15 books to celebrate Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month

by Ocean Vuong

🎧 Audiobook

Vuong's first published works were poetry, and he brings that gorgeous sense of language to his autobiographical first novel. This is the story of Little Dog, a young man trying to understand his mother's traumatic past in Vietnam, while also hoping to explain to her his struggles as the gay child of immigrants in America.

by Lisa Lee

🎧 Audiobook

In this captivating novel, a young Korean American woman attempts to distance herself from her family in order to forge an authentic future—but a violent act forces her to see that she'll always be implicated with their actions and they with hers.

by Rachel Heng

🎧 Audiobook

The most obvious reference in the title is to the feat of civil engineering that has expanded Singapore's land mass by 25% by reclaiming land from the ocean. But in the story of Ah Boon, a young boy in a fishing village, it's equally a reference to the people of Singapore reclaiming their identity after years of British rule and Japanese occupation. It's a beautiful tale about love, coming of age, and reconciling tradition with the draw of modernity with hints of magical realism.

by Han Kang

🎧 Audiobook

In this light-filled and multifaceted book, Han Kang draws together the threads of her work and life, tracing the connections between her interior and exterior worlds through a sequence of essays, poems, photographs, and diary entries, brilliantly translated by Maya West and by e. yaewon & Paige Aniyah Morris.

by Kiran Desai

🎧 Audiobook

A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the Booker Prize–winning author of The Inheritance of Loss.

by R. F. Kuang

🎧 Audiobook

Dante's Inferno meets Susanna Clarke's Piranesi in this dark academia fantasy in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor's soul—perhaps at the cost of their own.

by Hua Hsu

🎧 Audiobook

Hsu, a New Yorker staff writer, remembers being the average American college student and listening to Dave Matthews and hanging out with friends. But more than that, he specifically recalls a Japanese American friend at college, and how they both realized American culture doesn't necessarily have a place for them. Their friendship helps Hsu find his place in the world and the importance of art in his life.

by Liann Zhang

🎧 Audiobook

This razor-sharp debut thriller blends biting satire with chilling suspense, as a young woman steps into her deceased twin's influencer life—only to discover dark secrets hidden behind her social media façade.

by Malala Yousafzai

🎧 Audiobook

In this astonishing memoir, Malala reintroduces herself to the world, sharing how she navigated life as someone whose darkest moments threatened to define her narrative—while seeking the freedom to find out who she truly is.

by Rachel Khong

🎧 Audiobook

This is a generation-spanning love story that begins with a Y2K-era romance between a broke intern and a pharmaceutical heir, and echoes decades later as a teenage son searches for the truth about who he is. 

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.

by Karissa Chen

🎧 Audiobook

From WWII to 2008, this searing story follows one couple across 60 years as world events pull them together and apart, exploring what it means to find home far from your homeland.

by Yangsze Choo

🎧 Audiobook

Choo brilliantly explores a world of mortals and spirits, humans and beasts, and their dazzling intersection. Epic in scope and full of singular, unforgettable characters, this is a stunning novel about old loves and second chances, the depths of maternal love, and ancient folktales that may very well be true.

by Yiyun Li

🎧 Audiobook

Yiyun Li's remarkable, defiant work of radical acceptance as she considers the loss of her son.

by Yosha Gunasekera

🎧 Audiobook

When the last fare of the night turns up dead in her backseat, a Sri Lankan American taxi driver works off the clock to clear her name in this mystery novel by debut author Yosha Gunasekera.

by Sonoko Machida

🎧 Audiobook

An international bestseller with over half a million copies sold between Japan and South Korea, this charming novel tells the delightfully quirky and heartfelt stories of the store’s customers and employees, offering us all a unique recipe for a good, fulfilling life.