East Asian Nonfiction Titles

History professor Lee tells the story of Asians in America, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Hmong (among others) from the 16th century (when people came to what is now California from Manila) to now when Asian Americans are treated as America’s “model minorities.” This was published in 2015, so it goes up to pretty recent events, but just misses the last presidency.

Activist and beloved actor Takei shares the painful story of his family’s time in multiple Japanese internment camps during World War II. Ever since I read Maus, I’ve been a proponent of the graphic novel as memoir/biography, and this is an example of how the genre can be used to illustrate the more visual impressions of childhood. The story is a reminder of an extremely harmful and recent event in our nation’s history that is nevertheless rarely taught in school.

Yu Hua picks ten common Chinese words and, through each one, illustrates something about Chinese history and culture, using anecdotes and facts. The words and phrases — people, leader, reading, writing, lu xun, revolution, disparity, grassroots, copycat, and bamboozle — each reveal something unique about “the Chinese experience over the last several decades.” Yu Hua has written novels and short story collections. This is his only book of essays.

When Koh was fifteen years old, her parents left America (where they had arrived ten years earlier) and went back to South Korea, leaving her and her brother in California. Over the years, her mother writes her letters in Korean, apologizing, “letters Eun Ji cannot fully understand until she finds them years later hidden in a box.” This is a story of “hard-won selfhood and our deep bonds to family, place, and language” told by an acclaimed poet.