Books: Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

I can’t recall where I saw it but I recently read that Asian literature is the most under read. I find that really appalling because it terms of diversity and being marginalized I find it so very important that we ALL read multicultural books. This month we celebrate Asian Pacific American heritage. There are blogs all over the net hosting giveaways of Asian literature and in that same vein, I wanted to point out some of my own personal favorites:

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston
The Bonesetter’s Daughter: A Novel by Amy Tan
Blu’s Hanging by Lois-ann Yamanaka
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles By Jennifer 8 Lee
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel by Lisa See
The White Tiger: A Novel (Man Booker Prize) by Aravind Adiga
Free Food for Millionaires By Min Jin Lee
The God of Small Things: A Novel by Arundhati Roy
Trail of Crumbs By Kim Sunée
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Transparency By Frances Hwang
Strangers from a Different Shore By Ronald Takaki
Waiting: A Novel by Ha Jin

I’m sure there are more I’m leaving out…

Here’s a video of Jennifer 8 Lee and I love how she refers to being “ethnically ambigous, people should think twice about what it means to be American, and how it has shifted to people from places where people are browner, yellower, redder.”

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