PEOPLE Picks Our Favorite Memoirs, Fiction and Nonfiction Books by Asian Authors

‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’ by Ocean Vuong

Written as a novel-length letter from a poet to his illiterate mother, Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a moving exploration of family ties, trauma and love. The narrator, Little Dog, is a gay, Vietnamese-American poet grappling with the past. Little Dog combs through his family’s history, beginning with his grandmother’s experience during the Vietnam War. Vuong’s critically-acclaimed novel is worth the hype.

‘Babel’ by R.F. Kuang

From one of the most celebrated literary voices of the decade comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic. The novel follows Robin Swift, an orphan taken from China and swept off to England to learn languages from Professor Lovell, his mysterious benefactor.

Robin’s goal is to enroll in Oxford University’s Royal Institute of Translation — also known as Babel. But as a Chinese boy raised in England, Robin finds he’s caught in between two worlds. R.F. Kuang’s powerful novel covers imperialism, revolution and the history of the British Empire.

‘First Comes Like’ by Alisha Rai

Influencer Jia Ahmed is focused on building her beauty empire and proving herself to her opinionated family when Bollywood star Dev Dixit slides into her DMs. The problem? It’s not really Dev who’s messaging Jia.

But the real Dev isn’t a stranger to drama, so he’s happy to fake-date Jia to please her family and the press. As the whole world becomes captivated with their picture-perfect relationship, Jia can’t help but to wonder if they could ever be more.

‘The Sense of Wonder’ by Matthew Salesses

On the court, breakout basketball star Won Lee captivates fans by winning seven straight games. But off the court, he struggles to gain the respect of his coaches and teammates. Based on NBA star Jeremy Lin’s legendary winning streak in 2012— and subsequent racist backlash —The Sense of Wonder explores what it means to be Asian American in the sports and entertainment industries.

‘Last Night at the Telegraph Club’ by Malinda Lo

Set in the 1950s in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Last Night at the Telegraph Club follows 17-year-old Lily Hu as she discovers her sexuality and finds love. Though the world may not be a safe place for a girl like Lily, she and Kath take refuge under the neon lights of Telegraph Club, a lesbian bar. Gracefully tackling race and queerness in midcentury America, Lo’s National Book Award-winning young adult novel is deeply moving.

‘Beasts of a Little Land’ by Juhea Kim

In Japanese-occupied Korea, a local hunter saves a young Japanese officer from a tiger. That act sets off a historical epic spanning decades.

As a young girl, Jade is sold by her impoverished family to a courtesan school in Seoul. There, she meets JungHo, who made his way down to Seoul after his father’s death. JungHo and Jade weave in and out of each other’s lives throughout Korea’s fight for independence.

‘The Ministry of Time’ by Kaliane Bradley

In this near-future dystopia, a civil servant is tasked with an unusual job — integrating Commander Graham Gore of the doomed 1845 Arctic expedition into the present world. Gore has been brought to the present from the 19th century as part of a mysterious new government initiative.

By the time the true nature of the government’s plans have come to light, Gore and the narrator have fallen hopelessly in love. Kaliane Bradley’s wholly original debut novel is a delightful blend of genres and tropes.

‘The Vegetarian’ by Han Kang

When Yeong-hye decides to become a vegetarian, her life fractures in unpredictable ways. As her husband, sister and brother-in-law fight to regain control over Yeong-hye, she defends her choice — at all costs. Kang’s critically acclaimed novel is atmospheric and unexpected.

‘Breasts and Eggs’ by Mieko Kawakami

Breasts and Eggs follows three women as they grapple with womanhood in contemporary Japan. Natsu, accompanied by her older sister’s daughter goes on a hunt for an affordable breast enhancement surgery. Ten years later, Natsu returns to her hometown to contemplate becoming a mother herself.

‘Never Let Me Go’ by Kazuo Ishiguro

As children, Kathy, Tommy and Ruth were students together at Hailsham, a boarding school in the English countryside. Their teacher emphasizes how special the children are and how they are needed to produce art for a mysterious gallery. Years later, when Tommy and Ruth reenter Kathy’s life, she’s forced to reckon the truth of Hailsham.

‘Days at the Morisaki Bookshop’ by Satoshi Yagisawa

Though she’s never been a big reader, Takako’s family has owned a bookstore for three generations. But when her boyfriend reveals he’s marrying someone else, Takako agrees to live rent-free above the bookstore with her eccentric uncle, Satoru. While living and working together at the bookstore, Satoru and Takako discover they have more in common than they think in this heartwarming novel.

‘The Wind Up Bird Chronicle’ by Haruki Murakami

When a young man in the Tokyo suburbs goes looking for his wife’s cat, he instead finds himself in an netherworld beneath the city’s surface. There, he encounters allies and antagonists alike. This surreal novel from one of Japan’s most beloved novelists is poignant and gripping.

‘Crying in H Mart’ by Michelle Zauner

Michelle Zauner’s breakout 2021 memoir established the Japanese Breakfast singer as not only a gifted indie pop act, but an accomplished writer. Crying in H Mart explores the the death of Zauner’s mother to cancer. Tightly written and deeply emotional, the memoir is a powerful account of trauma and grief.

‘The Joy Luck Club’ by Amy Tan

In 1949, four Chinese women who recently immigrated to San Francisco begin meeting to play mahjong and share stories. The women, who call themselves the Joy Luck Club, share their hopes and fears for their daughters’ futures. Though their American daughters think they have no use for their mothers’ advice, their inner struggles reveal just how much the two generations have in common.The Joy Luck Club is a classic novel exploring family, immigration and the bonds that hold us together.

https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Stories-Jhumpa-Lahiri/dp/0593469909/ref=sr_1_1?

In Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story collection, the city of Rome is the central character. But though all the people it follows live in Rome, many weren’t born there, and Lahiri explores the concept of “foreignness” with a graceful depth.

‘Real Americans’ by Rachel Khong

We’ve read versions of this story before, but not like this: Poor girl meets rich boy, they fall in love, and well, happily-ever-after doesn’t quite arrive. Lily isn’t just poor; she’s the daughter of Chinese immigrants who moves to an isolated island with her son Nick after breaking contact with her ex Matthew. Her ex comes from the kind of money that’s also a virus. When Nick sets off to find his long-lost father, this compelling book becomes an epic investigation into class, belonging and inheritance.

‘Memory Piece’ by Lisa Ko

This strangely beautiful novel follows three outcasts whose artistic collaboration draws them together as teens in the 1980s. As time goes on and the world pulls them in different directions, their paths diverge. By the 2040s, they’re forced to confront their values, the meaning of success and what they really hold dear when the world isn’t what it once was.

‘Exhibit’ by R.O. Kwon

When Jin Han meets Lidija Jung at a lavish party, both of their worlds change irrevocably. Jin, a photographer, is unmoored in her work, her marriage to her college love Philip and her sense of identity. Lidija is an enigmatic, injured ballerina on hiatus. The two forge a deep connection that twines them closer and closer in this bewitching novel that reveals the depths of desire, ambition and how much we can risk before losing everything.

‘Yellowface’ by R.F. Kuang

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu are on parallel tracks, at first. But Athena’s star is on the rise, and nobody wants to read June’s work. That is, until Athena dies in a freak accident and June steals Athena’s just-finished manuscript, a novel about Chinese laborers during World War I. And yeah, June edits and sells it as her own. Then she lets her publisher rebrand her as the ambiguously ethnic Juniper Song. Who’s she hurting as long as the untold stories get told… right? This funny, immersive novel asks who gets to own stories, and it’s a delightful, necessary read.

‘Sunshine Nails’ by Mai Nguyen

Vietnamese refugees Debbie and Phil Tran have made a home for themselves in Toronto on the backs of their family nail salon. Then, their landlord jacks up the rent, an uber-chic nail salon chain opens across the street and they’re suddenly at risk of losing everything. Their daughter, Jessica, is back home after a breakup and losing her job, so they enlist her and their son, Dustin, and niece, Thuy, in a little light sabotage. A delicious romp rife with the blurry lines between right and wrong.

‘Dial A. For Aunties’ by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Meddy Chan doesn’t mean to kill her blind date. And when she calls her mother for help, and her mother brings along her busybody aunties to pitch in, everything gets hilariously complicated.

What do you get when you take a dead body in a cake cooler, add a whole bunch of slapstick attempts to cover it up at the hoity-toity island wedding the Chan family is catering and then blend in Meddy’s biggest heartbreak showing up on the scene? A book more delectable than one of the Chan wedding cakes.

‘Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming’ by Ava Chin

In this resonant, deeply researched memoir, Ava Chin traces her origins as the daughter of a single mother in Queens back to the building in Manhattan’s Chinatown where so much of her family’s legacy lived. She follows the journey of family members who emigrated from the Pearl River Delta, delves into their backbreaking work on the transcontinental railroad and the brutal racism of frontier towns, then onward to the merchants, “paper son” refugees, activists and heads of the Chinese tong her relatives became, including how they struggled under and resisted the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. An essential read.

‘Dear Girls’ by Ali Wong

In this hilarious collection of essays from Beef actress Ali Wong, she shares the wisdom she’s learned from her life in comedy and tells some poignant and gut-busting stories from her life. Those include the rollercoaster that can be dating in New York City, reconnecting with her roots (and drinking snake blood) in Vietnam, growing up as a wild child in San Francisco and of course, parenting her two daughters. Read it with, or gift it to, a meaningful woman in your own life.

‘Pachinko’ by Min Jin Lee

In the early 1900s, a young Sunja, the favored daughter of a disabled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger in Korea. He promises to give her everything, but when she discovers she is pregnant—and that her lover is married—she won’t be bought.

Instead, she accepts a proposal from a gentle, sickly minister who’s heading to Japan. But rejecting her son’s powerful father and leaving her home has far-reaching ramifications in this sweeping, moving novel that carries us through generations and environs.

‘Out’ by Natsuo Kirino

A brutal murder in the sleepy Tokyo suburbs, an attempted cover-up and a journey into the dark underbelly of Japanese society, this book has everything thriller fans could possibly want. It’s darkly funny, starkly current and a wild ride of a tale chronicling how far friends will go for each other when the going gets rough.

‘Set On You’ by Amy Lea

Curvy fitness influencer Crystal Chen is all about breaking down stereotypes and not breaking in front of the trolls, but she’s feeling a little romantically fragile after her latest breakup. So she turns to her happy place: the gym. But then firefighter Scott Ritchie enters the scene, and the two of them find themselves in a battle of wills over the squat rack — and let’s be honest, there’s more going on between them than favoring the same equipment.

So when they run into each other at their grandparents’ engagement party, Crystal and Scott find themselves drawn even closer together, until a viral photo threatens to tear them apart. If you’re a sports rom-com fan, you’ll love this one.

‘The Duke Who Didn’t’ by Courtney Milan

Miss Chloe Fong is not here to play. After she gave her childhood sweetheart, Jeremy Wentworth, an ultimatum three years ago she hasn’t heard from him since. But now he’s returned and he’s determined to win her back and own his true nature as an indefatigable trickster.

There’s just one problem: He’s neglected to mention that he’s the Duke of Lansing and owns her entire village. As you might expect, the path to love definitely does not run smooth for them.

‘When Dimple Met Rishi’ by Sandhya Menon

Post-graduation, Dimple Shah is ready to get away from her family and spend the summer at a program for aspiring web developers, where she’ll finally get a respite from her mom harping on her finding the perfect Indian husband. Right?

Rishi Patel, on the other hand, is a romantic, so he’s fully on board when his parents reveal that his future wife is going to be at the same summer program he is. The Shahs and Patels have something up their sleeves, and how it plays out is up to their kids. A will-they, won’t-they that’s perfect for the first gasp of summer.

‘Interior Chinatown’ by Charles Yu

Actor Willis Wu is basically a prop in human form on the procedural cop show Black and White. He usually plays Generic Asian Man, or sometimes Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son on a really good day. He harbors big dreams of playing Kung Fu Guy — the pinnacle of acting success for guys like him.

That is, until he finds himself unexpectedly in the spotlight, which draws a beam to his own legacy, the secret history of Chinatown and more than Wu ever expected to discover. Film buffs and fans of moving, personal stories will love this one.

‘A Living Remedy’ by Nicole Chung

This lyrical, thought-provoking memoir asks a lot of the same questions many of us have found ourselves mulling over. Who is the “middle class” really? Who gets to define the “American dream?” And what does it mean to be there for each other, really there, in a society that’s increasingly fragmented?

Chung takes us to staggering depths of grief in this incisive look at the inequality that reaches to the very bedrock of American society and what community actually means.

‘The Sympathizer’ by Viet Thanh Nguyen

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has the propulsive pacing and suspense of a thriller with the sweeping scope of a masterful historical fiction and a wholly original plot to boot. It follows a communist double agent, a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who makes his way to Los Angeles after the Fall of Saigon. But while he seems like he’s working with other Vietnamese refugees to help them create a life for themselves in their new country, he’s secretly reporting back to the communists. Read this first, then watch the new HBO show of the same name.

‘Know My Name’ by Chanel Miller

Then known as Emily Doe, many remember Chanel Miller’s shocking victim impact statement on the heels of Brock Turner’s sentencing to just six months in county jail after sexually assaulting her. In this searing, revelatory memoir, Miller writes about her trauma, feeling ashamed and isolated in the aftermath and what she learned about our country, our culture and our criminal justice system.

‘Little Fires Everywhere’ by Celeste Ng

Two families from different economic backgrounds in Shaker Heights, Ohio are brought together by their children and after a legal case involving an adoption takes over the local gossip, they find themselves at the center of it. This gripping book later became a miniseries on Hulu starring Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon.

‘Happiness Falls’ by Angie Kim

After her father disappears and her nonverbal younger brother, Eugene, returns from a hike with him covered in blood, it sends Mia’s tight-knit Korean American family into a nightmare. It’s part mystery, part family drama and part exploration of who we believe and who we don’t and the role our existing biases play.

‘I Love You So Mochi’ by Sarah Kuhn

Fashionista Kimi loves transforming everyday objects into bold fashion statements, but her mother disapproves of her projects. After they get into an explosive fight and Kimi’s estranged grandparents invite her to spend spring break in Kyoto, she jumps at the chance to get away from it all.

In Japan, she loses herself in the city’s art, food and cultural wonders and meets Akira, a med student who also works as a mochi mascot. Soon enough, Kimi isn’t escaping her life back home so much as broadening her understanding of what she left behind and who she could become.

‘The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts’ by Maxine Hong Kingston

Growing up, Kingston’s California surroundings and the fierce women warriors in her mother’s “talk stories” clash with each other and the female oppression that birthed them. As she learns to fill in the confounding gaps in her mother’s tales with stories of her own, she forges fractured memories into a beautiful, transcendent understanding of one woman’s past and present and how they illustrate a larger whole.

‘Being Mortal’ by Atul Gawande

Mortality is the human condition, and many of us approach the conclusion of our lives in fear, isolation and surrounded by a medical establishment more concerned with safety than fulfillment. In this eye-opening, compassionate book, Gawande, a practicing surgeon, offers a different path forward: A freer, more socially engaging way to treat the elderly and how to make a person’s last days or weeks not only peaceful, but more dignified.

‘Dogeaters’ by Jessica Hagedorn

If you put Filipino tradition and American pop culture in a blender, you’d get the Manila of this rollicking novel which sees a grab bag of characters — including movie stars, service people, a young addict and the richest man in the country —embroiled in a dizzying series of events that end in a beauty pageant, a film festival and an assassination.

‘The Namesake’ by Jhumpa Lahiri

Even as they long for the Calcutta they left behind, the Ganguli family is trying to assimilate in America. They name their firstborn Gogol, a window into all the challenges of honoring their traditions in a new and often unfamiliar country. And as Gogol finds his own meandering way, in all of the poignant, heartbreaking and funny moments that entails, you’ll find yourself rooting for them all.

‘Native Speaker’ by Chang-rae Lee

Henry Park has spent his whole life trying to embody the essence of his adopted America and as he does, his Korean heritage feels less and less solid too. Cultivating a stiff upper lip, remembering everything he’s been taught and keeping to himself make him an excellent spy, but aren’t very helpful in his marriage to an American woman, or grieving his son’s death. When he gets an assignment that tests his loyalties, he has to decide who he wants to be — both inside and out.

‘Beautiful Country’ by Qian Julie Wang

When Qian, 7, arrives in New York City in 1994 her world changes immediately. Her parents were professors in China, but their “illegal” status means their new life is one of scarcity, cobbling together a living in sweatshops and taking out their stress on each other. Qian finds refuge (and English) in her school library, finding joy in small pleasures like pizza and trash-picking and glimpses of the glittering city of our silver screens.

But when her Ma Ma collapses, revealing a long-held illness, and Ba Ba retreats to his own counsel, she’s got to find her own way. A beautiful, glistening memoir of a very American kind of family.

‘No-No Boy’ by John Okada

First published in 1957, No-No Boy initially came out to little acclaim, with many Americans all too eager to put World War II and the Japanese internment in the past. But in the mid-1970s, a new generation of Japanese American writers and scholars recognized the novel’s importance and elevated it to its rightful place in the Asian American literature canon.

It tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictionalized version of the real-life “no-no boys.” Yamada, like his brethren, answered “no” twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and pledge loyalty to the United States. That earns him two years in prison and alienation from his community when he returns home. It’s a stereotype-shattering account of a part of history none of us should forget, written in prose that makes sure we don’t.

‘Minor Feelings’ by Cathy Park Hong

Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong’s blend of memoir, history and cultural criticism is so much fun, readers may not even notice having their unconscious assumptions challenged along the way. The title stems from Park’s childhood as the daughter of Korean immigrants growing up steeped in “minor feelings” of shame, suspicion and melancholy. She later realized that these “minor feelings” come up when you realize you’ve been fed untruths about your own identity.

This book explores such topics as family and friendship, art and politics, identity and the individual and may lead you to ask some difficult questions, yourself.

‘Land of Milk and Honey’ by C Pam Zhang

After the world falls prey to widespread famine and food becomes little more than sustenance, one chef mourns the loss of the flavors that inspired her, as well as her career. When she’s hired to cook for an isolated colony of the global elite, both her tastebuds and her body’s appetites reawaken.

But as she learns more about her mysterious employer and his alluringly daredevil daughter, the chef is lured into a world where decadence isn’t dead, but neither is greed. This dark, sumptuous and ultimately hopeful take on climate change is delectable.

‘The Making of Asian America’ by Erika Lee

No people is a monolith, and that goes for the AAPI community in the U.S. This well-researched book highlights generations of Asian immigrants and their contributions to the Asian American experience, from sailors who manned the first trans-Pacific ships in the 1500s to the Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II and so many more. A fascinating read.