May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and I have some suggestions if you’re looking for something to read to commemorate this heritage month. These books are published for adults, but if you’re more interested in books for kids and teens, I’ve got suggestions for that, too. All of these books are available for checkout at the Floyd County Library during May or any time.
The Verifiers by Jane Pek (2022). E-book and downloadable audiobook. Claudia Lin is looking at a cliched post-college future as a chronically underemployed English major–much to the consternation of her mother, who wants her to settle down and start dating a nice Chinese boy already; her brother, who pushes her to follow in his model-minority footsteps; and her sister, who can’t get over Claudia’s privileged place in their mother’s affections. But Claudia is used to keeping secrets from her family. Such as the fact that she prefers girls–and that she’s embarking on an unsuitable but supremely fun career. Veracity, a two-and-a-half-person detective agency that operates out of a Manhattan townhouse and verifies people’s online dating personas, has recruited Claudia via an online murder mystery game.
Join us for Reading the Rainbow’s discussion of this title on May 17
Print copies are available at the New Albany Central Library and the IU Southeast Library, just ask at a service desk!
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (2019). E-book and downloadable audiobook. Brilliant, heartbreaking, tender, and highly original – poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a sweeping and shattering portrait of a family, and a testament to the redemptive power of storytelling. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born–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.
Fairest: A Memoir by Meredith Talusan (2020). E-book and downloadable audiobook. A singular, beautifully written coming-of-age memoir of a Filipino boy with albinism whose story travels from an immigrant childhood to Harvard to a gender transition and illuminates the illusions of race, disability, and gender.
No Other World by Rahul Mehta (2017). An insightful, compelling debut novel set in rural America and India in the 1980s and ’90s. This is part coming-of-age story about a gay Indian American boy, part family saga about an immigrant family’s struggles each to find a sense of belonging, identity, and hope.
Ma and Me by Putsata Reang (2022). When Putsata Reang was 11 months old, her family fled war-torn Cambodia, spending 23 days on an overcrowded navy vessel before finding sanctuary at an American naval base in the Philippines. Holding what appeared to be a lifeless baby in her arms, Ma resisted the captain’s orders to throw her bundle overboard. Instead, on landing, Ma rushed her baby into the arms of American military nurses and doctors, who saved the child’s life. Over the years, Put lived to please Ma and make her proud, hustling to repay her life debt by becoming the consummate good Cambodian daughter, working steadfastly by Ma’s side in the berry fields each summer and eventually building a successful career as an award-winning journalist. But Put’s adoration and efforts are no match for Ma’s expectations. When she comes out to Ma in her twenties, it’s just a phase. When she fails to bring home a Khmer boyfriend, it’s because she’s not trying hard enough. When, at the age of forty, Put tells Ma she is finally getting married–to a woman–it breaks their bond in two.
All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews (2022). E-book and downloadable audiobook. Graduating into the trough of yet another American recession, Sneha is one of the fortunate ones. However mind-numbing the work, her entry-level consulting job is the key that unlocks every door: she can pick up the check for her growing circle of friends in Milwaukee, send money home to her parents in India, and dare to envision a stable future for herself. She even begins dating who she has long wanted-women-and soon develops a crush on Marina, a beautiful dancer who always seems just out of reach. But then, as quickly as it came together, Sneha’s life begins to fall apart. Her job and apartment are both suddenly and maddeningly in jeopardy, and closely-guarded secrets and buried traumas resurface, sending her spiraling into shame and isolation. When a chance encounter with Marina ignites an electric romance, it looks like salvation-if only they can overcome the lie that threatens to undo the trust they’ve built.
Siren Queen by Nghi Vo (2022). E-book and downloadable audiobook. Luli Wei is beautiful, talented, and desperate to be a star. Coming of age in pre-Code Hollywood, she knows how dangerous the movie business is and how limited the roles are for a Chinese American girl from Hungarian Hill-but she doesn’t care. She’d rather play a monster than a maid. But in Luli’s world, the worst monsters in Hollywood are not the ones on screen. The studios want to own everything from her face to her name to the women she loves, and they run on a system of bargains made in blood and ancient magic, powered by the endless sacrifice of unlucky starlets like her. For those who do survive to earn their fame, success comes with a steep price. Luli is willing to do whatever it takes-even if that means becoming the monster herself. Siren Queen offers up an enthralling exploration of an outsider achieving stardom on her own terms, in a fantastical Hollywood where the monsters are real and the magic of the silver screen illuminates every page.
All the Flowers Kneeling by Paul Tran (2022). Downloadable audiobook. Visceral and astonishing, Paul Tran’s debut poetry collection All the Flowers Kneeling investigates intergenerational trauma, sexual violence, and U.S. imperialism in order to radically alter our understanding of freedom, power, and control. In poems of desire, gender, bodies, legacies, and imagined futures, Tran’s poems elucidate the complex and harrowing processes of reckoning and recovery, enhanced by innovative poetic forms that mirror the nonlinear emotional and psychological experiences of trauma survivors.
Nuclear Family by Joseph Han (2022). E-book and downloadable audiobook. Mr. and Mrs. Cho run a successful chain of Hawai’ian plate lunch restaurants, and their adult children are finding their way in the world: 21-year-old Grace is graduating in a few months, and 25-year-old Jacob is teaching English in Seoul. They’re set to take over the restaurants when Umma and Appa retire. But when Jacob is captured by the South Korean government for attempting to run across the DMZ, the Chos’ peaceful lives are shattered. What could possess Jacob to do something so stupid? The Chos don’t know that Jacob has been literally possessed by his wily grandfather’s ghost, don’t know that Jacob is hiding his bisexuality and confusion over his identity as a Korean-American; they don’t know that Grace is constantly stoned and plotting her escape from the island and her family’s expectations. The children don’t know the burdens of their immigrant parents. Joseph Han draws from Korean myth to explore the generational trauma experienced by families shattered by partition, and the impacts of American imperialism on the Korean peninsula. Nuclear Family is a spectacular debut novel-at once devastating and hilarious-about the memories that bind and divide families, and the yearning for home.
Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki (2021). E-book and downloadable audiobook. Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in Ryka Aoki’s Light From Uncommon Stars, a defiantly joyful adventure set in California’s San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts. Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six. When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka’s ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She’s found her final candidate. But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn’t have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan’s kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul’s worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline. As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.
Beastiary by K-Ming Chang (2020). Three generations of Taiwanese American women are haunted by the myths of their homeland in this spellbinding, visceral debut about one family’s queer desires, violent impulses, and buried secrets.
How Much of These Hills is Gold by C. Pam Zhang (2020). E-book and downloadable audiobook. Two siblings are on the run in an unforgiving landscape–trying not just to survive but to find a home. Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future. Both epic and intimate, blending Chinese symbolism and re-imagined history with fiercely original language and storytelling, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a haunting adventure story, an unforgettable sibling story, and the announcement of a stunning new voice in literature.
The Groom Will Keep His Name: And Other Vows I’ve Made About Race, Resistance, and Romance by Matt Ortile (2020). Downloadable audiobook. When Matt Ortile moved from Manila to Las Vegas, the locals couldn’t pronounce his name. Harassed as a kid for his brown skin, accent, and femininity, he believed he could belong in America by marrying a white man and shedding his Filipino identity. This was the first myth he told himself. The Groom Will Keep His Name explores the various tales Ortile spun about what it means to be a Vassar Girl, an American Boy, and a Filipino immigrant in New York looking to build a home.
