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USA Today
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
10 new books by Asian authors to read this AAPI month, from memoir to romance
10 new books by Asian authors to read this AAPI month, from memoir to romance Every May, we celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, and that means it's the perfect time to read new titles by AAPI authors. Though this year's AAPI month comes amid the Trump administration's unrelenting offensive against diversity initiatives, film and media leaders continue to speak about the importance of representation. 'I'm DEI until I D-I-E,' said 'Never Have I Ever' star Poorna Jagannathan at this year's Gold Gala in Hollywood. And in publishing, diversity needs to be a priority at 'every level,' bestselling romance author Ana Huang told USA TODAY earlier this month. New releases by AAPI authors to read this AAPI Month From eerie dystopian to poignant memoirs and chance-encounter romances, this list of 2025 releases from Asian authors has something for every reader. Here's what we recommend: 'Saving Five' by Amanda Nguyen She's been in the headlines for more than just her time on the Blue Origin spaceflight this year. Astronaut Ngueyn's memoir tells the story of her activism in conversations with her younger selves, including when her life changed forever after she was raped at Harvard University in 2013. Her survival and advocacy led to Congress unanimously passing the Survivors' Bill of Rights Act of 2016. 'Time Loops & Meet Cutes' by Jackie Lau Reminiscent of 'Groundhog Day,' this romance novel finds a woman reliving the same Friday over and over again after she eats dumplings that are supposed to give her 'what she needed most.' To complicate matters more, she falls for a good-looking brewery owner who appears in multiple places in her repeating day, but not remembering her the next time it starts again. 'Dirty Kitchen' by Jill Damatac This memoir by filmmaker Damatac takes us through her time growing up in the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant, then traveling to her native Philippines and London to pursue an education at the University of Cambridge. 'Dirty Kitchen' combines colonial history, Indigenous tradition and Filipino cooking as Damatac searches for identity, tradition and comfort through food. 'The Girls of Good Fortune' by Kristina McMorris 'Sold on a Monday' author McMorris returns with a historical fiction novel about a woman disguised as a man who is 'shanghaied' – drugged and taken to an underground cell with the intent of being forced into labor. As she retraces her steps, she realizes how she got there, including a violent, anti-Chinese massacre that killed her father and the young daughter she left behind. 'Audition' by Katie Kitamura 'Audition' is a literary study of the performances and masks we put on for those who think they know us best. In it, an accomplished actress and an attractive younger man meet for lunch. Her husband walks in. The dynamic between the three is ambiguous, but as two parallel narratives unfurl, readers search for who this younger man is: Is he her long-lost son? Her lover? A yearning student? 'Spiral' by Bal Khabra The author of hockey romance novel "Collide" returns with another "Off the Ice" story. "Spiral" follows Toronto Thunder hockey player and paparazzi magnet Elias Westbrook and Sage Beaumont, an aspiring ballerina. A fake relationship might just be what Sage needs for her shot in the spotlight and what Elias needs to get the tabloids off his back. 'Mỹ Documents' by Kevin Nguyen 'Mỹ Documents" is a timely and important dystopian novel about four young half-siblings whose paths diverge when the government begins forcibly detaining Vietnamese Americans. While two siblings are interned and forced to work, cut off from the outside world, the other two are exempt and work to expose the horrors of the camps. 'We Do Not Part' by Han Kang The author of the Booker Prize-winning 'The Vegetarian' returns with the story of two friends during a reckoning with a period of hidden Korean history. Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon that she's been injured in an accident and begs Kyungha to save her pet while she's hospitalized. Kyungha gets caught in a terrible, blinding snowstorm, arriving at Inseon's house only to realize there's something even darker awaiting. 'Vera Wong's Unsolicited Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)' by Jesse Q. Sutanto If you loved Sutanto's first Vera Wong mystery, check out the anticipated sequel. The meddling teahouse owner is feeling a bit bored after her high-stakes investigation into a murder in her shop, but then a chance encounter with a distressed young woman leads her to another rookie investigation into the death of an enigmatic influencer. 'When Devils Sing' by Xan Kaur (out May 27) This YA Southern Gothic horror novel follows four unlikely allies investigating a local teen's disappearance. As Neera, Isaiah, Reid and Sam investigate Dawson Sumter's bloody disappearance, they uncover that the nearby rich community may be harboring a power that connects to an ancient urban legend about three devils. 15 books to read this summer: Most anticipated releases for 2025's hottest months Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY's Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you're reading at cmulroy@ Contributing: KiMi Robinson
New York Times
22-05-2025
- General
- New York Times
This Filipino Chicken Soup Heals and Restores
The first time Jill Damatac made adobo, when she was 26, she boiled the meat for two and a half hours, until it was purged of moisture, purpose and soul. The meager pinches of ginger and garlic that went into the pot came desiccated, in jars. What wound up on the plate was 'a salty recollection of sauce,' she writes in her memoir, 'Dirty Kitchen.' She did not know how to make adobo, or any Filipino dish for that matter. She had stopped eating the food of her childhood and of her ancestors — had almost stopped being Filipino, 'as a form of survival,' she writes. She was trying to be wholly American, to hide her secret: that although she had lived in the United States since she was 9, alighting in Newark after a journey of 30 hours and three planes, her family was never able to obtain official papers; that she was undocumented. Like many children of immigrants, she had to find her way back to her heritage, to approach it almost as an outsider. She turned to old cookbooks and trawled the comments section of Panlasang Pinoy, an online trove of Filipino recipes. The more she researched, the more curious she became about older, precolonial traditions, particularly among her father's people, the highland Ifugao of the Cordillera region of Luzon. So often, she told me, these were sensationalized as exotic relics and 'noble savage stuff.' You could call it a chicken soup, but understand that this is a merely literal description. Pinikpikan 'is not primarily cooked for pleasure,' Damatac writes. 'It is eaten as the final part of a holy ceremony, which must appease the gods and offer compensation to a displeased universe.' When a member of the family falls ill, the mumbaki comes. To cook is to cure. If you are tender of heart, you may prefer to skip to the next paragraph. For in this ritual, there is no veil between life and death. The root of 'pinikpikan' is 'pik-pik,' 'to beat,' and historically the people who eat the dish must first stand witness as the chicken, the required sacrifice, is struck with a stick — softly, according to accounts, if that is of any comfort — to make the blood rise under the skin. Damatac writes about this forthrightly. This is who we were, she says: 'We need to be seen throughout all our incarnations in time.' (Today the practice is banned under the country's Animal Welfare Act.) If you cannot find a traditional healer, there is another form of medicine: tinola, a chicken soup that is more earthbound, perhaps, but no less restorative. It rewards patience, as its subtle flavor 'does not bloom, soft and gentle on the tongue, until the second mouthful,' Damatac writes. There are echoes of pinikpikan in its profusion of ginger, bringing a sweet heat; peppery malunggay (moringa) leaves in their mysterious fractals; chayote, kin to squash but as bracing as an apple, for a clean, juicy bite. Patis (fish sauce) stands in for salt. Damatac, who chose to self-deport in 2015 and is now, at age 42, a British citizen, recalls how her lola (grandmother) made tinola, with the whole chicken, in a 'chuck everything in the pot and deal with it' way. In her own version, she uses just thighs and drumsticks, with skin and on the bone, and bronzes them before submerging them in chicken stock and setting to a simmer. (For only 20 minutes: She has learned her lesson.) One part of her heritage that she never lost: her love of chicken skin. She buys extra from the butcher and crisps it, starting the pan cold and letting the heat rise, watching as the fat melts and sputters. She serves it with the tinola, adding it as a topping at the last possible moment, so it won't soften and sink in the broth. She likes the shatter, the dark shards of gold between her teeth. It comes with a touch of déjà vu, as she writes about adobo in her book: 'as if you have had it before, in a past life, when you were loved and well fed.'
