May: AAPI Heritage Month
Books for all ages, written by Asian American and Pacific Islander authors.
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32 products
32 products
By: Abdi Nazemian (Author), 2020, Paperback
Stonewall Honor Book * A Time Magazine Best YA Book of All Time
"A book for warriors, divas, artists, queens, individuals, activists, trend setters, and anyone searching for the courage to be themselves.”—Mackenzi Lee, New York Times bestselling author of The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue
It’s 1989 in New York City, and for three teens, the world is changing.
Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. He’s terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows he’s gay, but all he knows of gay life are the media’s images of men dying of AIDS.
Judy is an aspiring fashion designer who worships her uncle Stephen, a gay man with AIDS who devotes his time to activism as a member of ACT UP. Judy has never imagined finding romance...until she falls for Reza and they start dating.
Art is Judy’s best friend, their school’s only out and proud teen. He’ll never be who his conservative parents want him to be, so he rebels by documenting the AIDS crisis through his photographs.
As Reza and Art grow closer, Reza struggles to find a way out of his deception that won’t break Judy’s heart—and destroy the most meaningful friendship he’s ever known.
This is a bighearted, sprawling epic about friendship and love and the revolutionary act of living life to the fullest in the face of impossible odds.
By: Jes and Cin Wibowo (Author, Illustrator), 2024, Paperback, Graphic Novel
For fans of The Witch Boy and Squished, Lunar Boy is a must-have heartwarming coming-of-age graphic novel about a young boy from the moon who discovers a home in the most unlikely places, from debut twin creators Jes and Cin Wibowo.
Indu, a boy from the moon, feels like he doesn’t belong. He hasn’t since he and his adoptive mom disembarked from their spaceship—their home—to live on Earth with their new blended family. The kids at school think he’s weird, he has a crush on his pen pal who might not like him back, and his stepfamily doesn’t seem to know what to do with him. Worst of all, Indu can’t even talk to his mom about how he’s feeling because she’s so busy.
In a moment of loneliness, Indu calls out to the moon, begging them to take him back. And against all odds, the moon hears him and agrees to bring him home on the first day of the New Year. But as the promised day draws nearer, Indu finds friendship in unlikely places and discovers that home is more than where you come from. And when the moon calls again, Indu must decide: Is he willing to give up what he’s just found?
By: Erika Lee (Author), Christina Soontornvat (Author), 2024, Hardcover
“Powerful. . . . Made in Asian America isn’t just about the past. It’s about the history being made right now by young people, inspired by the Asian Americans who came before them to ensure that our stories are not only heard, but also remembered.” —Paula Yoo, The New York Times Book Review
From three-time Newbery Honoree Christina Soontornvat and award-winning historian Erika Lee comes a middle grade nonfiction that shines a light on the generations of Asian Americans who have transformed the United States and who continue to shape what it means to be American.
Asian American history is not made up of one single story. It’s many. And it’s a story that too often goes untold.
It begins centuries before America even exists as a nation. It is connected to the histories of Western conquest and colonialism. It’s a story of migration; of people and families crossing the Pacific Ocean in search of escape, opportunity, and new beginnings.
It is also the story of race and racism. Of being labeled an immigrant invasion, unfit to become citizens, and being banned, deported, and incarcerated. Of being blamed for bringing diseases into the country.
And it is a story of bravery and hope. It is the story of heroes who fought for equality in the courts, on the streets, and in the schools, and who continue to fight in solidarity with others doing the same.
This book is a stirring account of the ordinary people and extraordinary acts that made Asian America and the young people who are remaking America today.
By: Abdi Nazemian (Author), 2024, Paperback
Stonewall Book Award Winner * A Best Book of the Year from the Guardian, ALA Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and BookPage
From the award–winning author of Like a Love Story comes a sweeping story of three generations of boys in the same Iranian family. Perfect for fans of Last Night at the Telegraph Club and Darius the Great Is Not Okay.
2019. Moud is an out gay teen living in Los Angeles with his distant father, Saeed. When Moud gets the news that his grandfather in Iran is dying, he accompanies his dad to Tehran, where the revelation of family secrets will force Moud into a new understanding of his history, his culture, and himself.
1978. Saeed is an engineering student with a promising future ahead of him in Tehran. But when his parents discover his involvement in the country’s burgeoning revolution, they send him to safety in America, a country Saeed despises. And even worse—he’s forced to live with the American grandmother he never knew existed.
1939. Bobby, the son of a calculating Hollywood stage mother, lands a coveted MGM studio contract. But the fairy-tale world of glamour he’s thrust into has a dark side.
Set against the backdrop of Tehran and Los Angeles, this tale of intergenerational trauma and love is an ode to the fragile bonds of family, the hidden secrets of history, and all the beautiful moments that make us who we are today.
A CCBC 2024 Choices for the Fiction for Young Adult category!
By: Adiba Jaigirdar (Author), 2024, Hardcover
Ex-best-friends-turned-rivals team up to beat and expose the guy they've been dating, in this romance perfect for fans of She Gets the Girl and "highly recommended" by School Library Journalin a starred review!
Meghna Rahman is tired of constantly being compared to her infuriatingly perfect ex best friend, Rani, who always makes it into the Young Scientist Exhibition. This year, Meghna is finally accepted into the competition, but doesn't make it to the final round like her boyfriend Zak does. And, of course, Rani too.
Rani Choudhury is tired of feeling like she doesn’t have much say in her life―not when it comes to how her mom wants her to act or how her parents encourage her to date close family friend Zak. She would much rather focus on her coding, especially once she's chosen to compete in the European Young Scientist Exhibition.
When Meghna and Rani figure out that Zak has been playing them both, they decide to do something no one would see coming: they team up. They’ll compete in the EYSE as partners, creating an app that exposes cheaters and a project that exposes Zak. But with years of silence and pressure between them, working together will prove difficult. Especially once they start to go from rivals to friends and realize their feelings may be even more than platonic...
This is a book of fiction, but it deals with real issues including instances of colorism, sexism, gaslighting, cheating and cheating partners.
By: Shelley Parker-Chan (Author), 2022, Paperback
By: Tom Pyun (Author), 2024, Paperback
First comes surrogacy, then comes the messy gay breakup in Tom Pyun’s tragi-comic debut novel that asks, is it ever too late to finally face yourself and grow up?
Winston Kang and Jared Cahill seem like the perfect couple. When they check-in for their flight to Cambodia, where they’re headed to meet the surrogate carrying their baby girl, even the woman at the airline counter recognizes it: “I’m so happy that marriage is legal for you guys,” she says.
But while Jared is already planning for their second kid—half white like him, half Korean like Wynn—Wynn isn't ready to give up his dreams of becoming a hip-hop dancer to become "the hostage of a crying, pooping terrorist." So he does what anyone in his position would do: He leaves Jared at the airport.
Wynn sets off on a journey around the globe, trying to figure out what it means to put himself first, from auditioning for Misty Espinoza’s comeback tour to organizing a Prince-themed flash mob. Oceans away, Jared starts to panic that no one in his life can talk to Meryl about her period or what it’s like to grow up Asian American.
Told in alternating points of view, Pyun’s sardonic and addictive page-turner confronts questions of race, identity, and privilege, and facing the question of whether it’s ever too late to finally face yourself and grow up.
By: Shuang-zi Yang (Author), 2024, Paperback
WINNER OF THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE
A bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history, and power
May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.
Soon a Taiwanese woman―who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name―is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is.
Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.
By: Vivek Shraya (Author), Rajna Perra (Illustrator), 2016, Hardcover, Picture Book
In this beautiful children’s picture book by Vivek Shraya, author of the acclaimed God Loves Hair, a five-year-old South Asian boy becomes fascinated with his mother’s bindi, the red dot commonly worn by Hindu women to indicate the point at which creation begins, and wishes to have one of his own. Rather than chastise her son, she agrees to it, and teaches him about its cultural significance, allowing the boy to discover the magic of the bindi, which in turn gives him permission to be more fully himself.
Beautifully illustrated by Rajni Perera, The Boy & the Bindi is a joyful celebration of gender and cultural difference.
Vivek Shraya is a writer, musician, performer, and filmmaker. His body of work includes twelve albums, four short films, and four books which include God Loves Hair, She of the Mountains, and even this page is white. He has read and performed at shows, festivals, and post-secondary institutions internationally. He lives in Toronto.
Rajni Perera is a Sri Lankan-born artist whose internationally showcased work floats between Western and immigrant culture. She lives in Toronto.
WINNER OF THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2021 BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, LIBRARY JOURNAL, BOOKLIST, AND THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
A ruthless princess and a powerful priestess come together to rewrite the fate of an empire in this “fiercely and unapologetically feminist tale of endurance and revolution set against a gorgeous, unique magical world” (S. A. Chakraborty, author of the The City of Brass).
Exiled by her despotic brother, princess Malini spends her days dreaming of vengeance while imprisoned in the Hirana: an ancient cliffside temple that was once the revered source of the magical deathless waters but is now little more than a decaying ruin.
The secrets of the Hirana call to Priya. But in order to keep the truth of her past safely hidden, she works as a servant in the loathed regent’s household and cleaning Malini’s chambers.
When Malini witnesses Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a ruthless princess seeking to steal a throne. The other a powerful priestess desperate to save her family. Together, they will set an empire ablaze.
Praise for The Jasmine Throne:
"Suri’s writing always brings me to another world; one full of wonders and terrors, where every detail feels intricately and carefully imagined." —R. F. Kuang, author of Babel
"Raises the bar for what epic fantasy should be." —Chloe Gong, author of These Violent Delights
"An intimate, complex, magical study of empire and the people caught in its bloody teeth. I loved it.” —Alix E. Harrow, author of The Once and Future Witches
"Suri’s incandescent feminist masterpiece hits like a steel fist inside a velvet glove. Simply magnificent." —Shelley Parker-Chan, author of She Who Became the Sun
"A fierce, heart-wrenching exploration of the value and danger of love in a world of politics and power." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Lush and stunning....Inspired by Indian epics, this sapphic fantasy will rip your heart out." —BuzzFeed News
By: Kyle Casey Chu (Author), 2025, Hardcover
Better Nate Than Ever meets Dumplin’ in this charming, poignant debut by Kyle Casey Chu, aka Panda Dulce, a founding queen of Drag Story Hour.
After making the buzzer-beating shot at the Georgia basketball state championships, Derrick Chan becomes the star of Bayard Middle School, and Derrick’s single dad could not be prouder. But there are parts of Derrick that no one knows about, like the toenail polish he wears under his basketball sneakers, his secret lip-sync performances in the bathroom mirror, and the feelings he’s developing for his best friend and teammate, JJ.
As the school year comes to a close, Derrick’s dad takes an out-of-town job and ships Derrick off to spend the summer with his estranged, eccentric grandmother, Claudia. Soon, Claudia introduces Derrick to the world of small-town southern beauty pageants, and Derrick suddenly feels he’s found where he belongs. But when the opportunity arises to compete in the town pageant, Derrick is forced to decide just how much of himself he’s ready to show the world.
Can he learn to love and accept the most unique parts of himself? And what will happen if others—like his father and JJ—can’t do the same?
By: Simone Jimenez (Author), 2023, Paperback
Two warriors shepherd an ancient god across a broken land to end the tyrannical reign of a royal family in this epic fantasy from the author of The Vanished Birds.
“A beguiling fantasy not to be missed.”—Evelyn Skye, New York Times bestselling author of The Crown’s Game
WINNER OF THE IAFA CRAWFORD AWARD • WINNER OF THE BRITISH FANTASY AWARD • SHORTLISTED FOR THE URSULA K. LE GUIN AWARD • SHORTLISTED FOR THE IGNYTE AWARD
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, Vulture, Polygon, She Reads, Gizmodo, Kirkus Reviews, The Quill to Live
The people suffer under the centuries-long rule of the Moon Throne. The royal family—the despotic emperor and his monstrous sons, the Three Terrors—hold the countryside in their choking grip. They bleed the land and oppress the citizens with the frightful powers they inherited from the god locked under their palace.
But that god cannot be contained forever.
With the aid of Jun, a guard broken by his guilt-stricken past, and Keema, an outcast fighting for his future, the god escapes from her royal captivity and flees from her own children, the triplet Terrors who would drag her back to her unholy prison. And so it is that she embarks with her young companions on a five-day pilgrimage in search of freedom—and a way to end the Moon Throne forever. The journey ahead will be more dangerous than any of them could have imagined.
Both a sweeping adventure story and an intimate exploration of identity, legacy, and belonging, The Spear Cuts Through Water is an ambitious and profound saga that will transport and transform you—and is like nothing you’ve ever read before.
A wandering fortune teller finds an unexpected family in this warm and wonderful debut fantasy, perfect for readers of Travis Baldree and Sangu Mandanna.
Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells "small" fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences…
Even if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a "knead" for adventure, and—of course—a slightly magical cat.
Tao starts down a new path with companions as big-hearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past close in—and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.
Named A Most Anticipated Book by: LitHub * Vulture * Time * A PW 2022 Holiday Gift Pick
One of: Time's "100 Must-Read Books of 2022" * NPR's 2022 "Books We Love" Vulture's "10 Best Books of 2022"
A Goodreads Readers Choice Award Semifinalist
From acclaimed poet Franny Choi comes a poetry collection for the ends of worlds—past, present, and future. Choi’s third book features poems about historical and impending apocalypses, alongside musings on our responsibilities to each other and visions for our collective survival.
Many have called our time dystopian. But The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On reminds us that apocalypse has already come in myriad ways for marginalized peoples.
With lyric and tonal dexterity, these poems spin backwards and forwards in time--from Korean comfort women during World War II, to the precipice of climate crisis, to children wandering a museum in the future. These poems explore narrative distances and queer linearity, investigating on microscopic scales before soaring towards the universal. As she wrestles with the daily griefs and distances of this apocalyptic world, Choi also imagines what togetherness--between Black and Asian and other marginalized communities, between living organisms, between children of calamity and conquest--could look like. Bringing together Choi's signature speculative imagination with even greater musicality than her previous work, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On ultimately charts new paths toward hope in the aftermaths, and visions for our collective survival.
By: George Takei (Author), Justin Eisinger (Author), Steven Scott (Author), Harmony Becker (Illustrator), 2019, Paperback
A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon -- and America itself -- in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love.
George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's -- and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future.
In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten "relocation centers," hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard.
They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.
What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do? To answer these questions, George Takei joins co-writers Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker for the journey of a lifetime.