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guide to asian american literature

Surveying the History of Asian America Through Its Most Important Books

Introduction

In the 1960s and 1970s, young activists codified the term “Asian Americans” to express a shared cultural heritage among Americans whose descendants hailed from Asia. Yet the contributions to American culture and industry made by Asian Americans far predates the invention of this label. While the history of Asian Americans is far too vast and varied to capture comprehensively here, we think that one of the best ways to learn about any culture's history and heritage is through its literature. That's why we created this resource guide featuring 31 must-read books that help tell the story of the Asian American experience in the United States. You will also find links to over 40 educational resources that will help deepen your understanding or your students’ understanding of Asian American literature and history.

Asian Americans Before the 20th Century

Although records exist of individuals of Asian descent living in the Americas from as early as the 16th century, the first major wave of Asian immigration to the United States began in the mid-19th century. Spurred on by the California Gold Rush and the exploding demand for labor in mining, in factories, and on the Transcontinental Railroad, the number of Chinese American immigrants increased from 400 in 1848 to 25,000 in 1852, with that number continuing to grow over the next three decades. Yet as C. Pam Zhang details in her award-winning 2020 historical fiction novel How Much of These Hills Is Gold, the promise of vast fortunes all too often evaporated for early Chinese American immigrants, leaving behind desperation and hardship.

Furthermore, Asian American immigrants faced widespread racism, both from fellow Americans and from the federal government, which in 1882 passed the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibiting any new Chinese laborers from entering the country. In her comprehensive history The Making of Asian America, historian Erika Lee describes how the Chinese Exclusion Act was followed by a period of widespread violence against Chinese Americans. Some of the most egregious examples include 1885’s Rock Springs Massacre, in which at least 28 Chinese miners were murdered by white miners; and the Hells Canyon Massacre, in which up to 34 Chinese laborers were ambushed, murdered, and mutilated by a gang of white horse thieves. Countless other Chinese Americans escaped violence but still faced racist housing and economic policies which deprived families of incalculable sums of generational wealth, a phenomenon author Bruce Quan chronicles in his 2020 family memoir Bitter Roots: Five Generations of a Chinese Family in America.

More resources:

  • Watch this 30-minute documentary on the Rock Springs Massacre produced by PBS.
  • The University of Illinois has a helpful educators’ guide for teaching about the Chinese American experience in the 19th century.
  • The Asia Society interviews The Making of Asia America author Erika Lee on the traumatic history of Chinese immigration to the United States.

Asian American Literature in the Progressive Era and the Great Depression

Although Asian Americans have produced literature—primarily journalism and memoirs—for as long as they’ve lived in the United States, most of it was written in non-English languages. However, the dawn of the 20th century brought with it a surge of Asian American literature written in English. One of the earliest and most enduring of these works was the 1912 short story collection Mrs. Spring Fragrance by the Chinese American Edith Maude Eaton, published under the pen name Sui Sin Far. With its focus on the struggles of Chinese immigrant families and the cultural conflicts that arose between white and Asian immigrants, Mrs. Spring Fragrance in many ways set the tone for decades of literature chronicling the Asian American experience.

The early 20th century also saw a significant boost in immigration from Asian countries other than China. Following the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the continued demand for cheap labor was increasingly filled by immigrants from Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and South Asia. These communities also produced extraordinary literature that depicted how Asian American communities navigated the era’s dominant political and cultural schisms, particularly those surrounding immigration and labor. In his 1946 novel America Is in the Heart, Filipino American author Carlos Bulosan is inspired by his own experiences as a labor organizer in 1930s California seeking to start a union for migrant workers—all while facing racism that was so pervasive it was not uncommon to see “Dogs and Filipinos not allowed” signs outside businesses. Similarly, in Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories, Japanese American author Hisaye Yamamoto details her experiences as a young girl growing up in a family of immigrant migrant workers. Her work also explores a thematic strain that commonly emerges in Asian American literature: the interfamily conflicts between first- and second-generation immigrants.

More resources:

  • Listen to this NPR segment on “The Forgotten Filipinos Who Led a Farmworker Revolution.”
  • Southern California’s KCET provides a broad yet comprehensive overview of the early pioneers of Asian American literature.
  • The University of Washington’s Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium has a great article on the 1929 founding of the Japanese American Citizens League.

The World at War, and a Dark Chapter in American History

The start of World War II brought with it one of the most shameful chapters in US history: the forced relocation and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans into concentration camps. Sixty-two percent of those incarcerated were American citizens, most of them born in the United States to Japanese parents. Internees often faced dismal living conditions, as it was common for 25 individuals to be housed in barracks built for four. The barracks had no plumbing or cooking facilities, and camps frequently saw outbreaks of deadly diseases including dysentery and malaria. All told, at least 1,862 Japanese Americans died in the camps. Moreover, Japanese American families lost millions in property and wages by being forced to leave behind their homes and jobs for up to four years.

These traumas are documented extensively in memoirs and novels by Japanese American authors. Some of the most notable titles include John Okada’s No-No Boy (1957), Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter (1953), and more recently, George Takei’s graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy (2019).

Aside from Japanese American literature, Asian American authors extensively documented the hardships faced by other Asian communities during World War II, particularly in China and Korea. Min Jin Lee’s 2017 National Book Award finalist Pachinko is a sprawling novel chronicling the hardships and triumphs of a family in Korea before, during, and after World War II. In her nonfiction book The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang tells the forgotten history of atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army against Chinese civilians.

More resources:

  • Watch “Letters From Camp,” a short film directed by filmmaker Frank Chi and produced by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.
  • Listen to All Things Considered’s feature on Yuri Kochiyama, a former World War II internee whose friendship with Malcolm X shaped her career as a civil rights activist.
  • Watch a PBS interview with George Takei about They Called Us Enemy.

A Shared Asian American Identity Emerges

In 1968, Emma Gee and Yuji Ichioka, two student activists at the University of California Berkeley, wanted to start an organization catering to their fellow students of Asian descent. Inspired in part by the Black Power Movement and the American Indian Movement, Gee and Ichioka sought to unite all Asian cultures and heritages in the US under one term. According to Time magazine, their organization, the Asian American Political Alliance, was the first prominent use of the term “Asian American.”

Rooted in these activist origins, the label “Asian American literature” quickly emerged to encompass a wide range of writings from Asian American authors. The genre’s visibility exploded in 1974 with the publication of Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers. Edited by Frank Chin and other members of the Combined Asian American Resources Project, the book brings together writings from John Okada, Carlos Busolan, and Hisaye Yamamoto, along with numerous other writers of Asian descent.

As activists and scholars continued to push for greater visibility for Asian Americans, this shared cultural identity began to be embraced by individuals outside of academia. In her 2021 book From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry, author Paula Yoo attributes much of this to the racially motivated 1982 killing of Vincent Chin in Detroit. Outside a strip club, two white autoworkers viciously beat Chin to death because of the threat they perceived from the Japanese auto industry. (Chin was Chinese American.) Yoo writes that this galvanized the Asian American movement, particularly after neither murderer served any jail time for the crime.

Other authors who emerged from this era of Asian American literature include Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston, both of whom feature heavily in Charlie Chan Is Dead, a 1993 anthology that includes more female and Southeast Asian voices than Aiiieeeee! This era also saw the release of important works from authors of South Asian descent, including Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine.

More resources:

Asian American Literature Today and Beyond

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Asian American literature continues to be one of the most vibrant and diverse genres in the US. Authors like Ocean Vuong explore the queer experience of Asian Americans, as showcased in his award-winning 2019 novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Jenny Han is one of the most accomplished and prolific young adult fiction writers on the planet, with her All the Boys series perennially topping best-seller lists. In science fiction, few writers are more respected than Ted Chiang (Stories of Your Life and Others, Exhalation), who has won virtually every major award the genre has to offer. And graphic novels continue to be a fertile ground for great works by Asian American authors, including George Takei’s aforementioned They Called Us Enemy and Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese.

With anti-Asian American hate and violence on the rise, due in no small part to bigoted anti-Chinese comments made during the Covid pandemic, there have been renewed efforts to center Asian American experiences within broader fights for social justice taking place across America. As we look to the future of Asian American literature, authors like Cathy Park Hong stand out for her autobiographical essays in Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning. The book calls out racism in all sections of American society, including academia, politics, and publishing. And in a particularly relevant book to the Covid era, Nayan Shah’s Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown tracks the long history of Chinese Americans being scapegoated for American public health crises.

More resources:

  • Vox has an incredibly important reading list to understand anti-Asian racism in the United States, published in response to the March 2021 shooting in Atlanta.
  • Another great reading list comes from Electric Literature, which features 17 queer Asian American writers.
  • At The Atlantic, read an interview with Cathy Hong Park on what stories about racial trauma leave out.

Required Reading: An Asian American Lit Book List

If we had room, there would be no end to the number of titles written by Asian American writers we’d love to include on our reading list. In lieu of that, here are 31 amazing books you should read to explore Asian American history and heritage:

Adult Fiction

Memoirs & Autobiographical Fiction

History & Nonfiction

  • The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority by Ellen Wu (2013): Ken Chen of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop interviews Ellen Wu about The Color of Success.
  • The Making of Asian America by Erika Lee (2015): Watch Erika Lee speak at the National Archives building in Washington, DC about The Making of Asian America.
  • Bitter Roots: Five Generations of a Chinese Family in America by Bruce Quan (2020): In a video posted by the Oakland Public Education Fund, Bruce Quan reads an excerpt from Bitter Roots.
  • From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement by Paula Yoo (2021): NBC Asian America interviews Paula Yoo ahead of the release of From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry.

Young Adult

Essays & Collections

  • Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers by Frank Chin (1974): Read Hua Hsu’s essay in The New Yorker on Frank Chin and other “Asian American canon breakers.”
  • Mother Tongue by Amy Tan (1990): Read Amy Tan’s classic essay in its entirety through the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
  • Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction by Jessica Hagedorn (1993): Read “The Water Faucet Vision” by Gish Jen, one of the entries in Charlie Chan Is Dead.
  • Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong (2020): At KCRW, journalist Elise Hu analyzes Minor Feelings through the lens of her own experiences as an Asian American.