Asian Memoir

Mazie Hirono is one of the most fiercely outspoken Democrats in Congress, but her journey to the U.S. Senate was far from likely. Raised on a rice farm in rural Japan, she was seven years old when her mother, Laura, left her abusive husband and sailed with her two elder children to Hawaii, crossing the Pacific in steerage in search of a better life. Though the girl then known as "Keiko" did not speak or read English when she entered first grade, she would go on to serve as a state representative and as Hawaii's lieutenant governor before winning election to Congress in 2006.

Pioneering Chinese American actress Anna May Wong made more than 60 films, headlined theater and vaudeville productions, and even starred in her own television show. Her work helped shape racial modernity, as she embodied the dominant image of Chinese, and more generally, “Oriental” women between 1925 and 1940. In Anna May Wong, Shirley Jennifer Lim re-evaluates Wong’s life and work as a consummate artist, and positions the actress as a historical and cultural entrepreneur who rewrote categories of representation.

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.

If you're Irish American or African American or Eastern European Jewish American, there's a rich literature to give you a sense of your family's arrival-in-America story. Until now, that hasn't been the case for Chinese Americans. From noted historian Mae Ngai, The Lucky Ones uncovers the three-generational saga of the Tape family. It's a sweeping story centered on patriarch Jeu Dips' (Joseph Tapes') self-invention as an immigration broker in post-gold rush San Francisco, and the extraordinary rise it enables.

A luminous memoir-in-essays exploring place, identity, and what it means to grow up queer and Asian in the American South.

R. Scott Okamoto had no idea that his job as an English teacher at an evangelical Christian college meant facing bigotry as an Asian American and faux intellectualism as a teacher—and what it would mean for his own journey.

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.

'Chinese' or 'Any other Asian'. The boxes that people of vastly varied East and South East Asian heritage have to tick when declaring their ethnicity on many forms in the UK. For the first time, author Anna Sulan Masing addresses these issues in a comprehensive way. She explores what it means to be East and South East Asian in Britain today, and celebrates the multiple elements and varied experiences that make up ESEA identity. Powerful, moving and illuminating, this will be a must-read for anyone interested in exploring the make-up of our multicultural society.

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.

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.

This unique and informative book provides well-documented but little-known facts that will give listeners a deeper understanding of the cultural experience of Asians in America. Michael Soon Lee powerfully reveals how he overcame prejudice and discrimination to achieve success despite these obstacles.

Growing up, Alyssa Huynh heard stories from her family about their journey from Vietnam to Australia following the fall of Saigon and the racism they experienced upon arrival. While the discrimination she faced was different, she never quite felt like she belonged either. Longing for a safe space, she turned to the internet. Through sharing her writing online, she created a supportive community for fellow Asians and people of color with similar experiences, as well as for allies.

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.

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.

Islam is often associated with and limited to the worst of the world—extremism, obscurantism, misogyny, bigotry. So why would so many people associate with such a fundamentalist faith? Two Billion Caliphs advocates for a way of being Muslim in the world, ready for today and prepared for tomorrow.

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.

In public life and in Shih's own, "Asian Americanness" has changed shape constantly, directed by the needs of the country's racial imaginary. A memoir in essays, Chinese Prodigal examines the emergence of "Asian American" identity in a post-Civil Rights America in the wake of Vincent Chin's death. Shih guides us through the roles offered to Asian Americans to play, illuminating what these issues have to teach us about American values and about the vexed place Asians and Asian Americans inhabit today. Shih masterfully captures the intimate costs of becoming an American.

>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.