AAPI Reading List 2022
Lifting up Asian-American and Pacific Islander expertise and voices in literature
It is critical to lift up Asian-American & Pacific Islander expertise and voice in literature. Thanks to the work of AAPI authors, the world can better understand both the brilliance and triumphs of such a rich community. The Solutions Project is excited to share some of the most accomplished literary solutionaries for past and present.
The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move
Sonia Shah
“Rich with eclectic research and on-the-ground reporting, Sonia Shah’s book presents us with a dazzlingly original picture of our relentlessly mobile species. At a moment when migrants face walls of hatred, this is a story threaded with joy and inspiration.”
–Naomi Klein, author of On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal
Waste Tide
Chen Qiufan
“Something startlingly new… an action-packed story that’s full of moral complexity. This is the futuristic vision that everybody needs right now.”
–Charlie Jane Anders, author of All the Birds in the Sky
The Disaster Tourist: A Novel
Yun Ko-Eun, Lizzie Buehler (Translator)
“This firecracker of a novel from South Korean writer Ko-eun could not be more timely, with themes around climate tourism, activism, and the #MeToo movement . . . This is a fast-paced thriller-esque story that skillfully addresses individual complicity in harm, and the morality of a fascination with disaster.”
–Sarah Neilson, Shondaland
The Man with the Compound Eyes: A Novel
Wu Ming-Yi
“A gift. . . . Ming-Yi is a naturalist as well as a storyteller, and it is perhaps his greatest achievement that this novel creates a sense of solidarity not only between his human characters, but also between [the] humans and the animals and plants he describes with such fidelity.”
–FullStop
Rise of the Red Hand: Volume 1
Olivia Chadha
A rare, searing portrayal of the future of climate change in South Asia. A streetrat turned revolutionary and the disillusioned hacker son of a politician try to take down a ruthlessly technocratic government that sacrifices its poorest citizens to build its utopia.
Passage West
Rishi Reddi
“A debut novel recounts the struggles and triumphs of immigrants in California’s Imperial Valley a century ago…. The sweeping narrative is deeply researched and offers a fascinating look at a historic era from a fresh perspective…. The lives of two Indian immigrants are scarred by forces still alive a century later.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Little Manila Is in the Heart: The Making of the Filipina/o American Community in Stockton, California
Dawn Bohulano Mabalon
“Mabalon’s text is not merely a history of a community, but a study of how that community has been remembered and forgotten, given the redevelopment and gentrification policies that demolished most of Little Manila’s buildings after the 1960s.”
–Christopher Patterson “International Examiner “
Bangkok Wakes to Rain
Pitchaya Sudbanthad
“Gorgeously polyphonic and saturated in the senses, this novel brims with a wistful and gripping energy as it carries us through time and space. Sudbanthad brilliantly sounds the resonant pulse of the city in a wise and far-reaching meditation on home.”
–Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Gold Fame Citrus and Battleborn
We Are the Ocean
Epeli Hauʻofa
This collection [is] devoted to the (re)appropriation of Pacific Island identity and futures [and] should be read and pondered by all Oceanian students and by all students of Oceania.
— “The Contemporary Pacific”
Iep Jaltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter
Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner
“This intriguing collection provides a Marshallese perspective on contemporary life, family, politics of land tenure, indigenous rights, and a troubled and troubling American history in the Pacific.”
–Heid E. Erdrich, author of Cell Traffic
Never Have I Ever: Stories
Isabel Yap
Spells and stories, urban legends and immigrant tales: the magic in Isabel Yap’s debut collection jumps right off the page, from the friendship and fear building in “A Canticle for Lost Girls” to the joy in “A Spell for Foolish Hearts” to the terrifying tension of the urban legend “Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez.”
