Asian Biography

Growing up in the only Korean family in a Minnesota town, Michelle Lee-Barnewall has felt the pain of racial discrimination and the resulting identity confusion that follows. Through the telling of her personal story, she seeks to transcend the current divide between those who emphasize social...

One of America's best-known rock and entertainment journalists describes his journey from his childhood, cooped up in the "rice room" of his family's restaurant in Oakland's Chinatown, where he did chores, to the major role he played as a writer and editor at Rolling Stone. It is a story of teen worship of Elvis, but also of Chinese customs and the tragic murder of his brother, and of the '60s scene in San Francisco, where he found freedom - and his career.

Read by the author. The Monsoon Diaries is the firsthand account of Dr. Calvin Sun, an emergency room doctor who worked tirelessly on the front lines in multiple hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing upon the lessons he learned from his adventures traveling to more than 190 countries...

Through the sweeping cultural and historical transformations of China, entrepreneur Lan Yan traces her family’s history through early 20th Century to present day. The history of the Yan family is inseparable from the history of China over the last century. One of the most influential...

In Gift of Gratitude, author Claire E. Hallinan shares her gratitude for the gifts that she was given by her past: the ability to think of all experiences as positive, the strengths that she determined to be resilient, and the future that she believed to be hopeful through her unique learning experiences. It is these gifts that she is able to share in her very own classroom as a teacher today.

Two modern adventurers sought a treasure possessed by the legendary “Wild Men of Borneo.” One found riches. The other vanished forever into an endless jungle. Had he shed civilization—or lost his mind? Global headlines suspected murder. Lured by these mysteries, New York Times bestselling...

An epic saga of hubris, cruelty, and redemption, Now the Hell Will Start tells the remarkable tale of the greatest manhunt of World War II. Herman Perry, besieged by the hardships of the Indo-Burmese jungle and the racism meted out by his white commanding officers, found solace in opium and marijuana. But on one fateful day, Perry shot his unarmed white lieutenant in the throes of an emotional collapse and fled into the jungle. Brendan I. Koerner spent nearly five years chasing Perry's ghost to the most remote corners of India and Burma.

As the grandson of the one and only Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan had big shoes to fill. The Mongol Empire already spanned several countries and territories, but this didn’t satisfy Kublai. During his reign, he conquered southern China, Korea, and several other parts of southeast Asia, effectively doubling his empire. By the time of his death, people all over Asia and Europe knew his name. This book tells the life story of this infamous emperor of both Mongol and China who ruled from the legendary summer palace Xanadu.

When Trisha Low moves West, her journey is motivated by the need to arrive “somewhere better” - someplace utopian, like revolution; or safe, like home; or even clarifying, like identity. Instead, she faces the end of her relationships, a family whose values she has difficulty sharing, and America’s casual racism, sexism, and homophobia. In this book-length essay, the problem of how to account for one’s life comes to the fore - sliding unpredictably between memory, speculation, self-criticism, and art criticism, Low seeks answers that she knows she won’t find.

Perhaps the best golfer ever, Tiger Woods rocketed to the top of a once whites-only sport. Endorsements made him a global brand and the world’s richest athlete. The child of a multiracial marriage, Woods and his blond, blue-eyed wife, Elin Nordegren, seemed to represent a new postracial America. Then, in late 2009, Woods became embroiled in a sex scandal that made headlines worldwide.

Part memoir, part business book, part brazen showboating, theCoderBros Go to White Castle is the enlightening story of Hansel and Wayne, two best friends who transformed their passion for coding into a thriving lifestyle business. Growing up as Asian-Americans in white America, they each navigated cultural challenges before eventually meeting in San Francisco. There, they began their up-and-down adventures that culminated in theCoderSchool, a national franchise business that teaches kids to code.

Forced Out: A Nikkei Woman’s Search for a Home in America offers insight into “voluntary evacuation,” a little-known Japanese American experience during World War II, and the lasting effects of cultural trauma. Of the roughly 120,000 people forced from their homes by Executive Order 9066, around 5,000 were able to escape incarceration beforehand by fleeing inland.

This audiobook contains touching accounts of struggles and achievements of Korean Americans and serves an important primary source material for understanding the Korean teenage experience in the United States. This audiobook contains biographical accounts of a diverse group Korean Americans. Kenny Yoon, a junior at Horace Mann School in New York, is a part of the gifted music program at The Julliard School. Kenny describes how he came to play violin and how he hopes to bring joy to people through music.

From a dazzling new writer, a stirring and gorgeously written memoir rooted in Hakka culture about the lesson to accept both bitterness and sweetness in life. Eat Bitter is a memoir about guts and feelings. In Eat Bitter food is not fuel. It’s a vehicle for us to digest reality. A pause for...

A memoir of a South Vietnamese colonel's daughter, chronicling the tumultuous years growing up in the war-torn country of Vietnam and the abrupt and brutal regime change that forced her disruptive and disorienting coming of age between two vastly different cultures.

Nearly a decade after his triumphant Charlie Chan biography, Yunte Huang returns with this long-awaited portrait of Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874), twins conjoined at the sternum by a band of cartilage and a fused liver, who were "discovered" in Siam by a British merchant in 1824. Bringing an Asian American perspective to this almost implausible story, Huang depicts the twins, arriving in Boston in 1829, first as museum exhibits but later as financially savvy showmen who gained their freedom and traveled the backroads of rural America to bring "entertainment" to the Jacksonian mobs.

A rich boy turned refugee tells the story of coming full circle to succeed in ways beyond his imagination. Born to a family that had recently fled British India during the partition of India and Pakistan, Ram's early life in Mombasa seemed charmed with wealth and success. However, losing all of this overnight through a second deportation, this time from Kenya to the UK, he saw the course of his life change beyond recognition.

If Crazy Rich Asians and a Greek tragedy had a literary offspring, it would be the spitting image of Why Should Guys Have All the Fun? The true story of resolute immigration lawyer and activist Loida Lewis, Why Should Guys Have All the Fun? begins with Loida's adventure-packed Philippine upbringing. A torrid love affair with brilliant, irascible financier Reginald Lewis follows, as does regal living in Manhattan and Paris, and gut-wrenching loss, all before Loida shockingly commandeers a multibillion-dollar, multinational conglomerate and leads it with aplomb.

>Blood, Steel & Canvas: The Asian Odyssey of a Fighter is a story about fighting on two levels: the American lawyer author’s improbable career as Asia’s oldest amateur boxer and his fight to overcome colon cancer and its consequences. Through his friendships with boxers in the Philippines and Thailand, his efforts (not always successful) to learn the languages and his delight in experiencing local cultures, he sets an example for other expatriates who have the great fortune to live and work overseas.

A journey back in time, The Golden Mountain is the gripping tale of four generations of Chinese women who live and die under the restrictions of their culture, except for one, the author. Her story tells of growing up in Hong Kong and of her transition to New York City where she struggled to meld the American dream with her ethnic background. Finally, at age 50, she dares to move into the present and understand the true nature of dreams and what it means to live.