Booklists: suggested reading

 

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Asian American Fiction Booklist

 

Books by and about Asian Americans.

 

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.

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• Monkey Bridge
  Author: Cao, Lan
  Publisher: Viking List Price: $23.95 ISBN: 0670873675 Date: 1997
  BooklistPW
  Monkey Bridge tells two parallel, interlocked stories: one left in a secret journal by a Vietnamese mother who cannot make the transition between the land whose ghosts still haunt her and her home in the United States; the other is told by her teenaged daughter, who is caught in her own right of passage, coming of age in America after leaving Saigon in 1975.
• Hunger: A Novella and Stories
  Author: Chang, Lan
  Publisher: W.W. Norton List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0393046648 Date: 1998
  PW
  With powerful intensity, Lan Samantha Chang explores the experience of being Asian American.
  
• Fade to Clear: Allen Choice
  Author: Chang, Leonard
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312308450 Date: 2004
  Kirkus
  As Allen Choice investigates the abduction of his ex-lover's niece, he unearths links to drug smuggling and money laundering, and becomes the target of even deadlier forces.
  Updated 2.10.04
• Monkey King
  Chao, Patricia
  Publisher: Harpercollins List Price: $24 ISBN: 006018681x Date: 1997
  Publishers Weekly
  
• Troublemaker and Other Saints
  Author: Chiu, Christina
  Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399147152 Date: 2001
  PWKirkus
  Old and young, East and West, humor and pain collide in this debut novel as the life of one character weaves into that of another, and then another, bringing unlikely figures face to face, strengthening and illuminating each other in surprising ways.
  
• American Woman
  Author: Choi, Susan
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060542217 Date: 2003
  LJ
  American Woman, this gifted writer's second book, is a novel of even greater scope and dramatic complexity, about a young Japanese-American radical caught in the militant underground of the mid-1970s. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 7.1.03
• The Jade Peony
  Choy, Wayson
  Publisher: Picador List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0312155565 Date: 1997
  Publishers WeeklyKirkus
  ALA RUSA Notable
  
• Song of the Exile
  Author: Davenport, Kiana
  Publisher: Ballantine List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0345425391 Date: 1999
  Booklist
  From New Orleans to Paris to Shanghai, through the horrors of Pearl Harbor, Nazi occupation in Europe, Japanese prison camps, and beyond to Hawaii's struggle toward statehood, this stunningly original novel paints a mesmerizing portrait of the native Hawaiian peoples and their history.
  Read-alike suggestion: Historical Fiction Stars
• Hullaballo in the Guava Orchard
  Author: Desai, Kiran
  Publisher: Atlantic List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0871137119 Date: 1998
  KirkusLJ
  NYTBR Notable, LJ Best First Novel
  Kiran Desai offers a wryly hilarious and poignant story of life, love, and family relationships, simultaneously capturing the vivid culture of the Indian subcontinent and the universal intricacies of human experience.
  Suggested Reading: Stars of India
  
• Sister of My Heart
  Author: Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee
  Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385489501 Date: 1999
  PW
  Books for the Teen Age
  From the bestselling author of The Mistress of Spices comes a passionate novel about the extraordinary bond between two sisters and the family secrets, jealousies, and loves that threaten to tear them apart.
  Suggested Reading: Stars of India
  
• The Vine of Desire
  Author: Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385497296 Date: 2002
  PW
  The Vine of Desire continues the story of Anju and Sudha, the two young women at the center of Divakaruni's bestselling novel Sister of My Heart. Far from Calcutta, the city of their childhood, and after a year of living separate lives, Anju and Sudha rekindle their friendship in America.
  Suggested Reading: Stars of India
  
• Inheritance
  Author: Ganesan, Indira
  Publisher: Knopf $ 22 ISBN: 0679434429 Date: 1998
  Booklist
  Best Books for Teen Readers
  
• Mona in the Promised Land
  Author: Jen, Gish
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0679445897Date: 1996
  PW
  NYTBR Notable
  
  
• Under the Red Flag: Stories
  Author: Jin, Ha
  Publisher: University of Georgia $ 22.95 ISBN: 0820319392 Date: 1997
  BooklistKirkus
  Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction, Under the Red Flag features twelve stories which take place during China's Cultural Revolution - stories which display the earnestness and grandeur of human folly and, in a larger sense, form a moral history of a time and a place.
  
• In the Pond
  Author: Jin, Ha
  Publisher: Zoland $ 20 ISBN: 0944072925 Date: 1998
  KirkusPW
  
• Waiting
  Author: Jin, Ha
  Publisher: Pantheon List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0385486529 Date: 1999
  PWKirkus
  PW Best Books
  Lin Kong is a devoted doctor in love with a modern young woman - a nurse who is educated, clever, and vivid. The only complication is the wife to whom he was married when they were very young - a tiny woman, humble and touchingly loyal, whom he visits in order to ask, again and again, for divorce.
  
• The Bridegroom: Stories
  Author: Jin, Ha
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 22 ISBN: 0375420673 Date: 2000
  KirkusPW
  NYRBR Notable
  From the National Book Award-winning author of Waiting comes a new collection of short fiction that confirms Ha Jin's reputation as a master storyteller. These 12 stories bring vividly to life the daily dramas of Chinese men and women who are starting to feel the influence of the West while still immersed in a society that attempts to control their every move and thought.
  
• The Crazed
  Author: Jin, Ha
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 24 ISBN: 0375421815 Date: 2002
  BooklistPW
  A luminous new novel from Ha Jin--his first since the universally praised, national Book Award-winning, and bestselling Waiting. This time Jin takes on contemporary China and its conflicts between convention and individualism.
  
• Interpreter of Maladies
  Author: Lahiri, Jhumpa
  Publisher: Mariner List Price: $ 12 (trade paper) ISBN: 039592720x Date: 1999
  Kirkus
  PW Best Books, Pulitzer Prize
  Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and a baffling new world, the characters in Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of their culture and generations.
  Suggested Reading: Stars of India
  
• Native Speaker
  Author: Lee, Chang-Rae
  Publisher: Putnam $ 22.95 ISBN: 1573220019 Date: 1995
  KirkusPW
  ALA RUSA Notable
  
• Aloft
  Author: Lee, Chang-Rae
  Publisher: Riverhead $ 23.95 ISBN: 1573222631 Date: 2004
  KirkusBooklistPW
  Lee burst on the scene with Native Speaker, which won numerous awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award. Now, with Aloft, Lee has expanded his range and proves himself a master storyteller, able to observe his characters' flaws and weaknesses and, at the same time, celebrate their humanity.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 3.1.04
• Yellow: Stories
  Author: Lee, Don
  Publisher: Norton $ 22.95 ISBN: 0393025624 Date: 2001
  PWBooklist
  Superb, unpredictable stories capture Asian-American lives with mordant with and unsentimental sympathy. A literary descendant of Dubliners and Winesburg, Ohio, Don Lee's Yellow is set in the fictional California coastal town of Rosarita Bay, whose inhabitants face not only fears of being ethnically "yellow" but also the universal terrors of love, failure, and abandonment.
  
• Country of Origin
  Author: Lee, Don
  Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393058123 Date: 2004
  PW
  The mystery of an American woman's disappearance in Tokyo is intertwined with the mystery of her origins. Her best chance at being found may lie in the improbable hands of a neurotic Japanese cop ridiculed by his peers.
  Updated 4.12.04
• The Gangster We Are All Looking For
  Author: Le, Thi Diem Thuy
  Publisher: Knopf $ 18 ISBN: 0375400184 Date: 2003
  Kirkus
  A momentous literary debut: the life of a Vietnamese family in America luminously observed through the knowing eyes of a child. The Gangster We Are All Looking For is an authentically original story of finding one's place and voice in America.
  Suggested Reading: First Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 2.23.03
• Middle Son
  Author: Lida, Deborah
  Publisher: Algonquin $18.95 ISBN: 1565121198 Date: 1996
  PW
  Best Books for Young Adults, ALA Guide to Best Reading
  
• The Barbarians Are Coming
  Author: Long, David Wong
  Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399146032 Date: 2000
  PWKirkusLJ
  In a tale that alternates between black comedy and out-and-out slapstick, Louie explores the painful alienation between a Chinese-American man and his immigrant father - a conflict that is deepened by the son's decision to become a chef instead of a doctor.
  Suggested Reading: Black Humor Reading List | All Stars
• Becoming Madame Mao
  Author: Min, Anchee
  Publisher: Houghton $ 25 ISBN: 0681004076 Date: 2000
  Library JournalBooklistPW
  Booklist Editors' Choice
  From the bestselling author of Red Azalea comes a strikingly original, erotically charged portrayal of Madame Mao, one of the most vilified women of the 20th century.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars
  
• Empress Orchid
  Author: Min, Anchee
  Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 0618068872 Date: 2004
  Booklist
  Empress Orchid is the story of a fascinating, strong-willed woman who for generations has been vilified as a grand seductress and murderer. Min draws a vivid portrait of a flawed yet utterly compelling woman and, through her life, of the world of the Chinese court and the sexual and political lives of the royal concubines.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
  Updated 11.25.03
• Eating Chinese Food Naked
  Author: Ng, Mei
  Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 21 ISBN: 0684814161 Date: 1998
  Booklist
  A radiant and powerful first novel of a young Chinese American woman who is torn between her role as a dutiful daughter and being a liberated college graduate.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  
• When the Emperor was Divine
  Author: Otsuka, Julie
  Publisher: Knopf $ 18 ISBN: 0375414290 Date: 2002
  PWLibrary JournalBooklist
  Otsuka's commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any previously written--a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and an unmistakably resonant lesson for our times.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | World War Fiction Stars | First Fiction Debuts | All Stars Lists
  
• All Over Creation
  Author: Ozeki, Ruth L.
  Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670030910 Date: 2003
  KirkusPWBooklist
  From the author of My Year of Meats comes the story of a Japanese-American prodigal daughter just trying to make sense of it all as the unceasing cycle of all creation continues around her.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 2.20.03
• I Dream of Microwaves
  Author: Rahman, Imad
  Publisher: FSG $ 23 ISBN: 0374174016 Date: 2004
  Booklist
  Absurd and unerringly close to the bone, this bitingly funny debut story collection trails a Pakistani-American actor searching for a way to play himself in "real, actual life."
  Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 4.27.04
• Bonesetter's Daughter
  Author: Tan, Amy
  Publisher: Putnam $ 25.95 ISBN: 0399146431 Date: 2001
  PWBooklistKirkus
  Set in contemporary San Francisco and in a Chinese village where Peking Man is unearthed, The Bonesetter's Daughter is an excavation of the human spirit: the past, its deepest wounds, its most profound hopes. This is the story of LuLing Young, who searches for the name of her mother, the daughter of the famous Bonesetter from the Mouth of the Mountain. The story conjures the pain of broken dreams, the power of myths, and the strength of love that enables us to recover in memory what we have lost in grief.
  Updated 12/18/00
• All That Is gone
  Author: Toer, Pramoedya Ananta
  Publisher: Hyperion $ 23.95 ISBN: 1401366635 Date: 2004
  Booklist
  Updated 2.5.04
• The Barbarians Are Coming
  Author: Long, David Wong
  Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399146032 Date: 2000
  PWKirkusLJ
  In a tale that alternates between black comedy and out-and-out slapstick, Louie explores the painful alienation between a Chinese-American man and his immigrant father - a conflict that is deepened by the son's decision to become a chef instead of a doctor.
  Suggested Reading: Black Humor Reading List
• Blu's Hanging
  Yamanaka, Lois-Ann
  Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux List Price: $22 ISBN: 0374114994 Date: 1997
  Publishers Weekly
  ALA RUSA Notable
  The Pushcart Prize-winning author of Wild Meat and Bully Burgers now tells the bittersweet story of a ragtag family of orphans reeling from the death of their mother, trying to stay together in the face of almost insurmountable odds.