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Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao
The Emma Project by Sonali Dev
Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li
Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Tinghui Zhang
Know You by Heart by Tif Marcelo
The Heart Remembers by Jan-Philipp Sendker

It’s May again — we’re almost halfway through the year. It’s a good time to look ahead and also to pause and take a look at what we have accomplished. For those who don’t know, May is also a month to learn, reflect and honor the role Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have played in U.S. history. There are many events, talks, and exhibits we can do to celebrate the rich Asian American Pacific Islander’s traditions and contributions. For bookworms, May is a good month to get out of your reading comfort zone and dive into books and stories written by authors of Asian American heritage. 

As a historical fiction writer, I usually focus on history and historical fiction, but for this month, I’ve compiled a few books that are not quite entirely historical, but they are all equally magical. Here is my list:

 width=Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen | Vintage

Many brilliant books published during the pandemic rarely had a chance to reach readers. This book was one of them. It was one of the favorite books chosen by Obama, but I had not heard of it until recently. And how many of you have heard that the Vietnamese lived in New Orleans? This is a novel about loss, about rebuilding a family, about finding identity, and more. From the back cover: 

When Huong arrives in New Orleans with her two young sons, she is jobless, homeless, and worried about her husband, Cong, who remains in Vietnam. As she and her boys begin to settle in to life in America, she continues to send letters and tapes back to Cong, hopeful that they will be reunited and her children will grow up with a father.

But with time, Huong realizes she will never see her husband again. While she attempts to come to terms with this loss, her sons, Tuan and Binh, grow up in their absent father’s shadow, haunted by a man and a country trapped in their memories and imaginations. As they push forward, the three adapt to life in America in different ways: Huong gets involved with a Vietnamese car salesman who is also new in town; Tuan tries to connect with his heritage by joining a local Vietnamese gang; and Binh, now going by Ben, embraces his adopted homeland and his burgeoning sexuality. Their search for identity — as individuals and as a family — threatens to tear them apart, until disaster strikes the city they now call home and they are suddenly forced to find a new way to come together and honor the ties that bind them.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Bookshop

 width=Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao | Penguin Teen

An empress warrior? Wait, Empress Wu of the seventh century, the first female emperor of China as a warrior? The concept itself is brilliant, and in this Pacific Rim meets The Handmaid’s Tale fantasy, the reader is in for quite a ride. An instant #1 New York Times bestseller! From the back cover: 

The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.
 
When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.​
 
To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia​. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way — and stop more girls from being sacrificed.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Bookshop

 width=The Emma Project by Sonali Dev | Avon

Book 4 of the Rajes series, and hopefully not the last one? Dev’s bewitching pen recreates the Rajes, the Indian Americans, cast in the perpetually fascinating Jane Austin vein. From the back cover:

No one can call Vansh Raje’s life anything but charmed. Handsome — Vogue has declared him California’s hottest single — and rich enough to spend all his time on missions to make the world a better place. Add to that a doting family and a contagiously sunny disposition and Vansh has made it halfway through his twenties without ever facing anything to throw him off his admittedly spectacular game.

A couple years from turning forty, Knightlina (Naina) Kohli has just gotten out of a ten-year-long fake relationship with Vansh’s brother and wants only one thing from her life … fine, two things. One, to have nothing to do with the unfairly blessed Raje family ever again. Two, to bring economic independence to millions of women in South Asia through her microfinance foundation and prove her father wrong about, well, everything.

Just when Naina’s dream is about to come to fruition, Vansh Raje shows up with his misguided Emma Project … And suddenly she’s fighting him for funding and wondering if a friends-with-benefits arrangement that’s as toe-curlingly hot as it is fun is worth risking her life’s work for.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Bookshop

 width=Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li | Tiny Reparations Books

When I visited the British Museum in London three years ago, browsing the emerald jade bits and blue porcelain and the seal of an emperor in the Qing Dynasty, I couldn’t help thinking about how they traveled from the safety of a palace to a foreign museum thousands of miles away and why they were still housed there. This novel reminds me of the wisps of thought I had, and it is exciting to read a book that challenges the reality and, perhaps, people will make things right again. 

A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son who has always been his parents’ American Dream. But when a mysterious Chinese benefactor reaches out with an impossible — and illegal — job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago. 

His crew is every heist archetype one can imagine — or at least, the closest he can get. A con artist: Irene Chen, a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a pre-med student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering major who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they’ve cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down. 

Because if they succeed? They earn 50 million dollars — and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they’ve dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted attempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.

Equal parts beautiful, thoughtful and thrilling, Portrait of a Thief is a cultural heist and an examination of Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary critique of the lingering effects of colonialism.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Bookshop

 width=Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong | Penguin Press

I have to add Vuong’s poetry here. After his incomparable prose in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, I’ll buy any poems he writes. From the back cover: 

In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong’s poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.
 
The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Bookshop

 width=Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Tinghui Zhang | Flatiron Books

This novel captures my attention with its unique title, Four Treasures of the Sky, and indeed it is a poignant reminder that despite the kidnapping, prejudice and relentless tragedy, there is much to treasure about life. From the back cover: 

Daiyu never wanted to be like the tragic heroine for whom she was named, revered for her beauty and cursed with heartbreak. But when she is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. Over the years that follow, she is forced to keep reinventing herself to survive. From a calligraphy school to a San Francisco brothel, to a shop tucked into the Idaho mountains, we follow Daiyu on a desperate quest to outrun the tragedy that chases her. As anti-Chinese sentiment sweeps across the country in a wave of unimaginable violence, Daiyu must draw on each of the selves she has been — including the ones she most wants to leave behind — in order to finally claim her own name and story.

At once a literary tour de force and a groundbreaking work of historical fiction, Four Treasures of the Sky announces Jenny Tinghui Zhang as an indelible new voice. Steeped in untold history and Chinese folklore, this novel is a spellbinding feat.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Bookshop

 width=Know You by Heart by Tif Marcelo | Montlake

For those who are believers of love and romance, the USA Today bestselling author Tif Marcelo, has another novel just to meet your heart’s desire. The second book of the series proves to be addictive and entertaining. From the book cover:

As the oldest child in his family, Chris Puso has always taken his responsibilities seriously. He’ll do whatever it takes to ensure Heart Resort’s success. Four and a half years ago, that meant marrying Eden, a woman he admired but didn’t love, to access a family trust that benefited them both.

Eden Puso, a.k.a. romance author Everly Heart, believes in true love — in her novels, at least. But her marriage to Chris was more about funding her writing career and supporting her family than finding her happily ever after. And despite their mutual attraction toward one another, they stayed loyal to the contract … for the most part.

With six months until the end of their contract and with their careers taking off, their marriage of convenience has become, well, a little inconvenient. A competing resort threatens to usurp Heart Resort, and Chris and Eden band together to preserve its reputation, including doing a retreat themselves. But as the retreat uncovers their history and their hidden love for one another, can their relationship survive so their partnership reaches its natural conclusion? (BookTrib’s review.)

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Bookshop

One bonus book, not written by an author of Asian American heritage:

 width=The Heart Remembers by Jan-Philipp Sendker | Other Press

Sendker is a Germany-based author who spent decades reporting in Asia, and this is the last installment of his The Art of Hearing Heartbeats series. His first book, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, broke my heart and made it whole again. It’s a love story disguised in a mystery of an American woman searching for her roots, but also a story of pristine Burma in an era with traditions that few westerners understand. Sendker wrote with extraordinary sensitivity and sagely wisdom that almost made me believe he was Asian. The depth of his thoughts and the flaws of Western perception he exposed are eye-opening.  

12-year-old Ko Bo Bo lives with his uncle U Ba in Kalaw, a town in Burma. An unusually perceptive child, Bo Bo can read people’s emotions in their eyes. This acute sensitivity only makes his unconventional home life more difficult: His father comes to visit him once a year, and he can hardly remember his mother, who, for unclear reasons, keeps herself away from her son.

Everything changes when Bo Bo discovers the story of his parents’ great love, which threatens to break down in the whirlwind of political events, and of his mother’s mysterious sickness. Convinced that he can heal her and reunite their family, Bo Bo decides to set out in search of his parents.

A gripping, heartwarming tale that takes the reader from Burma to New York and back, The Heart Remembers is a worthy conclusion to Jan-Philipp Sendker’s beloved series.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Bookshop


 

 

Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen

Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen

Many brilliant books published during the pandemic rarely had a chance to reach readers. This book was one of them. It was one of the favorite books chosen by Obama, but I had not heard of it until recently. And how many of you have heard that the Vietnamese lived in New Orleans? This is a novel about loss, about rebuilding a family, about finding identity, and more. From the back cover:  When Huong arrives in New Orleans with her two young sons, she is jobless, homeless, and worried about her husband, Cong, who remains in Vietnam. As she and her boys begin to settle in to life in America, she continues to send letters and tapes back to Cong, hopeful that they will be reunited and her children will grow up with a father. But with time, Huong realizes she will never see her husband again. While she attempts to come to terms with this loss, her sons, Tuan and Binh, grow up in their absent father’s shadow, haunted by a man and a country trapped in their memories and imaginations. As they push forward, the three adapt to life in America in different ways: Huong gets involved with a Vietnamese car salesman who is also new in town; Tuan tries to connect with his heritage by joining a local Vietnamese gang; and Binh, now going by Ben, embraces his adopted homeland and his burgeoning sexuality. Their search for identity — as individuals and as a family — threatens to tear them apart, until disaster strikes the city they now call home and they are suddenly forced to find a new way to come together and honor the ties that bind them.


Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

An empress warrior? Wait, Empress Wu of the seventh century, the first female emperor of China as a warrior? The concept itself is brilliant, and in this Pacific Rim meets The Handmaid’s Tale fantasy, the reader is in for quite a ride. An instant #1 New York Times bestseller! From the back cover:  The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.   When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.​   To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia​. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way — and stop more girls from being sacrificed.


The Emma Project by Sonali Dev

The Emma Project by Sonali Dev

Book 4 of the Rajes series, and hopefully not the last one? Dev’s bewitching pen recreates the Rajes, the Indian Americans, cast in the perpetually fascinating Jane Austin vein. From the back cover: No one can call Vansh Raje’s life anything but charmed. Handsome — Vogue has declared him California’s hottest single — and rich enough to spend all his time on missions to make the world a better place. Add to that a doting family and a contagiously sunny disposition and Vansh has made it halfway through his twenties without ever facing anything to throw him off his admittedly spectacular game. A couple years from turning forty, Knightlina (Naina) Kohli has just gotten out of a ten-year-long fake relationship with Vansh’s brother and wants only one thing from her life … fine, two things. One, to have nothing to do with the unfairly blessed Raje family ever again. Two, to bring economic independence to millions of women in South Asia through her microfinance foundation and prove her father wrong about, well, everything. Just when Naina’s dream is about to come to fruition, Vansh Raje shows up with his misguided Emma Project … And suddenly she’s fighting him for funding and wondering if a friends-with-benefits arrangement that’s as toe-curlingly hot as it is fun is worth risking her life’s work for.


Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

When I visited the British Museum in London three years ago, browsing the emerald jade bits and blue porcelain and the seal of an emperor in the Qing Dynasty, I couldn’t help thinking about how they traveled from the safety of a palace to a foreign museum thousands of miles away and why they were still housed there. This novel reminds me of the wisps of thought I had, and it is exciting to read a book that challenges the reality and, perhaps, people will make things right again.  A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son who has always been his parents’ American Dream. But when a mysterious Chinese benefactor reaches out with an impossible — and illegal — job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago.  His crew is every heist archetype one can imagine — or at least, the closest he can get. A con artist: Irene Chen, a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a pre-med student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering major who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they’ve cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down.  Because if they succeed? They earn 50 million dollars — and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they’ve dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted attempt to take back what colonialism has stolen. Equal parts beautiful, thoughtful and thrilling, Portrait of a Thief is a cultural heist and an examination of Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary critique of the lingering effects of colonialism.


Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong

Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong

I have to add Vuong’s poetry here. After his incomparable prose in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, I’ll buy any poems he writes. From the back cover:  In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong’s poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.   The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.


Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Tinghui Zhang

Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Tinghui Zhang

This novel captures my attention with its unique title, Four Treasures of the Sky, and indeed it is a poignant reminder that despite the kidnapping, prejudice and relentless tragedy, there is much to treasure about life. From the back cover:  Daiyu never wanted to be like the tragic heroine for whom she was named, revered for her beauty and cursed with heartbreak. But when she is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. Over the years that follow, she is forced to keep reinventing herself to survive. From a calligraphy school to a San Francisco brothel, to a shop tucked into the Idaho mountains, we follow Daiyu on a desperate quest to outrun the tragedy that chases her. As anti-Chinese sentiment sweeps across the country in a wave of unimaginable violence, Daiyu must draw on each of the selves she has been — including the ones she most wants to leave behind — in order to finally claim her own name and story. At once a literary tour de force and a groundbreaking work of historical fiction, Four Treasures of the Sky announces Jenny Tinghui Zhang as an indelible new voice. Steeped in untold history and Chinese folklore, this novel is a spellbinding feat.


Know You by Heart by Tif Marcelo

Know You by Heart by Tif Marcelo

For those who are believers of love and romance, the USA Today bestselling author Tif Marcelo, has another novel just to meet your heart’s desire. The second book of the series proves to be addictive and entertaining. From the book cover: As the oldest child in his family, Chris Puso has always taken his responsibilities seriously. He’ll do whatever it takes to ensure Heart Resort’s success. Four and a half years ago, that meant marrying Eden, a woman he admired but didn’t love, to access a family trust that benefited them both. Eden Puso, a.k.a. romance author Everly Heart, believes in true love — in her novels, at least. But her marriage to Chris was more about funding her writing career and supporting her family than finding her happily ever after. And despite their mutual attraction toward one another, they stayed loyal to the contract … for the most part. With six months until the end of their contract and with their careers taking off, their marriage of convenience has become, well, a little inconvenient. A competing resort threatens to usurp Heart Resort, and Chris and Eden band together to preserve its reputation, including doing a retreat themselves. But as the retreat uncovers their history and their hidden love for one another, can their relationship survive so their partnership reaches its natural conclusion? (BookTrib’s review.)


The Heart Remembers by Jan-Philipp Sendker

The Heart Remembers by Jan-Philipp Sendker

Sendker is a Germany-based author who spent decades reporting in Asia, and this is the last installment of his The Art of Hearing Heartbeats series. His first book, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, broke my heart and made it whole again. It’s a love story disguised in a mystery of an American woman searching for her roots, but also a story of pristine Burma in an era with traditions that few westerners understand. Sendker wrote with extraordinary sensitivity and sagely wisdom that almost made me believe he was Asian. The depth of his thoughts and the flaws of Western perception he exposed are eye-opening.   12-year-old Ko Bo Bo lives with his uncle U Ba in Kalaw, a town in Burma. An unusually perceptive child, Bo Bo can read people’s emotions in their eyes. This acute sensitivity only makes his unconventional home life more difficult: His father comes to visit him once a year, and he can hardly remember his mother, who, for unclear reasons, keeps herself away from her son. Everything changes when Bo Bo discovers the story of his parents’ great love, which threatens to break down in the whirlwind of political events, and of his mother’s mysterious sickness. Convinced that he can heal her and reunite their family, Bo Bo decides to set out in search of his parents. A gripping, heartwarming tale that takes the reader from Burma to New York and back, The Heart Remembers is a worthy conclusion to Jan-Philipp Sendker’s beloved series.


Weina Dai Randel

Weina Dai Randel is the award-winning author of four novels, Night Angels, The Last Rose of Shanghai, The Moon in the Palace and The Empress of Bright Moon, a historical duology about Wu Zetian, China's only female emperor. Weina is the winner of the RWA RITA Award, a National Jewish Book Awards finalist, and a two-time Goodreads Choice Award nominee. Her books have been translated into twelve languages. Born in China, Weina came to the United States at 24, when she switched to English and began to speak, write and dream in her second language. She holds an MA in English from Texas Woman's University in Texas. She has worked as the subject-matter expert for Southern New Hampshire University's MFA program and as an adjunct professor. Interviews with Weina have appeared on WFAA's Good Morning Texas and in such publications as World Literature Today, China Daily, The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, and Los Angeles Review of Books. After living in Texas for years, Weina now resides in Boston with her loving husband, two children, and a family of chipmunks in the backyard.

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