Grappling with identity: An AAPI Heritage Month reading list
I'm Aaron, a former sportswriter currently wrapping up a graduate degree at USC, and these days I love to read about pretty much anything other than sports — thrillers, books about transit and urban planning, and stories with a protagonist who is grappling with their identity.
The last of those has been part of my literary world since I was at least 12, when, as part of my seventh-grade creative writing elective, I wrote a memoir titled 'Jasian,' as in Jewish and Asian.
My dad is a native of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, my mom immigrated to the U.S. during the Vietnam War, and as a racially ambiguous kid growing up in Houston, I often corrected classmates who mistook me for Latino.
With this being the first full week of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, I'm using my L.A. Times Book Club debut to highlight some of my favorite books about Asian identity, many of which unpack feelings I've felt a lot more elegantly than I did in 'Jasian.' I also interview the owner of Bel Canto Books, a Filipina-led bookstore in Long Beach. We talk about upcoming AAPI month events at her store, her favorite books featuring Asian protagonists, and new releases she's looking forward to.
In Rachel Khong's 'Real Americans,' Nick Chen is a Chinese American teenager who looks completely white and feels isolated growing up in rural Washington with his single, Chinese mother, Lily, who he believes is hiding something about his past. This intergenerational family story with a sci-fi twist is about identity, inheritance and how much control we all actually have in controlling our destinies.
'Almost Brown,' a memoir by Charlotte Gill, the daughter of an English mother and Indian father, unpacks the tensions that can exist in a mixed-race family featuring parents with different worldviews and children searching for their own sense of self. As someone who's felt more connected with my Vietnamese identity as I've gotten older, this story of reconciliation and understanding resonated with me.
You've probably already read 'Crying in H Mart' — and if you haven't, correct that — but I'd be remiss not to include it here. Like author Michelle Zauner, I lost my mother to cancer, a disease that hung over my relationship with my mom for much of my childhood and into my early 20s, when she died. But I've learned that my relationship with her and the Vietnamese heritage she gave me can continue to evolve even though my mom has passed — a lesson Zauner beautifully shares in this bestselling memoir.
If you're like me and enjoy satire and cringe moments, then you'll fly through R.F. Kuang's 'Yellowface,' a thriller about a woman who steals the manuscript of her dead Asian American friend and passes it off as her own, navigating cancel culture and racial politics along the way.
I also want to share a few reported books I enjoyed:
(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)
Mark Whitaker's new book, 'The Afterlife of Malcolm X: An Outcast Turned Icon's Enduring Impact on America,' tells two stories on parallel tracks, according to Chris Vognar's review: a cultural history that touches on Malcolm X's appeal to disparate groups, and a legal thriller about the three men imprisoned for assassinating the Black nationalist leader in 1965.
Whether you're an architecture buff or just someone who appreciates the beauty of old L.A., check out the West Hollywood Denenberg Fine Arts Gallery's exhibit showcasing Robert Landau's new book, 'Art Deco Los Angeles.' The son of L.A. gallerist Felix Landau, Robert began taking photos for his latest book on a Hasselblad in the 1970s. 'I was responding visually and emotionally to places I grew up going to,' Landau tells The Times.
'Frasier' actor Kelsey Grammer's sister Karen was kidnapped, raped and murdered on July 1, 1975, just two weeks shy of her 19th birthday. But 'Karen: A Brother Remembers,' which came out Tuesday, is not a grief book, but a life book, an examination of the siblings' lives together and how Kelsey's sister stays with him nearly 50 years after dying.
Laura Mills writes for the Times about two new books that explore women's role in culture and the backlash it inspires: Sophie Gilbert's 'Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves' and Tiffany Watt Smith's 'Bad Friend: How Women Revolutionized Modern Friendship.' Gilbert explores how early 2000s media sold sex as a liberating act for women of this generation, when in reality it became closer to the opposite. Smith examines the centuries-long effort to control female friendship.
This week, we talk with Jhoanna Belfer, the owner of Long Beach's Bel Canto Books. The Filipina-led indie booksellers, which focus on celebrating works by women and people of color, started as a pop-up book club in 2018 and now has three locations: a standalone bookstore on the 4th Street corridor/Retro Row; a bookstore inside a Filipinx-led collaborative workspace in Bixby Knolls; and a mini bookstore inside Steel Cup Cafe.
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
What events is Bel Canto Books hosting for AAPI month?
What are some of your favorite books featuring Asian protagonists?
One of my favorite writers is Lisa Ko. Her first book, 'The Leavers,' was about a mom who's a nail shop technician and an immigrant in New York's Chinatown. She goes to work one day and never comes home. And her son has to grapple with what happened and try to figure out how to live, since he's 10 or 12 when she first disappears.
Lisa Ko has a new book called 'Memory Piece' that just came out in paperback. It's phenomenal. Writers obviously are writing about what's percolating in their minds and in the world that they're in, and 'Memory Piece' really reflects our current world. In the book, the government has become incredibly authoritarian, everyone is surveilled, and these three friends are trying to figure out how to live their lives and still make sense and find meaning.
The last one I would mention is Ocean Vuong's new novel, 'The Emperor of Gladness,' which drops next week. I got to read an early copy, and it's stunning. It's my favorite of his work so far, which is a very high bar. He just gets better and better with every book.
What new releases are you looking forward to?
'Coffee Shop in an Alternate Universe' by C.B. Lee is a cozy, queer fantasy about two young women who meet in a coffee shop. They don't realize that they're crossing into each other's different worlds. One world is not magical, and the other one is. It has tons of fun cafe drinks and monsters that they have to defeat.
A local author, Elise Bryant, has a second book coming out in her PTA moms murder mystery series: It's called 'The Game Is Afoot.' It's super fun if you either have kids in elementary school or you have ever known a PTA mom. It's very juicy and gossipy and fun.
The last one I'll call out is 'Moderation' by Elaine Castillo, a Filipina American writer whom I love. The protagonist is a content moderator, which sounds very benign. But she takes you into the deep, dark depths of what moderation actually can be, or horrifyingly probably is, with these people having to flag and kick out folks on the internet.
You can find Bel Canto Books at their standalone shop located 2106 E. 4th St., Long Beach; in Kubo LB at 3976 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach; and inside Steel Cup Café at 2201 N. Lakewood Blvd. Suite E, Long Beach.
That's all from me for now! I look forward to sharing more books with you all soon!
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