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I’m sharing some of my favorite books by Asian American women for this Watcher and because its Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islander History Month, which has existed in some iteration for over 50 years now.
I’ve read some really compelling non-fiction by some amazing authors which has been crucial in showing me new perspectives and ways of thinking. There’s so much talk about the pitfalls of echo chambers and bubbles on social media and in politics, but I don’t think you have to subject yourself to the polar opposite of what you believe in to get a new outlook on any given idea or topic. In fact, this is where intersectionality comes in handy.
Without sounding like I’m virtue-signaling (cringe!) I think it’s important to listen and learn from people who don’t look like you, both because you may have more in common than you think and because they may see something differently inherently because they’ve had to move through the world in a different way. A lesson that it consistently reinforced to me is that there really is room for everyone. Room to tell stories, to listen, to change and grow.
This is probably why I hate the “whataboutism” mindset so much. Because it’s so focused on the individual or confines people to the demographics they were born into, obscuring the fact we can connect with other people in other communities. There are people inviting us into their hearts and minds, to gain a better understanding and connection. To respond with “well, what about my very specific thing that youre ignoring and will never understand?!” is so lame!!!!
Most of the books mentioned here aren’t solely centered on race or ethnicity, but each of the authors make it a part of their stories in a way that is inseparable from the perspective of what they’re discussing.
Landing a perfect back handspring off my soapbox, I hope something on this list catches your eye, but even more so, if you have a book by an Asian American author that you’d like to share with the class (fiction or non-fiction) please comment it below! The next one on my Libby waitlist is Yellowface by R.F. Kuang and I cannot wait to check it out.
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
Mindy Kaling
This was the book that really made me want to get into comedy and TV writing. Mindy Kaling recounts her experiences as the child of immigrants, trying to conform to American beauty standards, and how she got into writing for TV. There was something so relatable to me about her stories and how she was able to laugh at her past insecurities and missteps. I was such a weird kid and even though I had a good group of friends, I was also deeply insecure about every aspect of my existence. Being (or attempting to be) funny and having people laugh with me (or even at me when I was in control of the punchline) was a huge form of validation for me.
I think a young person past a certain complexion can relate to feeling extra insecure in their adolescence and sometimes even way into adulthood. We’re all looking for those things or people who make us feel good and at home in our own bodies. Even though I haven’t read Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? all the way through again in almost 13 years, I think about it often. It was a memorable marker in me figuring out how to be comfortable in my own skin. It was also (I think) the first non-fiction book I read at 13 years old and that made me feel so grown up.
End Credits
Patty Lin
This is the book that made me glad that I didn’t pursue my TV writer dreams. Patty Lin walks us through her life during her career as a TV writer (Freaks and Geeks, Friends, Breaking Bad, Desperate Housewives) from her early 20s to her late 30s. She talks about often being the only woman of color in the rooms she wrote in and how it was sometimes daunting to speak up because of that.
But what really struck me about her recounts of her writers room experiences were the gangbangs. No, not that. It’s a term writers use to describe the process of ripping someone’s work to shreds and rebuilding it from the ground up, rendering the IP completely unrecognizable to its proprietor. Lin was so illustrative in how depressing the process was; you get hired on something because they like your voice, the way you think, the way you write, then the moment you actually get in the room a bunch of people are “well actually-ing” your work, most of them white guys who may or may not actually be qualified to be critiquing your writing. I personally don’t mind an edit or a note here or there, but I know how devastating it can be to be repeatedly told youre not doing it right even when what youre doing was your idea to begin with. Fuck off Bryan!!! Write it yourself then!
The other thing that I found really compelling about End Credits was Lin’s retelling of her relationships. As she grew, changed, and figured out what she did and did not want in her career, this was mirrored in her relationships. If Mindy Kaling helped me feel comfortable as a pubescent awkward black girl, Lin did the same thing for me now in my mid-20s. I’m so grateful I read her words when I did and I will definitely carry her stories about her career and love life with me for the years to come.
Trick Mirror
Jia Tolentino
Okay, so this whole Watcher was actually just an excuse to talk about how this book is my bible. I read Trick Mirror in 2020 right after moving back to Scotland to do my masters in cultural anthropology, it was a big shift and maybe that’s why the book has such a hold on me, I even referenced it in one of my essays for the course. But I don’t think that’s it, not really. This book scratched all the parts of my brain that I didn’t even know were itching like that! I read “Always Be Optimizing” at least twice a year every single year. People have comfort movies, songs, stuffed animals, blankets, well…this is my comfort essay!!!!! I was having a literal menty b about going back to my old job after my holiday last year and I turned on the audiobook version of the essay and turned into Amy Elliot Dunne, Tashi Duncan, Suzanne Stone!!!! I was Back™.
I like “Always Be Optimizing” because I’m obsessed with wellness culture, but the other essays in Trick Mirror, like “The I in the Internet” or “Reality TV Me,” or “The Story of a Generation in Seven Scams,” or “We Come from Old Virginia” still stick with me and I return to them when they start to call my name. I’m not a Catholic but Trick Mirror is my good book, a seminal text that I read and reference over and over in my thinking and writing, and when I need guidance in either, I do indeed turn to Mother Jia. A(wo)men.
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
Cathy Park Hong
I really admire Cathy Park Hong’s raw and honest essays about her experience growing up as the daughter of Korean-American immigrants. Her experience with race was similar to my own in ways that I didn’t fully expect.
She also takes care to relay to the reader the unique struggles of both Korean Americans and Asian Americans as a whole, the delicate intricacies of raising a third generation Korean child, and the complexities of the relationships between children of immigrants and their parents.
What has stayed with me in the four years since I read Minor Feelings for the first time, is the essay “Portrait of an Artist” (referenced below), which is about the artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha who was raped and murdered by a security guard at the building her husband was working in. Park Hong discusses her life, work, and death and questions why Cha’s murder was ultimately so easily forgotten in the news.
I really appreciated how Park Hong relates herself to Cha and in turn how the stereotypical western perception of Asian women is imposed onto them without permission and how dangerous that is for everyone involved. I love her eloquent explanations and if we’re still going to be doing anymore discourse around girlhood, Park Hong definitely has something to add:
From invisible girlhood, the Asian American woman will blossom into a fetish object. When she is at last visible—at last desired—she realizes much to her chagrin that this desire for her is treated like a perversion. This is most obvious in porn, where our murky desires are coldly isolated into categories in which white is the default and every other race is a sexual aberration. But the Asian woman is reminded every day that her attractiveness is a perversion, in instances ranging from skin-crawling Tinder messages (“I’d like to try my first Asian woman”) to microaggressions from white friends.
Crying in H-Mart
Michelle Zauner
I’m going to include this book even though I never finished it. Not because it wasn’t good, but because it was too good. Michelle Zauner, a singer who goes by the stage name Japanese Breakfast, talks about growing up half-white, half Korean-American and how her identity and her own perception of it was changed by the death of her Korean immigrant mother.
She centers a lot of her stories around food and her mother’s illness and death, and that twisted combination of relatability is what drew me to the book in the first place, but it just got too real for me, so I’ve shelved it for a time when I have the mental and emotional fortitude to complete it.
What I find myself thinking about all of the time since I read it though is some advice Zauner’s mother gave to her. She writes:
“Some of the earliest memories I can recall are of my mother instructing me to always “save ten percent of yourself.” What she meant was that, no matter how much you thought you loved someone, or thought they loved you, you never gave all of yourself. Save 10 percent, always, so there was something to fall back on. “Even from Daddy, I save,” she would add.
Have you read any of these books? Did something in them resonate with you? Do you have a book rec from an Asian American author? I’d love to hear any and all of these things and more, so please leave a comment below!
Agreed, Crying in H-Mart is too good