Asian Pacific Resource Center Book Club Favorites

A few favorites from the Asian Pacific Resource Center Book Club.

List created by the Linda Fernandes, Asian Pacific Resource Center Librarian (Updated March 2015).

Find more reading suggestions at Books & More.

American Is in the Heart: A Personal History by Carlos Bulosan

Bulosan recounts his experiences as an immigrant from the Philippines in search for the promise of a better life in America.

nonfiction

When Broken Glass Floats: Growing up under the Khmer Rouge - A memoir by Chanrithy Him

Chanrithy Him, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide, recounts her childhood where rudimentary labor camps filled with illness and death were the norm.

nonfiction

Farewell to Mananzar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston

Memoir of the Wakatsuki family before,during, and after their imprisonment at Manzanar Internment camp.

nonfiction

Stealing Budda's Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen

A memoir of a Vietnamese American girl coming of age in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

nonfiction

Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell

Vowell takes on the history of Hawaii from the coming of the Missionaries to annexation.

nonfiction

Perfume Dreams – Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora  by Andrew Lam

Lam, the son of a South Vietnamese general, was raised in Vietnam and the U.S.. In this collection of essays he searches for his identity and reflects on the lives of the Vietnamese in exile.

nonfiction

On Gold Mountain - The One Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese American Family by Lisa See

The 100 year history the family of Fong See and Lettice Pruett – the grandparents of Lisa See.

nonfiction

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

A family drama set in Kerala, in the southernmost tip of India in the 1960’s.

fiction

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Siiie

During the Cultural Revolution in China, two boys vanished to the county for re-education, find a trunk of forbidden western literature.

fiction

The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones

Explores the world of Chinese Cuisine.

fiction

Southland by Nina Revoyr

Mystery, race, love, and history in Los Angeles

fiction

Digging to America by Anne Tyler

Two different families from Baltimore adopt children from Korea.

fiction

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Pulitzer prize winning collection of stories explore the lives of Indian immigrants.

fiction

Typical American  by Gish Jen

The Chang family pursue the American Dream.

fiction

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

A Papua New Guinean child growing up on the Island of Bougainville during civil war discovers Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations.

fiction

Waiting by Ha Jin

Winner of the National Book Award. Jin gives us a glimpse ot life in communist China. A village doctor waits 18 years for permission to divorce.

fiction

When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka

A Japanese American family is sent to live in a desert internment camp in Utah during WW II.

fiction