A Trusted Friend in a Complicated World
Updated on Oct. 22, 2024
From modern classics to new releases, these stellar books by contemporary Asian and Asian American authors belong on your to-read list
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Growing up in the 1990s in the United States, I never saw myself represented in entertainment as the main character. There certainly wasn’t a list of contemporary Asian American authors or Asian American movies that I could refer to. And so I assumed people who looked like me and my Korean American immigrant family were destined to be sidekicks or punch lines to jokes. But diverse representation is crucial to both learning about perspectives that are different from our own and teaching our communities that our stories and voices matter.
For the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, the increasing number of Asian American books and movies seems to get us closer to what Pulitzer Prize–winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen calls “narrative plentitude”—a world in which there are many stories about many different kinds of people, a world in which looking beyond stereotypes and ending racism is possible.
Yet despite a surge in such stories over the past several years, we’re not quite there yet. There’s still much work to be done. Asian American literature is an enormous category spanning multiple book genres and cultures, many of which are still experiencing “narrative scarcity.” After all, we are not a monolith; the AAPI community encompasses hundreds of ethnic groups of East Asian, South Asian, Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander descent. And there’s never been a better time to start reading books by AAPI authors.
With that in mind, we’ve compiled the best books by AAPI authors that are indicative of the multitudes present in this community. We even asked advocates, authors and book influencers for their personal favorites, so you know you’re getting well-vetted recommendations. Read on for outstanding Asian and Asian American books, from critically acclaimed bestsellers to culturally significant groundbreakers.
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Genre: Memoir/cultural criticism
Never has a book made me feel so seen and validated as Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings. This powerful, must-read revelation taught me about Asian American history that had been left out of my public school education, helping me connect the dots in my own life and mental health journey. As author and poet Claudia Rankine said, “to read this book is to become more human.”
Indeed, for Asian Americans, Hong puts into words so many experiences that have remained silent and invisible within us. Having language for these minor feelings—”minor” as in the melancholy music scale but also feelings that have been dismissed as minor by others—is like uncovering whole layers of the human experience, both for those inside and outside the Asian American community. Hong lends her lived experiences as a Korean American daughter of immigrant parents, as well as her sharp insights and historical research, to these beautifully and honestly written essays. This 2020 book will be adapted for the screen by studio A24 and actress Greta Lee.
Genre: Satire/psychological thriller
New York Times bestselling author R.F. Kuang is a master of multiple book genres. Unlike her award-winning Poppy War fantasy series or dark academia Babel, her 2023 novel Yellowface is a darkly funny satire about the publishing industry that also ventures into the thriller realm. As perfectly encapsulated by its title, the novel follows a white woman who plagiarizes her late Chinese American friend’s work and gets rebranded by her publisher as Asian. What ensues is a brilliant train wreck that will have your heart in your throat and yet compel you to keep reading. All the while, it’ll help you gain deeper insight into the racism and sexism rampant in the literary world and the impact of social media on modern-day authors.
“As a book blogger who posts reviews, this story made me a little uncomfortable because it highlights how powerful reviews and the publishing industry can be,” says Stephy George, founder of the Creative Muggle book blog. “It made me think about who gets to tell certain stories and how much influence we have as reviewers. The book is dark, sharp and hard to put down, and by the end, I was also questioning not just June’s actions but the systems that allow these things to happen.”
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Genre: Slice-of-life fiction
Hwang Bo-Reum’s debut novel took South Korea by storm for its refreshing positivity and rejection of hypercapitalism, which is why the English translation by Shanna Tan was listed as one of Debutiful‘s Most Anticipated Books of 2024. This bestseller follows a burned-out Yeongju, who quits her city job and divorces her husband to open a small bookstore. As Yeongju learns what it takes to be a successful bookseller, she meets a menagerie of fellow book lovers and lost souls, who are really the heart of this charming, feel-good book. Intentionally slow-paced and meandering, Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop was indeed a welcome break from the more intense books on my reading list of contemporary Asian authors. It’s the perfect book to read while curled up in a comfy chair with a cup of coffee on a lazy Sunday.
Genre: Family saga
No list of contemporary Asian American authors would be complete without this masterpiece. Considered one of the most impactful Asian American books ever written, The Joy Luck Club was prolific author Amy Tan’s debut novel and made Tan one of the most famous Chinese American authors. Published in 1989, this was the first book I ever read that explored the Asian American experience, and after a recent reread, the classic novel still holds up, with its timeless interconnected stories of four mothers and four daughters.
When Jing-mei’s mother dies, she is invited to take her place at the mahjong table during the weekly meeting of the Joy Luck Club, bridging the gap between these two generations. Each chapter is a vignette told from the point of view of either a mother or a daughter, and their juxtaposed perspectives reveal how much is unsaid between them and how much is misunderstood. Through each character’s story, we explore themes of resilience, familial pressure, generational differences and finding roots.
Genre: Graphic memoir
As children learn about the world, they often ask questions that make us rethink what we take for granted. In this 2018 graphic memoir, author Mira Jacob’s 6-year-old son is full of questions—some poignant, some funny—all of which lead to very good talks. As rifts in their interracial family surface with the 2016 presidential election, these questions grow in complexity, causing Jacob to reflect on her own American experience and sense of identity. With pictures and dialogue brimming with authenticity, the book is at once powerful and inviting. Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations is one of the most honest books about race relations in America and is told with immense love, humor and insight.
Genre: Family drama
A.H. Kim’s 2024 novel, Relative Strangers, puts a modern feminist twist on an Austen classic. In it, the lives of two sisters are uprooted when their mother is evicted from their family estate due to an inheritance dispute. Messy love affairs with handsome strangers, explosive secrets and entertaining drama ensue.
“A lighthearted, mixed-race Korean American retelling of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, this novel was a wonderful escape for someone like me who tends to read heavier works,” says Michelle Yang, a mental health advocate and the author of the forthcoming memoir Phoenix Girl: How a Fat Asian with Bipolar Found Love. “Growing up reading Austen and other classics with no characters who looked like me, this retelling is a bold, intimate and empowering adaptation of a classic story by a gifted writer.”
Genre: Fantasy/folk tale
New York Times bestselling author Yangsze Choo is celebrated for her rich stories steeped in Chinese and Malaysian mythology and history, with her first novel, The Ghost Bride, adapted into a Netflix original series. Her latest, 2024’s The Fox Wife, explores the East Asian myth of beautiful, shape-shifting fox spirits, told from the perspectives of a fox girl named Snow and an aging detective named Bao. Although this is a tale of murder, revenge and magical realism, it’s a quiet and dignified one that will immerse you in the enchanting winters of early 1900s Manchuria.
Genre: Science fiction/short stories
Stories of Your Life and Others is for readers of both short stories and sci-fi books. Published in 2002 to critical acclaim and awards, this book was more than 10 years in the making. Ted Chiang spent five years researching linguistics to write one of the stories in this collection, “Story of Your Life,” which won the Nebula Award for Best Novella and later became the basis for the film Arrival starring Amy Adams. The story centers on a linguist who learns to communicate with visiting aliens and, in the process, begins to experience time differently. All of Chiang’s stories will make you pause and think more deeply about the reality we live in and the reality he presents to us. He brings big concepts like free will, love, time and knowledge into sharp focus with stories that are intimate and full of humanity.
Genre: Short stories
For fans of short fiction, there is no more beautifully written choice than Afterparties, a 2021 short story collection about Cambodian American life in Central Valley, California. Each story showcases the mastery of Anthony Veasna So, a young debut writer who died the winter before this book was published. So’s characters pulse with life, and I felt like I personally came to know both the older generation—survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide—and the younger generation, who deftly wield humor to process this trauma.
Though self-contained, the short stories are interconnected by characters who share a community. Maly first appears as the beautiful, charismatic cousin of a narrator. Her deceased mom is said to be reincarnated as a baby, and the family is throwing a party to celebrate her return. Maly reappears in another story when that baby is in her 20s and working as a nurse. Maly’s boyfriend has his own story at a Buddhist temple, where he stays to mourn the death of his father. And while I too mourned the death of the young writer, I found comfort in the way these characters return, reassuring me that So himself continues to live in the legacy of his radiant stories.
Genre: Memoir
When successful journalist Stephanie Foo finally confronted her daily panic attacks, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD from years of abuse and neglect from her parents. Her 2023 memoir, What My Bones Know, dives into the past, interviews experts and reveals how devastating generational trauma, specifically in the immigrant community, can be. While the book examines very tough subjects through an intersectional lens with unflinching authenticity and vulnerability, its passages are empowering and brimming with hope.
“This memoir about Foo’s determination to heal from complex trauma absolutely destroyed me, but I could not turn away,” says Yang. “It’s a must-read. Foo is a former producer at This American Life and really knows how to tell a riveting story.”
Genre: Mystery/thriller
Part murder mystery, part dark comedy, Parini Shroff’s 2023 debut novel, The Bandit Queens, follows a woman named Geeta whom everyone believes murdered her abusive husband (even though she insists she didn’t). In a small village in India, women come to Geeta for advice on how to get rid of their husbands, and together they support one another through the pains of misogyny and caste discrimination. While most mystery books focus on the crime and the victim, Shroff uses the narrative as an opportunity to paint a stark and complex portrayal of women’s rights in India and to celebrate the power of sisterhood.
Genre: Historical fiction/family saga
Before this book was a phenomenon on Apple TV, it was a National Book Award finalist and Roxane Gay’s favorite book of 2017. Pachinko is Min Jin Lee’s second novel (her debut, Free Food for Millionaires, is also excellent), and its scope is ambitious and sweeping. Following four generations of a poor Korean family, the story illuminates the heartrending choices that must be made without financial freedom and how fortune can fluctuate between generations, but wounds of displacement linger.
The length of this book may appear intimidating, but Lee’s writing is transportive—before I knew it, I felt like I traveled the years and countries with this family as if they were my own. I cried (a lot!) alongside them and had a hard time leaving them when the book ended. Luckily, we can see them reimagined on TV … or start again from page one whenever we want.
Genre: Historical fiction
Based on author Eve J. Chung’s family story, Daughters of Shandong is a deeply moving account of a mother’s escape with her daughters to Taiwan during the Communist Revolution in China. Though harrowing, the journey makes for an ultimately hopeful story about what it means to be human. It’s a transportive tale about resilience, sacrifice and the bonds between mothers and daughters. A Reader’s Digest Book Club pick for May 2024 and instant USA Today bestseller, Daughters of Shandong is a powerful read that will stick with you long after you turn the final page.
Genre: Historical fiction
If you can’t get enough of intergenerational stories like Pachinko, this 2021 debut novel by Anjali Enjeti is one to check out. Enjeti is one of the most exciting new Asian authors to know and also published a nonfiction book of essays called Southbound the same year.
The Parted Earth begins in 1947 during the partition of India, when British colonizers sliced borders between India and Pakistan along religious lines, causing devastating displacement for millions of people. Scholars have called it the largest migration in human history, and Enjeti brings the reader into a family story to intimately show the loss and reverberating pain of this time. Across 70 years, three generations of women and the continents where they sought to find themselves, The Parted Earth gifts us with a poignant family saga. If you enjoy listening to audiobooks, this is one you won’t want to miss. Its narrator, Deepti Gupta, won the Audie Award for Best Female Narrator of 2022.
Genre: Historical fiction
After the war in Vietnam, many of the tens of thousands of offspring between American GIs and Vietnamese women became known as the forgotten “children of the dust.” Growing up, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai remembers seeing glimpses of the discrimination these Amerasians faced, and she dedicated part of her life to interviewing and reuniting American veterans with their children. Her stunning and heartbreaking 2023 novel, Dust Child, takes these experiences and fictionalizes them through the interwoven stories of two Sài Gòn bar girls, an American veteran and a Black Vietnamese man who seeks to find his family in the United States. Although the subject matter can be difficult to read at times, this historical fiction book offers glimmers of hope and compassion that transcend borders and languages.
Genre: Coming-of-age fiction
The Leavers is a story of immigration, separation, adoption, identity, America, China, work, art and so much more. If this sounds ambitious, that’s because it is, but Lisa Ko’s skillful writing seamlessly weaves all these themes through the lives of unforgettable characters. The heart of the story unfolds between Deming and his mother, Polly. One day, when he is just 11 years old, she disappears, leaving him alone and confused. Did she choose to leave, or was she taken away? This question is never absent from his mind, even as he is adopted and ushered into a new life with a new name. Eventually, he will learn that the truth of what happened to his mother is far more complicated than he imagined. This beautiful book surfaces questions about what we owe one another and what we owe ourselves. It’s no wonder this debut novel was on NPR’s Best Books of 2017 list.
Genre: Historical fiction/family drama
In Crystal Hana Kim’s haunting 2024 novel, 46-year-old Eunju finds an unknown Korean American woman at her doorstep, holding a familiar knife and prompting Eunju to revisit the past she desperately left behind. Inspired by true events, The Stone Home reveals the dark history of state-sanctioned reformatory centers in 1980s South Korea, where “vagrants” and other marginalized citizens, like young Eunju and her mother, were rounded up and forced to live and labor under the guise of becoming productive citizens. However, even in horrific conditions, love and the human spirit prevail.
“Being Korean American, I often learn about the history of my birth country through the works of historical fiction,” says Kyunghee Kim, the author of See Us Bloom. “I enjoyed reading The Stone Home by Crystal Hana Kim for shining light on the forgotten moments in South Korea’s history through its rich characters. You will not forget this book.”
Genre: Magical realism/historical fiction
Hawaiian perspectives are rarely included on a conventional list of contemporary Asian American authors, but Kiana Davenport’s 1994 novel has become a modern classic. At well over 500 pages, this rich and multifaceted narrative is hard to summarize, but at its heart, it’s the story of Pono, a matriarch and seer of the future, and her four granddaughters, each distinct from one another and from her. Written in lyrical language that evokes the crash of waves and the lushness of the forest, Shark Dialogues weaves Hawaiian history with mythology and family secrets with family duty. It gives generously to the reader, unleashing a plot as wild and potent as nature itself. Through the stories of Pono and her mixed-heritage granddaughters, Shark Dialogues shows parts of Hawaii never published before.
Genre: LGBTQ+ memoir
Queer hijabi Muslim immigrant Lamya H. made waves with her 2023 memoir, Hijab Butch Blues. Structured around Islamic prophets and her interpretation of their stories from the Quran, the book explores the complex intersectionality of her sexuality and faith. Some of the subject matter around religion, mental health and racism may be triggering for some readers, but the author’s poignant prose and message of finding self-love and acceptance is worth the read. This is a revolutionary LGBTQ+ book you won’t want to miss.
Genre: Memoir
Published in 2018 and studded with awards and accolades, All You Can Ever Know is Nicole Chung’s insightful, complex and nuanced account of her adoption. Growing up, her adoptive parents told her a simple and sweet version of how their family came to be. As Chung ventures into adulthood, pregnancy and parenthood, she begins to question her origin story and seeks answers. In a memoir that is as page-turning as it is thought-provoking, Chung uncovers family secrets, beautiful surprises and a new origin story that is anything but simple. She writes with great compassion for her birth family and her adoptive family, and generously shares with readers her experience as a transracial adoptee.
Genre: Magical realism
Award-winning author Ruth Ozeki’s 2021 novel plays with form and what is real in ways that are both delightful and heartbreaking. Just as he enters adolescence, Benny Oh loses his father, and he begins to hear the voices of objects, not in words but in tones. A pencil, a window, a pair of scissors—he hears their moods, histories and desires. At the same time, his mother fills their house with objects in her grief, a fortress of protection that makes Benny’s life at home unbearably loud. The only place he can find solace is in the library. There, he’ll find a voice that leads him to tell his complicated and difficult story. A novel that is as wide in scope as it is deep in compassion, The Book of Form and Emptiness will have you viewing the world differently when you are finished.
Genre: Short stories
In this 2013 debut short story collection, Kristiana Kahakauwila takes back the narrative that exoticizes Hawaii as only a vacation spot and lets the voices of the islands tell their own tales. The first story in This Is Paradise centers on a young tourist’s misadventure, and it’s narrated by the groups of local women who observe her. In the collective “we” voice, we hear from hotel housekeeping staff, surfers and businesswomen. Kahakauwila’s fresh use of this chorus to guide us sets the tone for this collection of six distinct yet connected stories. She traverses divides between class and race and between mainland and island life, making the reader question preconceived ideas of paradise. Each story will make you eager for the next. Joyce Carol Oates calls it “vividly imagined, beautifully written, at times almost unbearably suspenseful.”
Genre: Poetry/LGBTQ+
Award-winning poet Ocean Vuong captivated readers with his stunning 2019 debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, earning him a spot on every list of contemporary Asian American authors. It was only expected, then, that Time is a Mother would also make our hearts ache, as this 2022 poetry collection was written in the aftermath of the death of Vuong’s mother and deals with themes like queer identity, grief, generational trauma and the Vietnam War. His ingenuity with words shines in poems like “Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker,” which lists his mother’s online purchases as her life is slowly upended by cancer.
“As a poet myself, the way Ocean Vuong writes about nuanced grief that often comes with time in Time Is a Mother is accurate, haunting and hopeful,” says Kim. “It is a theme any human being can relate to. It presents more questions than answers, begging the reader to pause and listen. Highly recommend this read.”
Genre: Dark comedy/feminist fiction
Courageous and savagely funny, Katherine Min’s The Fetishist examines the complexity of racial and sexual politics. This 2024 novel opens with an estranged couple: Daniel, the titular Asian fetishist, and Alma, a Korean American cellist who looks back on the white men she dated, wondering if she was ever loved for who she actually is. However, it’s Kyoko, a Japanese American punk rocker hell-bent on revenge against Daniel, who lights every scene with gasoline.
Reading these three wildly different perspectives, I felt both enraged and seen, recognizing my own frustrating and confusing dating experiences of being stereotyped and objectified, and I found myself ultimately cheering for Kyoko. Written in 2014, before the #MeToo movement, this work of feminist fiction was posthumously published—Min’s daughter recovered the draft years after her mother died of cancer—and it’s about time Katherine Min received the accolades she deserved.
Genre: Memoir/cultural criticism
While the United States is often seen as a melting pot or mosaic of cultures, an uncomfortable truth is that matters of race can still be incredibly black and white. In Biting the Hand, her poignant 2023 memoir, Julia Lee confronts the racism she has experienced throughout her life and the myth of the model minority, all while grappling with the racial positionality of Asian Americans in a country that too often asks us to choose sides in a conversation dominated by binary racial dynamics. In doing so, Lee weaves a deeply personal narrative, casting a retrospective gaze on the events that shaped her identity, from the Los Angeles riots of the early ’90s to the social justice movements of the 2010s. But while inherently historical, this nonfiction book, at its heart, attempts to get at a singular question: What does it mean to be truly seen?
Genre: Crime thriller
If you enjoyed Martin Scorsese’s The Godfather or Goodfellas, you’ll love Deepti Kapoor’s 2023 novel, Age of Vice. Set in the underworld of the lavishly wealthy of India, the novel is an action-packed thriller that explores corruption, sociopolitical tensions and forbidden love. This is admittedly a long one, but with Kapoor’s use of tension and compelling storytelling, the payoff is absolutely worth it.
Genre: Memoir
Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, this 2019 memoir-in-essays traces Grace Talusan’s journey from the Philippines to New England and back again. After an expired visa, her family lived in fear of deportation, and Talusan lived in fear of her grandfather’s abusive nightly visits. Through these essays, we see how a body documents trauma, how the documenting of bodies can create trauma and how the keeping of secrets can harm bodies across generations. By voicing what was previously silenced, Talusan offers strength and protection to those who follow. Moving, courageous and masterfully written, The Body Papers is not to be missed.
Genre: Memoir
When Michelle Zauner’s mother passed away from pancreatic cancer, Zauner not only lost her dearest loved one, but she also felt like she lost her connection to her Korean heritage. Her bestselling 2021 memoir explores this grief and how she was able to heal and pay homage to her late mother through cooking Korean food and making music.
“[Crying in H Mart] is all about her struggles with her identity as a mixed-race Korean American and the heartbreak of losing her mom to cancer,” says George. “Her descriptions of food, like kimchi and jjigae, are beautiful and show how deeply connected she was to her mom and culture. You can almost taste the food while feeling the emotion behind it. This book isn’t just about grief—it’s about finding where you belong, even when a huge part of your life is gone. Zauner’s honesty is what makes it so powerful. She doesn’t hide the pain, but she also shows how food and memories help keep loved ones close.”
George isn’t the only book lover to recommend Crying in H Mart to Reader’s Digest. Time and time again, authors, librarians, booksellers and readers have recommended this astonishing memoir.
Genre: Family saga
A sweeping tale of motherhood and survival, this 2023 novel follows the lives of three generations of strong Vietnamese American women. In the aftermath of their beloved matriarch’s death, Ann and her mother, Huong, must come together in their decrepit mansion in the Florida swampland to process their grief and heal their relationship. Banyan Moon is, at times, historical fiction that dives into the traumas of the war in Vietnam (you may want to keep a box of tissues handy if sad books make you cry easily), but it also reads like a fairy tale and is a beautiful testament to the things we do for love.
Genre: Memoir
When “Emily Doe” was assaulted by Brock Turner in 2015, the media and the courtroom focused on what a promising young man he was. He went to Stanford. He was a swimmer. But what about the woman he assaulted? They tried to paint her as unreliable, as disposable, but “Emily Doe” wanted the world to know she was Chanel Miller, an artist, a writer, a woman of exceptional promise who raised her voice to fight for all survivors of sexual assault. Her victim impact statement went viral on BuzzFeed, and Know My Name, her 2020 memoir, went on to win prizes and influence laws. This book shines a light on the lonely, harrowing experience of survivors and stands as a beacon of hope on the road to healing.
Genre: Romance
As far as pop-culture Asian American books go, this one has hit the mainstream. Chances are, you’ve seen the film version or at least heard of Crazy Rich Asians. Featuring the first all-Asian cast since 1993’s The Joy Luck Club, the movie was a groundbreaking moment. These days, you’re bound to find Kevin Kwan on every list of contemporary Asian American authors to read—and he’s earned his place!
Even if you’ve seen the film, the iconic 2013 novel will be hard to put down. The premise is the same: Rachel Chu and Nicholas Young begin dating in New York, but when they go to Nick’s home in Singapore, Rachel learns his family is rich—like, crazy rich—and not everyone is happy about their relationship. The book also holds so many more delicious layers, family secrets and tender moments. It’s fun from beginning to end, and if you enjoy it, you’ll be pleased to learn there are two more novels in this romance book series.
Genre: Gothic fiction/romance
As a fan of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Isabel Allende’s The House of Spirits, I couldn’t wait to read Shubnum Khan’s 2024 novel, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years. Set in a crumbling seaside mansion in South Africa, where a Muslim Indian community resides, the book follows Meena in the 1930s, Sana in the present day and the djinn that watches over both of them. Khan defies the limits of genre by imbuing elements of Gothic horror, historical fiction, magical realism and romance into her lyrical prose, and the haunting beauty of the story stayed with me for weeks after reading.
Genre: Feminist fiction
Sometimes funny and poignant, other times dark and strange, Breasts and Eggs is about an aspiring writer’s relationship with her bar hostess sister and niece, as well as her fertility journey in modern-day Japan. Mieko Kawakami explores the issues surrounding women’s bodily autonomy in Japan, where (I was shocked to learn) reproductive laws are still stacked against single women, especially working-class single women. Despite the sobering topic, I loved Kawakami’s irreverent tone and the characters who feel both real and absurd. It’s no wonder this 2020 novel was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of Time‘s Best Books of 2020.
Genre: YA historical fiction/LGBTQ+ romance
Winner of the 2021 National Book Award in Young People’s Literature, this is Malinda Lo’s sixth novel, and her mastery of the form is clear. Beautifully written and deeply researched, Last Night at the Telegraph Club is both a romantic teen novel and a work of historical fiction, taking place in 1954 in San Francisco. At a time when it is dangerous to be either Chinese or queer, 17-year-old Lily Hu begins to learn what it means to be both. As she and her classmate, Kathleen Miller, find themselves drawn to each other more and more, Lily grapples with what her family would think, how her queerness might endanger them and how much risk comes with love. With the tension of McCarthyism, racism and homophobia humming in the background, this high-stakes story soars with hope.
Genre: Fairy tale/LGBTQ+ short stories
Winner of the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, K-Ming Chang’s Gods of Want is a master class in prose-poetry. I absolutely devoured these surrealist short stories of different women whose immigrant and/or queer experiences are tangled in the fantastical and mythological. Be warned: Chang does not shy away from the erotic or the gross and viscerally violent, and the wandering stories are generally unconcerned with plot. While this was exactly why I loved this collection, it’s admittedly not for everyone. Awarded the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” prize in 2020, Chang writes poetry and fiction that are luminous, exquisitely strange and wise beyond her years.
Genre: Romance
For readers looking for a happy-ending romance, Helen Hoang’s The Bride Test delivers a story of heart, hope and very steamy love. Hoang was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in 2016, and she’s been writing romance novels with neurodiverse characters ever since. The Bride Test, published in 2019, is her second novel and follows Khai, a handsome and eternally single young man. His autism makes him particular about the people he spends time with, and he experiences emotions differently than his family. He thinks he’s incapable of love until the beautiful and tenacious Esme arrives from Vietnam. You can’t help but root for these characters, and you’ll fall in love with them as they find love with each other.
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At Reader’s Digest, we’ve been sharing our favorite books for over 100 years. We’ve worked with bestselling authors including Susan Orlean, Janet Evanovich and Alex Haley, whose Pulitzer Prize–winning Roots grew out of a project funded by and originally published in the magazine. Through Fiction Favorites (formerly Select Editions and Condensed Books), Reader’s Digest has been publishing anthologies of abridged novels for decades. We’ve worked with some of the biggest names in fiction, including James Patterson, Ruth Ware, Kristin Hannah and more. The Reader’s Digest Book Club, helmed by Books Editor Tracey Neithercott, introduces readers to even more of today’s best fiction by upcoming, bestselling and award-winning authors. For this list of contemporary Asian American authors, Sarah Jinee Park tapped her experience as a reader, fiction writer and editor of Mochi Magazine, an online destination for Asian American women to ensure that all information is accurate and offers the best possible advice to readers. We verify all facts and data, back them with credible sourcing and revisit them over time to ensure they remain accurate and up to date. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
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