This year, Soapberry Review reached out to writers and contributors to ask for the books that stayed with them. The result—this year’s Best Asian American Books of 2024 list—is a stunning and diverse array of stories, from a scholarly work about systemic ableism in academia to an essay collection about “shoplifting and airport sex” to a novelistic study of the “existentialism endemic to modern life” to an essay on how literature can help us understand the century-long war in Palestine. They are works of escapism; and works that demand us to look closer at family, literature, and even the nature of reality.
We hope you pick up one or several of these books from your local independent bookstore or library to read in the upcoming year.
A Bành Mì For Two by Trinity Nguyen
“Trinity Nguyen’s debut novel, A Bành Mì For Two, is a heartfelt coming-of-age story following its two Asian protagonists: Lan, a young Vietnamese woman trying to be a dependable daughter after losing her ba, and Vivi, a Vietnamese American trying to explore her cultural roots.
As the title indicates, Vietnamese cuisine plays a central role throughout the book. Sài Gòn bursts to life as Vivi and Lan explore all of the delicious street food. These dishes, too, are an integral part of the country’s history of violence and survival.
In 220 pages, Nguyen gifts readers with a lighthearted sapphic romance while maintaining Vivi and Lan’s own character arcs – each navigating their own form of grief and confronting their (perceived) familial expectations as daughters. Even with the heavier topics, this was a delight to read. This YA sapphic romance is as sweet as bành flan (Vietnamese custard pudding).” – Kayla Kuo, contributor
“In my copy of dear elia, Mimi Khúc signed the book with ‘From my unwellness to yours.’ Her words remind me that we are all differentially unwell, but when we address our unwellness we can offer and receive the types of care that we need. Khúc’s book lays out how our unwellness is structured. For many Asian Americans it comes from a mixture of higher education’s systemic ableism, the process of model minoritization, and feelings of indebtedness to our families. However, Khúc reminds us that while these systems force unwellness onto us, we can resist and reclaim our humanity. Some of her suggestions are downright terrifying as she proposes defying filial feelings of indebtedness, rejecting institutional metrics of success, and removing ableist policies for our students. These actions will not end systematic unwellness, but they are vital steps to take if we want to prioritize our collective humanity and care.” – Jin Chang, History of Education PhD candidate, The University of Iowa
Read our review here.
Everything We Never Had by Randy Ribay
“Explored through four generations of Filipino-American boys, Randy Ribay’s Everything We Never Had highlights the difficulties of navigating through generational trauma and how breaking it isn’t as straightforward as it seems. From the immigrant narrative in the 1930s to the global pandemic era in the 2020s, readers get a non-linear experience of ways the Maghabol men navigate through identity, masculinity, mental health, and connection to culture. Ribay’s work sheds light on the underrepresented impacts and narratives of Filipino farm workers during the labor movement and their activism, in parallel with the racism towards the Asian community during the COVID-19 pandemic. An open-ended conclusion and interpretive plot line invite the readers to a thorough self-reflection and research on stories overlooked in history. It is a story of needed unity in our communities and our families. Ribay never fails to write a rich story that instills an inner spirit of activism in the reader.” – Akira Park, undergraduate researcher, Washington State University, and contributor
How to End A Love Story by Yulin Kuang
“If you had told me I would love most a book that begins with a funeral and somehow takes wild roundabouts and steep mountain passes towards Romanceland, I would never have believed you. That’s what’s so special about How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang: she makes you believe in seemingly impossible things. For instance, homecoming king Grant Shepard (even the swoony name!) will come back into your life, and you’re determined to hate him forever because of what happened to your sister, but he starts to melt even your bitter heart. Besides being a completely satisfying romance, How to End A Love Story is also a family drama with Asian characters who are some of the most complicated, realistic (who also buy Costco tiramisu), and memorable I’ve ever read. I felt both surprised and seen reading this book, thrilled by this ride.” – Thu Anh Nguyen, poet
Read our essay on How to End a Love Story here.
How to Fuck Like a Girl by Vera Blossom
“When I saw the title and the cover of How to Fuck Like a Girl, I just had to read it, and I could not put it down. Every page is saturated with Vera Blossom’s humor, passion, and love as she ruminates on topics that range from the desire for human connection to shoplifting and airport sex. Blossom is brutally honest with her readers on what it takes to survive in a world that is constantly discriminatory to people who are different and encourages us to steal back our girlhood, talk to the Dunkin’ Donuts employee, and be the Virgo (speaking from experience, being a sea goat is overrated anyway). I want to believe in a better world, and Blossom presents us with a roadmap to get there.” – Justine Trinh, PhD candidate English, Washington State University, and book club leader
Read our review here.
“One of the challenges of the bildungsroman is to capture the protagonist’s interiority without slipping into solipsism. In that regard, Mike Fu’s Masquerade rarely loses its balance. We follow thirty-one-year-old Meadow Liu as he works to uncover the mystery of his missing friend, Selma, but all the while, we are pulled into questions regarding the inherent nature of reality, and what it means to finally become. Indeed, does one ever become at all, or is it always just the becoming? In Fu’s prose, one will intimately recognize the existentialism endemic to modern life, and question whether the identity one has constructed for oneself is anything but what the title promises.” – Matt Lemas, contributor
Read our review here.
“Hisham Matar’s latest novel, My Friends, is a meditation in the midst of a calamitous history and a dominoing present. The book follows three exiled men in Europe—Khaled, Mustafa, and Hossam—whose personal predicaments (full of political drama, espionage, and artful insights) between Gaddafi’s regime in the 1980s and its conclusion in the 2011 Arab Spring result in their close bonds being challenged and altered, leading to three separate roads ultimately taken. For anyone familiar with Matar’s masterful corpus and his recurring literary obsessions, this novel will feel like sitting down at a café and listening to the tribulations of an old, familiar, and welcome friend.” – N.S. Ahmed, writer and editor
A Professional Lola by E.P. Tuazon
“In A Professional Lola, a joyful, weird, and eclectic collection of short stories from Grace Paley award winner E.P. Tuazon, there is an intimacy that makes you, the reader, feel like a fly on the wall, observing life unfold. The title story, ‘Professional Lola,’ about a main character interacting with a grandma-for-hire at a family birthday party, is brilliant. ‘Carabao,’ another gem, flooded me with memories and impressed me with its layered observations on gender and generational trauma.
The stories find the magic in the mundane – the author has a way of making everyday things, like borrowing a barong, meaningful and nuanced. I love the ambiguity and abruptness of the endings, the absurdity of ordinary moments, and the glimpse into various characters’ lives.
I often crave modern stories from the Filipino Diaspora the way I crave my mom’s home-cooking. Professional Lola explores the kaleidoscope of the Filipino immigrant and diaspora experience with a quiet grace that just hits the spot.” – Katrina T. De Los Reyes, writer
Read our review here.
Recognizing the Stranger by Isabella Hammad
“Nine days before October 7, 2023, Isabella Hammad delivered a speech at Columbia University as the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture and luckily, we now have it published in Recognizing the Stranger along with an afterword. Over a year later, Hammad’s analysis and critique on how literature can better help us understand the century-long war on Palestine is still a useful guide. Her speech details how we, as a society, may have reached a turning point in the narrative surrounding this conflict and the struggle for liberation. It demands that the reader confront long held ethical, political, and social beliefs and their place in history. Over Zoom in my class taught by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Hammad reflected upon how simply witnessing this moment isn’t enough; we must process and reflect upon it. To this, Viet said we must move beyond just empathy and commit to doing something about it.” – Audrey Fong, co-founder, Soapberry Review
A Thousand Times Before by Asha Thanki
“Asha Thanki’s exceptional debut novel, A Thousand Times Before, follows three generations of South Asian women connected by a tapestry that allows them to access each others’ memories. The speculative conceit literalizes generational inheritance and trauma, as well as its wisdom, and the possibilities of its power. Thanki’s novel is about this tapestry, but it is also about Partition and its aftermath; it is about love that withstands spatial and temporal separation; and it is about the desire to reach across time, to speak to our dead, and to discover in their wisdom that we are capable of being loved, and known.” – Sarah Sukardi, co-founder, Soapberry Review