Reading

A Reading List for Summer 2021

A Reading List for Summer 2021

We're highlighting Asian writers ahead 

 

 

Following the torrential surge of anti-Asian acts in America and the call to #StopAsianHate and protect AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) lives, we reflect on lived experiences of fellow Asians through literature. With the most recent attack on an elderly Filipino woman in New York, their, our plight to belong and be seen continues even in 2021. A diverse reading list may not eradicate hatred, but it will, hopefully, help us cultivate empathy.

 

A Reading List for Summer 2021

Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas 

We're starting the list with Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist, Jose Antonio Vargas, and his provocative memoir Dear America. He writes, “This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but in the unsettled, unmoored psychological state that undocumented immigrants like myself find ourselves in… After 25 years of living illegally in a country that does not consider me one of its own, this book is the closest thing I have to freedom.”

 

RELATED: A Reading List for Filipino American History Month

 

A Reading List for Summer 2021

 

Speak, Okinawa by Elizabeth Miki Brina 

Elizabeth Miki Brina discovers her family’s history traumatized by colonization and racism in Speak, Okinawa. Through understanding her mother (a nightclub hostess) and father’s (an American soldier) relationship, and her mother's homeland, Okinawa, she explores the connectedness, which allowed her to exist.

 

A Reading List for Summer 2021

 

My Year Abroad by Chang-Rae Lee 

An instant national bestseller, My Year Abroad tells the story of Tiller, an average American college student, and Pong Lou, a creative Chinese American entrepreneur, both transformed by an eccentric adventure. It revels in man’s capacity for pleasure, pain, and connection.

 

A Reading List for Summer 2021

 

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Writer prodigy, Ocean Vuong, reveals a delicate coming-of-age tale of a Vietnamese American boy struggling to find his place in America in his semi-autobiographical debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. It’s written in the form of love letters to his mother who cannot read, who survived the Vietnam War. The bestselling novel surveys race and identity in contemporary America.

 

A Reading List for Summer 2021

 

Bonus: Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters 

In honor of International Transgender Day of Visibility, we bring the spotlight towards Torrey Peters' irresistible debut novel, Detransition, Baby. Following three interconnected women—trans and cis—wrestling with questions surrounding the possibility of creating a family. Here, Peters aims to destigmatize taboos around gender, sex and relationships. It soon will be adapted as a television series.

 

 

RELATED: The Year of Reading: The Best Books of 2020

 

Have anything on your summer reading list? Leave it in the comments below!

 

 

Art Alexandra Lara

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