Best Asian American Literature & Fiction Books
Here you will get Best Asian American Literature & Fiction Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. The Kite Runner
Author: by Khaled Hosseini
159463193X
Riverhead Books
English
The #1 New York Times bestselling debut novel that introduced Khaled Hosseini to millions of readers the world over. The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, caught in the tragic sweep of history, The Kite Runner transports readers to Afghanistan at a tense and crucial moment of change and destruction.
A powerful story of friendship, it is also about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sonstheir love, their sacrifices, their lies. Since its publication in 2003 Kite Runner has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic of contemporary literature, touching millions of readers, and launching the career of one of America’s most treasured writers.
2. The Joy Luck Club: A Novel
Author: by Amy Tan
Penguin Books
English
352 pages
The Joy Luck Club is one of my favorite books. From the moment I first started reading it, I knew it was going to be incredible. For me, it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime reading experiences that you cherish forever.
It inspired me as a writer and still remains hugely inspirational. Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich AsiansAmy Tan’s beloved, New York Times bestselling tale of mothers and daughters, now the focus of a new documentary Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir on Netflix Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who’s “saying” the stories.
In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money.
“To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable.” Forty years later the stories and history continue. With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters.
3
Everything I Never Told You
Author: by Celeste Ng
Penguin Books
English
297 pages
The acclaimed debut novel by the author of Little Fires Everywhere. A deep, heartfelt portrait of a family.” Alexander Chee, The New York Times Book ReviewWonderfully movingA beautifully crafted study of dysfunction and grief.” The Boston Globe Lydia is dead.
But they don’t know this yet. So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue.
But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.
4. The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu
Author: by Tom Lin
B08KRZ147P
June 1, 2021
English
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ ChoiceAn astounding debut that reimagines the classic Western through the eyes of a Chinese American assassin on a quest to rescue his kidnapped wife and exact his revenge on her abductors, and declares the arrival of an astonishing new voice (Jonathan Lethem).
Orphaned young, Ming Tsu, the son of Chinese immigrants, is raised by the notorious leader of a California crime syndicate, who trains him to be his deadly enforcer. But when Ming falls in love with Ada, the daughter of a powerful railroad magnate, and the two elope, he seizes the opportunity to escape to a different life.
Soon after, in a violent raid, the tycoon’s henchmen kidnap Ada and conscript Ming into service for the Central Pacific Railroad. Battered, heartbroken, and yet defiant, Ming partners with a blind clairvoyant known only as the prophet. Together the two set out to rescue his wife and to exact revenge on the men who destroyed Ming, aided by a troupe of magic-show performers, some with supernatural powers, whom they meet on the journey.
5. Pachinko (National Book Award Finalist)
Author: by Min Jin Lee
1455563927
Grand Central Publishing
English
A New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year and National Book Award finalist, Pachinko is an “extraordinary epic” of four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family as they fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan (San Francisco Chronicle).
NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2017 * A USA TODAY TOP TEN OF 2017 * JULY PICK FOR THE PBS NEWSHOUR-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB NOW READ THIS * FINALIST FOR THE 2018DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE* WINNER OF THE MEDICI BOOK CLUB PRIZE Roxane Gay’s Favorite Book of 2017, Washington Post NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * #1 BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER * USA TODAY BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER * WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER “There could only be a few winners, and a lot of losers.
And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones.” In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea.
He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant-and that her lover is married-she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan.
6. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel
Author: by Ocean Vuong
Published at: Penguin Press; First Edition (June 4, 2019)
ISBN: 978-0525562023
An instant New York Times Bestseller! Longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal in Fiction, the 2019 Aspen Words Literacy Prize, and the PEN/Hemingway Debut Novel AwardShortlisted for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Winner of the 2019 New England Book Award for Fiction!
Named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Oprah. Com, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, Nylon, The Week, The Rumpus, The Millions, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more. A lyrical work of self-discovery that’s shockingly intimate and insistently universalNot so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning.
Ron Charles, The Washington PostPoet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytellingOn Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read.
Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation.
7. Interior Chinatown (Vintage Contemporaries)
Author: by Charles Yu
English
288 pages
0307948471
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER”One of the funniest books of the year…. A delicious, ambitious Hollywood satire.” The Washington PostFrom the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.
Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop.
Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guythe most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain.Or is it?
After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he’s ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family. Infinitely inventive and deeply personal, exploring the themes of pop culture, assimilation, and immigrationInterior Chinatown is Charles Yu’s most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet.”Fresh and beautiful….
8. Little Fires Everywhere: A Novel
Author: by Celeste Ng
Penguin Books
English
368 pages
The #1 New York Times bestseller! Now a Hulu original series starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington. I read Little Fires Everywhere in a single, breathless sitting. Jodi PicoultTo say I love this book is an understatement. It’s a deep psychological mystery about the power of motherhood, the intensity of teenage love, and the danger of perfection.
It moved me to tears. Reese WitherspoonExtraordinary … Books like Little Fires Everywhere don’t come along often. John GreenFrom the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You, a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives.
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is plannedfrom the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
9. Fifty Words for Rain: A Novel
Author: by Asha Lemmie
B082ZQ8WRT
Dutton (September 1, 2020)
September 1, 2020
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick and New York Times Bestseller! From debut author Asha Lemmie, a lovely, heartrending story about love and loss, prejudice and pain, and the sometimes dangerous, always durable ties that link a family together.
Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Timesbestselling author of The NightingaleKyoto, Japan, 1948.Do not question.Do not fight.Do not resist. Such is eight-year-old Noriko Nori Kamiza’s first lesson. She will not question why her mother abandoned her with only these final words.
She will not fight her confinement to the attic of her grandparents’ imperial estate. And she will not resist the scalding chemical baths she receives daily to lighten her skin. The child of a married Japanese aristocrat and her African American GI lover, Nori is an outsider from birth.
Her grandparents take her in, only to conceal her, fearful of a stain on the royal pedigree that they are desperate to uphold in a changing Japan. Obedient to a fault, Nori accepts her solitary life, despite her natural intellect and curiosity.
10. Like Wind Against Rock: A Novel
Author: by Nancy Kim
B08CVBQ1K8
June 1, 2021
English
A novel of explosive family secrets, regret, and all the little decisions that shape our lives and make us who we are. At the age of thirty-nine, Alice Chang suddenly finds herself living in the last place she expected: her mother’s house.
But in the face of divorce, eviction, and the recent death of her father, she doesn’t have a choice. Watching as her mother thrives in a new job and meets younger men at the local gym, Alice struggles, reflecting on her parents’ marriage, her relationship with each of them, as she adjusts to being single again for the first time in twenty years.
Then she finds her father’s old journaland uncovers a shocking family secret that forces her to question everything she thought she knew about love, regret, family, and her own path forward. As Alice comes to terms with the man her father really was, she must finally decide who she wants to be and what it will take to get there.
11. Dial A for Aunties
Author: by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Berkley (April 27, 2021)
English
320 pages
“Sutanto brilliantly infuses comedy and culture into the unpredictable rom-com/murder mystery mashup as Meddy navigates familial duty, possible arrest and a groomzilla. I laughed out loud and you will too. USA Today (four-star review) A hilarious, heartfelt romp of a novel aboutwhat else?
Accidental murder and the bond of family. This book had me laughing aloud within its first five pages Utterly clever, deeply funny, and altogether charming, this book is sure to be one of the best of the year! Emily Henry, New York Times bestselling author of Beach Read One of PopSugar’s “42 Books Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2021”!What happens when you mix 1 (accidental) murder with 2 thousand wedding guests, and then toss in a possible curse on 3 generations of an immigrant Chinese-Indonesian family?
You get 4 meddling Asian aunties coming to the rescue! When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline.
12. The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
Author: by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Grove Press
English
384 pages
Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Winner of the 2016 Edgar Award for Best First Novel Winner of the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction[A] remarkable debut novelPhilip Caputo, New York Times Book Review (cover review)The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as seven other awards, The Sympathizer is one of the most acclaimed books of the twenty-first century.
With the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Vladimir Nabokov, The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a man of two minds, a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who comes to America after the Fall of Saigon, and while building a new life with other Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles is secretly reporting back to his communist superiors in Vietnam.
The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping spy novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.
13. The Island of Sea Women: A Novel
Author: by Lisa See
Scribner
English
400 pages
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A mesmerizing new historical novel (O, The Oprah Magazine) from Lisa See, the bestselling author of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, about female friendship and devastating family secrets on a small Korean island. Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds.
When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibilitybut also danger.
Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook find it impossible to ignore their differences. The Island of Sea Women takes place over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers.
14. Arsenic and Adobo (A Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery)
Author: by Mia P. Manansala
Berkley (May 4, 2021)
English
336 pages
One of BuzzFeed’s Highly Anticipated Mystery Novels of 2021! The first book in a new culinary cozy series full of sharp humor and delectable dishesone that might just be killer…. When Lila Macapagal moves back home to recover from a horrible breakup, her life seems to be following all the typical rom-com tropes.
She’s tasked with saving her Tita Rosie’s failing restaurant, and she has to deal with a group of matchmaking aunties who shower her with love and judgment. But when a notoriously nasty food critic (who happens to be her ex-boyfriend) drops dead moments after a confrontation with Lila, her life quickly swerves from a Nora Ephron romp to an Agatha Christie case.
With the cops treating her like she’s the one and only suspect, and the shady landlord looking to finally kick the Macapagal family out and resell the storefront, Lila’s left with no choice but to conduct her own investigation. Armed with the nosy auntie network, her barista best bud, and her trusted Dachshund, Longanisa, Lila takes on this tasty, twisted case and soon finds her own neck on the chopping block
15. Sparks Like Stars: A Novel
Author: by Nadia Hashimi
B089GWDV7D
March 2, 2021
English
Suspensefulemotionally compelling. I found myself eagerly following in a way I hadn’t remembered for a long time, impatient for the next twist and turn of the story.”NPRAn Afghan American woman returns to Kabul to learn the truth about her family and the tragedy that destroyed their lives in this brilliant and compelling novel from the bestselling author of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, The House Without Windows, and When the Moon Is Low.
Kabul, 1978: The daughter of a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving cosmopolitan capital. The 1970s are a time of remarkable promise under the leadership of people like Sardar Daoud, Afghanistan’s progressive president, and Sitara’s beloved father, his right-hand man.
But the ten-year-old Sitara’s world is shattered when communists stage a coup, assassinating the president and Sitara’s entire family.Only she survives. Smuggled out of the palace by a guard named Shair, Sitara finds her way to the home of a female American diplomat, who adopts her and raises her in America.
16. The Chosen and the Beautiful
Author: by Nghi Vo
Tordotcom (June 1, 2021)
English
272 pages
An Instant National Bestseller!An Indie Next Pick! A Most Anticipated in 2021 Pick for Oprah Magazine | USA Today | Buzzfeed | Greatist | BookPage | PopSugar | Bustle | The Nerd Daily | Goodreads | Literary Hub | Ms. Magazine | Library Journal | Culturess | Book Riot | Parade Magazine | Kirkus | The Week | Book Bub | OverDrive | The Portalist | Publishers WeeklyA Best of Summer Pick for TIME Magazine | CNN | Book Riot | The Daily Beast | Lambda LiteraryThe Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Goodreads | Bustle | Veranda Magazine | The Week | Bookish | St. Louis Post-Dispatch | Den of Geek | LGBTQ Reads | Pittsburgh City Paper | Bookstr | Tatler HKGatsby the way it should have been writtendark, dazzling, fantastical.R.F.
Kuang”A vibrant and queer reinvention of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s jazz age classic…. I was captivated from the first sentence.”NPRVo has crafted a retelling that, in many ways, surpasses the original.”Kirkus Reviews (STARRED REVIEW)Immigrant.Socialite.Magician. Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American societyshe has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age.
