all, there’s nothing a proper cup of herbal tea can’t fix ...
Dial A for Aunties
Jesse Q. Sutanto
When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body.
Read More
Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline.
Mystery & Suspense
Check out these high-stakes, fast-paced books that unravel secrets... and social tensions!
Moonlight Murder
Uzma Jalaluddin
When Kausar Khan moved back to Toronto to be closer to her family, she didn't expect to have another murder investigation on her hands so soon—or really ever.
Read More
But when a young man named Qasim is found dead in their Golden Crescent neighborhood, and when she learns he was close to her granddaughter, Maleeha, what’s a grandmother to do but try and solve the case?
The Railway Conspiracy
Uzma Jalaluddin
London, 1924. Following several months abroad, Judge Dee Ren Jie has returned to the city to foil a transaction between a Russian diplomat and a Japanese mercenary.
Read More
Aided by Lao She—the Watson to his Holmes—along with several other colorful characters, Dee stops the illicit sale of an extremely valuable “dragon-taming” mace.
Speculative Fiction, Fantasy, & Sci-Fi
A selection of stories that stretch the boundaries of reality through magic, technology, and strange worlds that will have you pondering what is possible and questioning the powers that control our worlds.
A Forgery of Fate
Elizabeth Lim
Truyan Saigas didn't choose to become a con artist, but after her father is lost at sea, it’s up to her to support her mother and two younger sisters.
Read More
A gifted art forger, Tru has the unique ability to paint the future, but even such magic is not enough to put her family back together again, or stave off the gangsters demanding payment in blood for her mother’s gambling debts.
The Poet Empress
Shen Tao
Wei Yin is desperate. After the fifth death of a sibling, with her family and village on the brink of starvation, she will do anything to save those she loves.
Read More
Even offer herself as concubine to the cruel heir of the beautiful and brutal Azalea House.
But in a twist of fate, the palace stands on the knife-edge of civil war with Wei trapped in its center…at the side of a violent prince.
The Dragon and the Sun Lotus
Amelie Wen Zhao
A decade ago, the Kingdom of Night began the war against the Kingdom of Rivers, ravaging the lands and releasing mó—beautiful, ravenous demons—to roam free, drinking the souls of mortals.
Read More
Now the mó have made it beyond the magical wards of the immortal realm—the Kingdom of Sky—and will not stop until the entire world falls to darkness.
Àn’yīng is determined to banish the mó to their realm and return the mortal realm to peace. But a stunning betrayal has turned the tides of this war: Her handsome rival from the Immortality Trials and the man she was falling in love with, Yù’chén, is now the enemy.
The Subtle Art of Folding Space
John Chu
Ellie’s universe, and this one, is falling apart. Her ailing mother is in a coma; her sister, Chris, accuses her of being insufficiently Chinese between assassination attempts; and a shadowy cabal of engineers is trying to hijack the skunkworks, the machinery that keeps the physics of each universe working the way it’s supposed to.
Read More
Daniel, Ellie's cousin, has found an illicit device in the skunkworks—one that keeps Ellie's comatose mother alive while also creating destabilizing bugs in the physics of this universe. It's not a good day.
If she can confront her mother’s legacy and overcome her family’s generational trauma, she just might find a way to preserve the skunkworks and reconcile with her sister…but digging into her family’s past is thornier than it seems, and the secrets she uncovers will force Ellie to choose between her family and the universe itself.
Exhalation
Ted Chiang
Tackling some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine, these stories will change the way you think, feel, and see the world. They are Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic, revelatory.
Read More
Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine.
In “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In “Exhalation,” an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom,” the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.
Memoir & Essays
These personal narratives explore some of our favorite themes: identity, disability rights, family dynamics, yummy food, grief, resistance, and more.
The Subtle Art of Folding Space
John Chu
What does it means to lose your roots—within your culture, within your family—and what happens when you find them?
Read More
Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life, that forever feeling slightly out of place was her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as Nicole grew up—facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn’t see, finding her identity as an Asian American and as a writer, becoming ever more curious about where she came from—she wondered if the story she’d been told was the whole truth.
Year of the Tiger
Alice Wong
In Chinese culture, the tiger is deeply revered for its confidence, passion, ambition, and ferocity. That same fighting spirit resides in Alice Wong.
Read More
Drawing on a collection of original essays, previously published work, conversations, graphics, photos, commissioned art by disabled and Asian American artists, and more, Alice uses her unique talent to share an impressionistic scrapbook of her life as an Asian American disabled activist, community organizer, media maker, and dreamer.
Eat a Peach
David Chang
In 2004, Momofuku Noodle Bar opened in a tiny, stark space in Manhattan’s East Village. Its young chef-owner, David Chang, worked the line, serving ramen and pork buns to a mix of fellow restaurant cooks and confused diners whose idea of ramen was instant noodles in Styrofoam cups.
Read More
It would have been impossible to know it at the time—and certainly Chang would have bet against himself—but he, who had failed at almost every endeavor in his life, was about to become one of the most influential chefs of his generation, driven by the question, “What if the underground could become the mainstream?”
A Man of Two Faces
Viet Thanh Nguyen
With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life.
Read More
He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.
Dear Memory
Victoria Chang
For Victoria Chang, memory “isn’t something that blooms, but something that bleeds internally.” It is willed, summoned, and dragged to the surface.
Read More
The remembrances in this collection of letters are founded in the fragments of stories her mother shared reluctantly, and the silences of her father, who first would not and then could not share more. They are whittled and sculpted from an archive of family relics: a marriage license, a letter, a visa petition, a photograph. And, just as often, they are built on the questions that can no longer be answered.
Young Adult & Middle Grade
A list of coming-of-age stories that explore what it means to grow up between cultures and how to find belonging.
Once Upon a K-Prom by Kat Cho
Wish Upon a K-Star by Kat Cho
Barakah Beats by Maleeha Siddiqui
Finally Heard by Kelly Yang
Drawing Deena by Hena Khan
Comments