Much of our U of M community celebrates Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in April in order to be able to honor AAPI experiences while most students are still on campus, but national celebrations are just beginning with the official start of the month kicking off on May 1st. If you were too caught up in exams back in April and now find yourself having some time to read, stop by Shapiro’s 2nd floor to browse 35 selected memoirs by AAPI authors! The publishing dates on these memoirs range from 1946 to 2022, covering a broad swath of history and identities across changing times. In this collection, you’ll find everything from Living for Change, a memoir by Civil Rights movement activist Grace Lee Boggs, to actor George Takei’s graphic novel memoir, They Called Us Enemy, about his family’s experience in the Japanese internment camps during World War II.
I’m personally excited to dig into Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s Dirty river : a queer femme of color dreaming her way home. Piepzna-Samarasinha is a disability rights activist who has authored several other books, including Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (available online), which challenged my understanding of what it means to be radically inclusive and imparted the importance of creating networks of mutual care. I look forward to deepening my knowledge of these subjects through Piepzna-Samarasinha’s memoir - be on the lookout for a book review of it later this month!
Not on campus? Check out the books in the display that are also available online:
- Living for change: An Autobiography by Grace Lee Boggs. “A sweeping account of the life of an untraditional radical from the end of the thirties, through the cold war, the civil rights era, and the rise of Black Power, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panthers to the present efforts to rebuild our crumbling urban communities.”
- The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir by Thi Bui. “An intimate and poignant graphic novel portraying one family's journey from war-torn Vietnam.”
- America Is in the Heart: A Personal History by Carlos Bulsan. "First published in 1946, this autobiography of the well-known Filipino poet describes his boyhood in the Philippines, his voyage to America, and his years of hardship and despair as an itinerant laborer following the harvest trail in the rural West.”
- Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian/Pacific American Activists by Kevin K. Kumashiro, editor. “First-person accounts of 20 activists’ life stories that work against common stereotypes, shattering misconceptions and dispelling misinformation.”
- Know My Name: A Memoir by Chanel Miller. “Miller writes about her experience being sexually assaulted by then Stanford University athlete Brock Turner in January 2015, as well as the aftermath and subsequent court case People v. Turner.”
- Stealing Buddha's Dinner: A Memoir by Bich Minh Nguyen. “As a Vietnamese girl coming of age in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Nguyen is filled with a rapacious hunger for American identity, and…the desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food.”
- Made in China : A Memoir of Love and Labor by Anna Qu. “A young girl forced to work in a Queens sweatshop calls child services on her mother in this powerful debut memoir about labor and self-worth that traces a Chinese immigrant's journey to an American future.”
- The Body Papers: A Memoir by Grace Talusan. “Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s.”
- House of Sticks: A Memoir by Ly Tran. “House of Sticks is a timely and powerful portrait of one girl's coming-of-age and struggle to find her voice amid clashing cultural expectations.”
Want more? Here’s a few extra books that are currently only available online:
- Minor feelings: An Asian American reckoning by Cathy Park Hong. “With sly humor and a poet's searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today.”
- [Audiobook] Speak, Okinawa: A Memoir by Elizabeth Miki Brina. “A searing, deeply candid memoir about a young woman's journey to understanding her complicated parents-her father a Vietnam veteran, her mother an Okinawan war bride-and her own, fraught cultural heritage.”
- [Audiobook] Fairest: A Memoir by Meredith Talusan. “A singular, beautifully written coming-of-age memoir of a Filipino boy with albinism whose story travels from an immigrant childhood to Harvard to a gender transition and illuminates the illusions of race, disability, and gender.”
- [Audiobook] Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner. “From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.”