Book Lists

Celebrating Asian American/Pacific Islander Month

Posted onAuthorK. Imani Tennyson

It’s Asian American/Pacific Islander Heritage Month and I thought I’d highlight some books by AAPI authors of different genres that if you haven’t read yet, you need to put these books on your TBR list.

Horror

Illustrated cover features a young woman with long dark hair. She is under water with eyes wide open. Her hair is flowing around her. There are small bubbles floating around her. There are bits of red threadlike things floating near her hair and in front of her white shirt.They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran 

Since the hurricane, the town of Mercy, Louisiana has been overtaken by a strange red algae bloom. Noon and her mother have carved out a life in the wreckage, trawling for the mutated wildlife that lurks in the water and trading it to the corrupt harbormaster. When she’s focused on survival, Noon doesn’t have to cope with what happened to her at the Cove or the monster itching at her skin.

Mercy has never been a safe place, but it’s getting worse. People are disappearing, and the only clues as to why are whispers of underwater shadows and warnings to never answer the knocks at night. When the harbormaster demands she capture the creature that’s been drowning residents, Noon finds a reluctant ally in his daughter Covey. And as the next storm approaches, the two set off to find what’s haunting Mercy. After all, Noon is no stranger to monsters . . .

Contemporary

A young man is adjusting the hood of his read sweatshirt. Behind him, there are images of him boxing, riding a bike, embracing another person and graffiti on a locker and a young person with headphones on who is reading a book. All of the images look like they were one whole image once, but have been shattered into pieces that have shifted slightly away from each other.Chasing Pacquiao by Rod Pulido

Self preservation. That’s Bobby’s motto for surviving his notoriously violent high school unscathed. Being out and queer would put an unavoidable target on his back, especially in a Filipino community that frowns on homosexuality. It’s best to keep his head down, get good grades, and stay out of trouble.

But when Bobby is unwillingly outed in a terrible way, he no longer has the luxury of being invisible. A vicious encounter has him scrambling for a new way to survive–by fighting back. Bobby is inspired by champion Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao to take up boxing and challenge his tormentor. Then Pacquiao publicly declares his stance against queer people, and Bobby’s faith–in his hero and in himself–is shaken to the core.

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An Impossible Thing to Say by Arya Shahi

Omid needs the right words to connect with his newly met grandfather and distant Iranian heritage, words to tell a special girl what she means to him and to show everyone that he truly belongs in Tucson, Arizona, the only home he’s ever known. Neither the school play’s Shakespearean English nor his parents’ Farsi seems up to the task, and it’s only when Omid delves into the rhymes and rhythms of rap music that he starts to find his voice. But even as he does so, an act of terrorism transforms familiar accents into new threats.

Then a family member disappears, and it seems everyone but Omid knows why. When words fail altogether and violence takes their place, what will Omid do next?

Romance

Cover of the book True Love and other impossible odds. Two young woman are standing outside on a porch in the evening with slight smiles as they stare at one another. There are twinkle lights on the roof of the building behind them an da light on inside. Above is a pink to purple sky with stars.True Love and Other Impossible Odds by Christina Li

College freshman Grace Tang never meant to rewrite the rules of love. She came to college to move on from a grief-stricken senior year and to start anew. So she follows a predictable routine: Attend class, study, go home and visit her dad every weekend. She doesn’t leave any room in her life for outliers or anomalies.

Then, Grace comes up with an algorithm for her statistics class to pair students with their perfect romantic partners. Though some people are skeptical, like Julia, Grace’s prickly coworker, Grace is confident that her program will take all the drama out of relationships. That’s why she keeps trying to make things work with her match, a guy named Jamie. But as the semester goes on and she grows closer to Julia, Grace starts to question who she’s really attracted to.

In award-winning author Christina Li’s YA debut, Grace will have to make a choice between the tidy equations she knows will protect her from heartbreak or the possibility that true love doesn’t follow any formula.

Check out Crystal’s review 

Illustrated cover for Lunar New Year Love Story. Two Asian teenagers stand overlooking a waist-high railing. The girl has her arm hooked through the boy's, and she is facing the viewer and has black hair in a long bob. She is wearing a blue jacket, orange shirt, and purple pants. The boy is looking away from the viewer so you can only see his back, and he is wearing a long-sleeved red shirt and black pants and has short black hair. Behind them is the night sky, lit up by stars and streaks of red, yellow, and pink lines that form a lion dancer.Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang & Leuyen Pham

She was destined for heartbreak. Then fate handed her love.

Val is ready to give up on love. It’s led to nothing but secrets and heartbreak, and she’s pretty sure she’s cursed—no one in her family, for generations, has ever had any luck with love.

But then a chance encounter with a pair of cute lion dancers sparks something in Val. Is it real love? Could this be her chance to break the family curse? Or is she destined to live with a broken heart forever?

Fantasy

Cover image for Dragonfruit. A young woman with long dark hair is holding a dragonfruit in her hands. Her nails are painted white. There are sails and boats and a bat entwined in her hair. She has leaves and bright flowers in her hair abover her ears.Dragonfruit by Makiia Lucier

 

In the old tales, it is written that the egg of a seadragon, dragonfruit, holds within it the power to undo a person’s greatest sorrow. But as with all things that offer hope when hope had gone, the tale came with a warning.

Every wish demands a price.

Hanalei of Tamarind is the cherished daughter of an old island family. But when her father steals a seadragon egg meant for an ailing princess, she is forced into a life of exile. In the years that follow, Hanalei finds solace in studying the majestic seadragons that roam the Nominomi Sea. Until, one day, an encounter with a female dragon offers her what she desires most. A chance to return home, and to right a terrible wrong.

Samahtitamahenele, Sam, is the last remaining prince of Tamarind. But he can never inherit the throne, for Tamarind is a matriarchal society. With his mother ill and his grandmother nearing the end of her reign. Sam is left with two choices: to marry, or to find a cure for the sickness that has plagued his mother for ten long years. When a childhood companion returns from exile, she brings with her something he has not felt in a very long time-hope.

But Hanalei and Sam are not the only ones searching for the dragonfruit. And as they battle enemies both near and far, there is another danger they cannot escape…that of the dragonfruit itself.

Check out Crystal’s review 

Cover of The Floating World has two young people standing back to back and holding hands. They are outside with plants around their feet and a floating piece of land behind and above them that has many buildings and water flowing down from it. There are many white birds flying in the sky. The person on the left is wearing knicker style pants and has a white mask tied at their waist. They have short hair and their face is tilted up. The person on the right also has short hair and seems to be carrying a staff on their back. They have a red scarf blowing in the breese and they are wearing a cloak and long pants.The Floating World by Axie Oh

Sunho lives in the Under World, a land of perpetual darkness. An ex-soldier, he can remember little of his life from before two years ago, when he woke up alone with only his name and his sword. Now he does odd-jobs to scrape by, until he comes across the score of a lifetime—a chest of coins for any mercenary who can hunt down a girl who wields silver light.

Meanwhile, far to the east, Ren is a cheerful and spirited acrobat traveling with her adoptive family and performing at villages. But everything changes during one of their festival performances when the village is attacked by a horrific humanlike demon. In a moment of fear and rage, Ren releases a blast of silver light—a power she has kept hidden since childhood—and kills the monster. But her efforts are not in time to prevent her adoptive family from suffering a devastating loss, or to save her beloved uncle from being grievously wounded.

Determined to save him from succumbing to the poisoned wound, Ren sets off over the mountains, where the creature came from—and from where Ren herself fled ten years ago. Her path sets her on a collision course with Sunho, but he doesn’t realize she’s the girl that he—and a hundred other swords-for-hire—is looking for. As the two grow closer through their travels, they come to realize that their pasts—and destinies—are far more entwined than either of them could have imagined…

Non-Fiction/Memoir

A young person in a t-shirt and jeans stands at the center of the book cover with her hand at her forehead. The background is split down the middle and also into a triangle at the bottom. In each section, there is a landscape. The left is Wuhan with modern buildings and a traditional building too. Their is also the shadow of a rabbit on the full moon. The right side shows the golden gate bridge with a blue sky. The bottom portion shows a brown flat place with a yellow sky.Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir Of A Wuhanese American by Laura Gao

After spending her early years in Wuhan, China, riding water buffalos and devouring stinky tofu, Laura immigrates to Texas, where her hometown is as foreign as Mars—at least until 2020, when COVID-19 makes Wuhan a household name.

In Messy Roots, Laura illustrates her coming-of-age as the girl who simply wants to make the basketball team, escape Chinese school, and figure out why girls make her heart flutter.

Insightful, original, and hilarious, toggling seamlessly between past and present, China and America, Gao’s debut is a tour de force of graphic storytelling.