Virtually Browse Our Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month Display
Everything Ancient Was Once New
DU624.65 .C37 2021
Intertwining personal narrative with rigorous research and analysis, Case weaves the past and the present together, reflecting on ancient concepts and their continued relevance in movements to protect lands, waters, and oceans; to fight for social justice; to reexamine our responsibilities to each other across the Pacific region; and to open space for continued dialogue on what it means to be Indigenous when at home and when away. Everything Ancient Was Once New journeys to and from Kahiki, offering readers a sanctuary for reflection, deep learning, and continued dreaming with the past, in the present, and far into the future.
Crying in H Mart
ML420.Z3913A3 2021
From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean-American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity. In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.
You're That Bitch
PN4587.2.R63 A3 2023
Hilarious and earnest, this collection of essays, and never-before-seen photos goes far beyond what we know of Bretman Rock from social media. You're That Bitch welcomes you into Bretman Rock's world--from how his childhood in the Philippines, his family, Filipino culture, and being a first-generation immigrant helped shape him into who he is today. Peek into how Bretman became a social media sensation at the precocious age of 14, balancing living a glamorous jet-setting lifestyle on weekends while still serving lunch at his school's cafeteria, running as a varsity track-star, and making honor roll during the week. With his signature honesty, this is an unfiltered and unprecedented look at what it means to be one of the first digital celebrities and that bitch---from dealing with cancel culture, drama and heartbreak, to what it means to love yourself and your community.
Year of the Tiger
RC935.A8 W66 2022
In Chinese culture, the tiger is deeply revered for its confidence, passion, ambition, and ferocity. That same fighting spirit resides in Alice Wong. 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. From her love of food and pop culture to her unwavering commitment to dismantling systemic ableism, Alice shares her thoughts on creativity, access, power, care, the pandemic, mortality, and the future. Filled with incisive wit, joy, and rage, Wong's Year of the Tiger will galvanize readers with big cat energy.
The Souls of Yellow Folk
E184.A75Y38 2018
One of the most acclaimed essayists of his generation, Wesley Yang writes about race and sex without the jargon, formulas, and polite lies that bore us all. His powerful debut, The Souls of Yellow Folk, does more than collect a decade's worth of cult-reputation essays--it corrals new American herds of pickup artists, school shooters, mandarin zombies, and immigrant strivers, and exposes them to scrutiny, empathy, and polemical force. Yang catches these ugly trends early because he has felt at various times implicated in them, and he does not exempt himself from his radical honesty. His essays retain the thrill of discovery, the wary eye of the first explorer, and the rueful admission of the first exposed.
Minor Feelings
E184 .O6H64 2020
Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative--and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world. Binding these essays together is Hong's theory of "minor feelings." A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche--and of a writer's search to both uncover and speak the truth.
Facing the Mountain
D769.31 442nd .B76 2022
In the days and months after Pearl Harbor, the lives of Japanese Americans across the continent and Hawaii were changed forever. In this unforgettable chronicle of war-time America and the battlefields of Europe, Daniel James Brown portrays the journey of Rudy Tokiwa, Fred Shiosaki, and Kats Miho, who volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible. Whether fighting on battlefields or in courtrooms, these were Americans under unprecedented strain, doing what Americans do best--striving, resisting, pushing back, rising up, standing on principle, laying down their lives, and enduring.
Under the Naga Tail
DS554.83.T35 A3 2023
Forced from his home by the Khmer Rouge, teenager Mae Taing struggles to endure years of backbreaking work, constant starvation, and ruthless cruelty from his captors. Mae risks torture and death to escape into the dark tropical jungles, trekking across a relentless wilderness. When Mae is able to overcome unthinkable odds in the hopes of reuniting with his family, fate takes a cruel turn as he becomes trapped as a refugee, surrounded by countless deadly landmines. Caught up in the terror once more, it is only his willpower to survive and dreams of a better country that give Mae the strength to face the dangers ahead. This gripping and inspiring memoir is not merely an incredible story of survival, but a testament to the human spirit's capacity in us all to endure and prevail in spite of great adversity.
Tastes Like War
E184.K6 C4733 2021
Grace M. Cho grew up as the daughter of a white American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad. They were one of few immigrants in a xenophobic small town during the Cold War, where identity was politicized by everyday details--language, cultural references, memories, and food. When Grace was fifteen, her dynamic mother experienced the onset of schizophrenia. Part food memoir, part sociological investigation, Tastes Like War is a hybrid text about a daughter's search through intimate and global history for the roots of her mother's schizophrenia. Grace discovered not only the things that broke the brilliant, complicated woman who raised her--but also the things that kept her alive
From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry
E184.A75 Y56 2021
America in 1982: Japanese car companies are on the rise and believed to be putting U.S. autoworkers out of their jobs. Anti-Asian American sentiment simmers. A bar fight turns fatal, leaving a Chinese American man, Vincent Chin, beaten to death at the hands of two white men, an autoworker and his stepson. From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry examines the killing and the trial and verdicts that followed. When a manslaughter led to only a $3,000 fine and three years' probation, outrage ensued. The protests that followed led to a federal civil rights trial--the first involving a crime against an Asian American--and galvanized what came to be known as the Asian American movement. From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry is a suspenseful, nuanced, and authoritative portrait of a pivotal moment in civil rights history, and a man who became a symbol against hatred and racism.
Inscrutable Belongings
Inscrutable Belongings brings together formalist and contextual modes of critique to consider narrative strategies that emerge in queer Asian North American literature. Collectively, the texts that Sohn examines bring to mind foundational struggles for queer Asian North Americans (and other socially marginalized groups) and confront a broad range of issues, including interracial desire, the AIDS/HIV epidemic, transnational mobility, and postcolonial trauma. Sohn's work makes clear that for such writers and their imagined communities, questions of survival, kinship, and narrative development are more than representational--they are directly tied to lived experience.
The Namesake
PS3562.A316 N36 2004
Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world--conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. In The Namesake, the Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri brilliantly illuminates the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations.