It’s Time To Start Listening: Reading Asian Diasporic Writers
Hi friends. I’m thrilled to share a guest post with you from Kasey, whose reading recommendations and Goodreads updates are some of my favorites. I’ll be back next week!
Hi! I’m Kasey, a travel writer living in Los Angeles and Tokyo. I’m a fifth generation Japanese American. My ancestors left Japan in the 19th century to find work in Hawai’i. My paternal grandparents and maternal grandfather were forced into the Jerome and Rowher camps during World War II and my maternal grandmother survived the bombings of Tokyo.
Even though I grew up in the Asian American community of the Los Angeles South Bay and lived in Tokyo, I still experience microaggressions (don’t be so sensitive), racism and fetishization. America has the gross idea of the “perpetual foreigner;” you don’t belong in America, go home to your own country. And when you leave the US? You don’t belong in your ancestral homeland. You’re stuck in the middle. That’s just a hint of what it’s like to be Asian American.
While reading won’t make you anti-racist (“authors of color are not tools for self improvement”), I hope these stories will help broaden views on the racism, the paradoxes, the struggles and the happiness that is a part of the Asian diasporic community. Not every Asian person has the same experience. We are individuals who deserve to have our stories told and read.
Recommendations
Anything by Karen Tei Yamashita is worth a read. Yamashita threads memoir, screenplay, speeches, short stories and novels throughout her work about Japanese American identity. Her most recent work, Sansei and Sensibility, turns the classics of Jane Austen into the lives of later-generation Japanese Americans living in Los Angeles and the South Bay. I-Hotel is an epic collection of ten novellas about the Asian American movement in the late 1960s-70s San Francisco.
Young adults, there’s plenty of lit for you too! The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee is about a chatty Chinese-American teenager living in the American Old West. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (technically an adult novel but I think it’s appropriate for older teens) by Chinese-American author Jamie Ford beautifully unfolds a relationship between a Chinese American teenage boy and a Japanese American teenage girl during World War II.
One of my favorite non-fiction books is the incredibly underrated Gaysia by Benjamin Law. Law is a Chinese-Australian journalist; you might recognize him from his book-turned-TV-show ‘The Family Law.’ In Gaysia, Law travels through countries and regions in Asia to discover the traditions, culture and struggles of his fellow “gaysians.”
If you’re a writer, David Mura’s A Stranger’s Journey and Matthew Salesses’ recent Craft in the Real World are essential books on craft. Both written by Asian American authors, these two books illustrate what it’s like to be a storyteller of color in workshop and the real world. You can check out a sample of Craft in the Real World on Literary Hub.
Quick recommendations
No-No Boy by John Okada illustrates the life and trauma of a no-no boy post-camp. Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel, A Pale View of Hills, is an intense tale about the PTSD of a Japanese woman after the American atomic bombing of Nagasaki. In the Country by Mia Alvar is a collection of stories about Filipinos and their diaspora living in Bahrain and elsewhere. For laughs, Ali Wong’s memoir Dear Girls is a collection of comedic essays addressed to her daughters with plenty of inside jokes for fellow Asians. Go Home! is a collection of stories and poems by Asian diasporic authors such as Alice Sola Kim, Chang-Rae Lee, and Rowan Hisayo Buchanan that cover the idea of what home really is.
Stories you can find online
It’s rare to find a Japanese author recognizing Japanese Americans and kikokushijo, which was why I was pleasantly surprised by Haruki Murakami’s short story “Hanalei Bay.” The story is available on The Guardian (Part I and Part II and in the collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman). “Omakase” by Weike Wang (The New Yorker) delves into fetishization and infantilization of Asian American women. “Why Were They Throwing Bricks?” by Jenny Zhang (Literary Hub), which was included in her excellent collection Sour Heart, is about a young woman and her relationship with her grandmother. How about my essay from McSweeney’s, “An Open Letter to the Guy who Didn’t Believe my Ethnicity Even Though it was None of His Business.” Yes, it was based on my life. Yes, I am still fuming about it.
Message me on Instagram if you enjoyed any of these books, want to offer more recommendations or just want to chat!