This past year has been a busy year for Asian American writers with many exciting moments, from Dan Santat’s A First Time for Everything winning the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature to Sanaz Toossi and Hua Hsu both winning Pulitzer Prizes.
As the year comes to an end, we wanted to take a look back at some of the best books from Asian American authors to come out in 2023. We reached out to community organizers, contributors, scholars, and writers to find out which books they couldn’t put down.
These are the books that we couldn’t stop thinking about, the books we’re gifting to friends and family, and the books we’re going to pick up time and time again. We hope you pick up a few of these books from your favorite independent bookstore or local library to read in the new year.
“Thao Thai’s debut novel, Banyan Moon, takes elements of the gothic genre and seamlessly blends it into the Vietnamese American novel. The narrative explores family secrets and how those secrets continue to haunt the family regardless of how old they are and whether those secret keepers are still alive to hide them. These secrets are originally meant to protect each member, but it is these secrets that result in misunderstandings and unintentional hurt that festers over the years. It is easy to forget our parents and grandparents had lives before us, and Thai beautifully captures the complexities of family and love that stem from this generational gap as we often struggle to understand the generation(s) before us. This was a book that I could not put down as it had me reflect on the things I will never know about my own grandmother and her life before me and my mom.” — Justine Trinh, Asian American literature scholar
The Best Possible Experience by Nishanth Injam
“Nishanth Injam began writing after he immigrated to the US in his young adulthood. The output of those efforts is The Best Possible Experience, a collection of strange, wonderful, and unsparing stories about Indians and Indian immigrants. A man embarks on a bus trip only to realize that passengers are disappearing in the bathroom. An Indian man enters into a greencard marriage with a Black woman and they prepare for their immigration interview. In this collection, Injam considers questions of disappointment, survival, compromise, and—of course—love.” — Sarah Sukardi, co-founder of Soapberry Review
“Ren Yu’s coming of age in Chlorine is neither charming nor pretty. As a teen girl, she’s expected to be so much: a champion swimmer, a well-behaved daughter, sexually desirable to her peers, a trustworthy friend—but Ren only concerns herself with what she believes she was born to be. With its cerebral protagonist and its violent portrayal of girlhood, Jade Song’s debut is a disturbing, reflective blend of relatable YA and nauseating body horror for fans of Carrie and Heathers, one that had me at the edge of my seat from the start to its inevitable, unforgettable conclusion.” — Frankie Martinez, contributor
Read our review of it here.
Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine
“Through ten short stories set in the same space, Dearborn, Michigan, Ghassan Zeineddine’s Dearborn weaves a vibrant, funny, dramatic, and nostalgic tapestry of immigrant and diaspora experience that left me feeling an overwhelming cacophony of emotions, but above all, endlessly charmed. Zeineddine masterfully creates charming, fully-realized characters who feel as though they occupy the same space and every story feels like a window into a world of endless complexity. I’ve never engaged with a piece of art that’s able to depict the raw concept of immigrant community as well as Zeineddine’s, whose depiction of the Arab American experience seems both hyper specific to Dearborn and universal to the identity of every immigrant and to America as a whole.” — Essa Rasheed, contributor
“Hu first encountered Korean beauty ideals when she was stationed in Seoul as an NPR bureau chief. In this part-reportage, part-memoir that she began to write after moving back to the States, she delves into the origins of the hyper-advanced K-beauty industry now leading the global charge in social media trends and innovation.
Hu investigates Korea’s postmodern technocratic society and how women operate under false bodily ‘choices’ that are governed by a deeply patriarchal system. She interrogates the ways in which impossible beauty standards constrict Korean women’s freedom, drive corporate profit, and lead to a wider culture of dangerous sexism and abuse.
Technologized beauty started in South Korea, and its adoption has spread worldwide at a rapid pace. I found this book to be especially prescient and chilling as the tech and beauty industries market themselves to younger and younger audiences, conflating appearances with self-worth.” — Iris Kim, writer and essayist
King of the Armadillos by Wendy Chin-Tanner
“I am not the kind of reader that needs to (or even wants to!) root for a protagonist, but I just could not help myself with this one. 15-year-old Victor Chin is still just a kid, stricken with Hansen’s disease (‘leprosy’), unceremoniously taken from his home in the Bronx and sent to a sanatorium in southern Louisiana. He is a fish-out-of-water twice over—alienated from his birth country and then from his family. King of the Armadillos is Victor’s coming-of-age story, but more than that, the novel is a tribute to the author’s father, also diagnosed with Hansen’s as a boy and also sent to an institution. This story clearly meant the world to Chin-Tanner, and it shows in her carefully detailed renditions and resonant themes of loss and family; friendship, resolve, and recovery.” — Pete Hsu, author of If I Were the Ocean, I’d Carry You Home
Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong
“Truly, I delighted in reading Jane Wong’s debut memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, where she opens the door wide for us to witness her coming-of-age story. From growing up behind the counters of her family’s Chinese restaurant, cheap dental implants, and interrogating what it means to be from a working class Asian American immigrant family – I resonated and rooted for her in comradery as a fellow daughter of working-class Asian immigrants. Wong brings light into the dark spaces of shame when it comes to loving people who are ‘bad’ and asks questions on how we can love better. With honesty and beauty, Wong’s memoir shows us the power of telling the truth and holding the ones we love closer.” — Julie Ae Kim, writer and co-founder of the Asian American Feminist Collective
“With its vivid detail and unique exploration of ghosts and decay, Organ Meats is the perfect literary accompaniment to a spooky winter season or any macabre vibes. This is my favorite new book this year as it brazenly embraces a style and voice I have not yet encountered – one that cares tenderly for its dark and often unexplored subject matter. This book invents its own mythology that is still grounded in the roots of oral storytelling – particularly the kind of legends that are passed down from mother to daughter. Organ Meats is one of those books that you have to read to read to understand, and it will not leave your thoughts any time soon.” — Sinclair Adams, sci-fi writer
Read our review of it here.
The Perfect Sound: A Memoir in Stereo by Garrett Hongo
“Prize-winning poet Garrett Hongo is one of our great American writers, and his poetic voice shines through in this personal memoir that operates on multiple levels. It’s a tribute to his late father, who built a homemade stereo from a kit, and the story of Garrett’s own pursuit of vintage audio gear and the latest tube equipment for the perfect sound for his own home. But woven through the narrative is the story of a Yonsei growing up among other Japanese Americans in the postwar communities of Hawai’i and Gardena, California. His vivid memories–of first love with a girlfriend brought to tears listening to Joni Mitchell, a night of the blues with Taj Mahal at Pomona College, or himself falling to his knees at hearing the power of great opera–are drawn with the same power of recall as his encounters with early Asian American theater workers, entertainers Pat Morita and Jack Soo, and his friendship with writer Wakako Yamauchi. It’s a lyrical book that can be opened anywhere and read again and again.” — Frank Abe, co-editor, The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration (forthcoming May 2024)
Songs on Endless Repeat by Anthony Veasna So
“The writer, Richard Bausch, often tells my class that the best fiction is that which takes you inside. And that’s exactly what Anthony Veasna So does so well. Just like with his debut short story collection, Afterparties, Songs on Endless Repeat takes us deep into the world as So experienced it whether it’s in the aftermath of a friend’s suicide or what it is like to be ‘obnoxiously young and restless.’ This posthumous collection of short stories and essays exhibits So’s versatility as a storyteller plus his ability to tap into what makes us human, leaving you in awe of his talent. Be sure to blast Pavement’s Wowee Zowee as you read this collection.” — Audrey Fong, co-founder of Soapberry Review
Straw Dogs of the Universe by Ye Chun
“Straw Dogs Of The Universe chronicles a painful and bloody era of Chinese-American history, a time when countless men lost their lives building the railroad and women were forced into indentured servitude. Chun deftly foregrounds the experiences of the individuals and found families of people we might only see as statistics relegated to the footnotes of history books. Equal parts harrowing, educational, and riveting, Straw Dogs Of The Universe cements Chun’s place as one of the boldest fiction writers of our generation.” — Katherine Jin, writer and contributor
Y/N by Esther Yi
“Esther’s Yi’s debut novel Y/N is the Salvador Dalí painting of books: everything (characters, metaphors, plot lines) is elongated, slightly grotesque, and beautiful at the same time. You can’t look away. The Korean American narrator of the novel thinks she has no interest in K-Pop until she actually sees a band perform live, and it’s then that she falls irrevocably in love with the band’s youngest member, Moon. Because of her love, she leaves her boyfriend, her roommate and her job in Berlin to search for Moon in Seoul. It is both ridiculous and completely plausible. What is fandom, afterall, except absolute belief in an actor/performer/character? Some of the most bizarre and entertaining parts of the novel are when it becomes meta: the narrator writes Y/N fanfiction where Y/N stands for Your Name, and anyone can insert themselves into the story with Moon. What makes Y/N infinitely readable is also what makes Moon so dazzling to the narrator: we know that true understanding–the kind that leads to attainment–is impossible, but we just can’t help reaching for it.” — Thu Anh Nguyen, poet