May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, so what better time to check out some of these books about queer Asian American kids?
The Best At It by Maulik Pancholy (2019). Also available on e-book and downloadable audiobook from the Indiana Digital Library. Twelve-year-old Rahul Kapoor, an Indian-American boy growing up in small-town Indiana, struggles to come to terms with his identity, including that he may be gay.
Bruised by Tanya Boteju (2021). Also available on e-book from the Indiana Digital Library. Daya Wijesinghe sees a bruise as a mixture of comfort and control, but joining a roller derby team push her toward big truths about love, loss, strength, and healing.
Flamer by Mike Curato (2020). Also available on e-book from the Indiana Digital Library. In the summer between middle school and high school, Aiden Navarro navigates friendships, deals with bullies, and finds himself drawn to Elias, a boy he can’t stop thinking about.
The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar (2020). Also available on e-book and downloadable audiobook from the Indiana Digital Library. When Nishat comes out to her parents, they say she can be anyone she wants—as long as she isn’t herself. Because Muslim girls aren’t lesbians. Nishat doesn’t want to hide who she is, but she also doesn’t want to lose her relationship with her family. And her life only gets harder once a childhood friend walks back into her life.
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Melinda Lo (2021). Also available on e-book and downloadable audiobook from the Indiana Digital Library. When Lily realizes she has feelings for a girl in her math class in 1950s Chinatown, it threatens Lily’s oldest friendships and even her father’s citizenship status and eventually, Lily must decide if owning her truth is worth everything she has ever known.
The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen (2020). Also available on e-book from the Indiana Digital Library. Real life isn’t a fairytale. But Tiá̃en still enjoys reading his favorite stories with his parents from the books he borrows from the local library. It’s hard enough trying to communicate with your parents as a kid, but for Tiá̃en, he doesn’t even have the right words because his parents are struggling with their English. Is there a Vietnamese word for what he’s going through? Is there a way to tell them he’s gay?
Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker and Wendy Xu (2019). Also available on e-book from the Indiana Digital Library. When teen witch Nova Huang discovers that her childhood crush, Tam Lang, is a werewolf, they team together to face dark forces who are eager to claim the magic of wolves.
Zara Hossain is Here by Sabina Khan (2021). Also available on e-book and downloadable audiobook from the Indiana Digital Library. Enduring racism when her Pakistani family moves to Texas, 17-year-old Zara resolves to keep her head low while her family awaits green-card approval, before a bullying classmate vandalizes her home, leading to a crime that puts Zara’s entire future at risk.
