Asian Biography

Nothing had worked. Not threats or negotiations, not shutting down the betting parlors or opium dens, not throwing Chinese offenders into prison. Not even executing them. The New York DA was running out of ideas, and more people were dying every day as the weapons of choice evolved from hatchets to automatic weapons and even bombs. Welcome to New York City's Chinatown in 1925.

The New York Times bestselling inspirational story of impoverished children who transformed themselves into world-class swimmers. "A brightly told story of the triumph of underdogs ... exuberant, well-researched ... tense, vivid, and inspiring." ―Kirkus Reviews In 1937, a schoolteacher on the...

FINALIST FOR THE 2024 HILARY WESTON WRITERS’ TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION Globe and Mail’s Best Books of 2024 CBC Books’ Best Canadian Nonfiction of 2024 “Here is my disconnect: the private and public self. My mind and body. The real person and curated spectacle. . . . Are there...

A poet’s audio obsession, from collecting his earliest vinyl to his quest for the ideal vacuum tubes. A captivating book that “ingeniously mixes personal memoir with cultural history and offers us an indispensable guide for the search of acoustic truth” (Yunte Huang, author of Charlie...

For readers of Caste, the coming-of-age story of a Dalit individual that illuminates systemic injustice in India and its growing impact on US society “A moving personal story and a useful educational examination of persistent discrimination”—Kirkus Reviews Winner of the Sahitya Akademi...

An unflinching look at the challenges and misunderstandings mixed-race people face in family spaces and intimate relationships across their varying cultural backgrounds In this emotionally powerful and intellectually provocative blend of memoir, cultural criticism, and theory, scholar and...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION WRITING A poignant personal narrative about family, cultural history and ecology, and a quest to understand what we owe our ancestors and our descendants from an unforgettable new voice. Every spring during the Qingming Festival, people...

Winner of the Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing Winner of the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, awarded to the best first book of the year Named one of the best books of the year by: THE NEW YORK TIMES THE WASHINGTON POST THE ECONOMIST TIME A poet's account of one...

“Italy is a beautiful but complicated place, not so much a country as a collection of cultures and cuisines. Matt Goulding expertly navigates it’s wonders and eccentricities with wisdom and great passion.” -Anthony Bourdain ""Goulding is pioneering a new type of writing about food.""...

A Life in Words, the first complete translation of Ismat Chughtai's celebrated memoir Kaghazi hai Pairahan, provides a delightful account of several crucial years of her life. Along side vivid descriptions of her childhood years are the conflicted experiences of growing up in a large Muslim...

“A moving chronicle of trans resilience and joy” (Vogue) from one of Out100’s Most Impactful and Influential LGBTQ+ Storytellers “Groundbreaking . . . [Rocero] quite literally models what triumph can look like.”—Glamour (Women of the Year) WINNER OF THEM’S AWARD FOR LITERATURE...

In this inspiring book of divine discovery, poet and seeker Arundhathi Subramaniam gives us a glimpse into the lives of four self-contained, unapologetic female spiritual travelers. “Among the finest pieces of spiritual truth-telling literature I have ever read … A book to savor and...

"Extraordinary . . . This inspirational autobiography stands among the finest scientist memoirs." —New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice Meave Leakey’s thrilling, high-stakes memoir—written with her daughter Samira—encapsulates her distinguished life and career on the front lines...

From one of China’s most acclaimed and decorated writers comes a powerful first-person account of life in Wuhan during the COVID-19 outbreak. On January 25, 2020, after the central government imposed a lockdown in Wuhan, acclaimed Chinese writer Fang Fang began publishing an online diary. In...

In this unusual, engaging, and intimate collection of personal essays, Lambda Literary Award finalist Tania De Rozario recalls growing up as a queer, brown, fat girl in Singapore, blending memoir with elements of history, pop culture, horror films, and current events to explore the nature of...

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.

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. As a teen, Anna Qu is sent by her mother to work in her family’s garment factory in...

No Longer Human (1948, Ningen Shikkaku / A Shameful Life / Confessions of a Faulty Man) was an attack on the traditions of Japan, capturing the postwar crisis of Japanese cultural identity. Framed by an epilogue and prologue, the story is told in the form three notebooks left by Ōba Yōzō, whose calm exterior hides his tormented soul. Osamu Dazai was a Japanese author who is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th century Japan. A number of his most popular works, such as Shayō (The Setting Sun) and Ningen Shikkaku (No Longer Human), are considered modern-day classics in Japan.

The first definitive natural history of the Indian subcontinent. Did you know that the exquisite caves of Ellora were hewn from rock formed in the greatest lava floods the world has known—eruptions so enormous that they may well have obliterated dinosaurs? Or that Bengaluru owes its unique...

The remarkable true story of the miraculous journey that made the Dalai Lama into the man he is today and sparked the fight for Tibetan freedom “A hair-raising tale of daring and escape.”—The Washington Post In the early weeks of 1959, a bloody uprising gripped the streets of the Tibetan...