AAPI Reading Recommendations
Rachel Lawyer, Student Learning & Academic Empowerment | rachel.lawyer@usu.edu
Explore USU Libraries’ curated reading list honoring Asian American and Pacific Islander voices—rich in heritage, insight, and inspiration. Discover something new this AAPI Heritage Month.
The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
This “elegant and haunting novel of war, art and memory" (The Independent) award-winning novel from the acclaimed author of The Gift of Rain follows the only Malaysian survivor of a Japanese wartime camp as she begins working for an exiled former gardener of the Emporer.
Dancing On My Own: Essays on Art, Collectivity, and Joy by Simon Wu
An expansive and deeply personal essay collection which explores the aesthetics of class aspiration, the complications of creating art and fashion, and the limits of identity politics.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling.
Babel by R.F. Kuang
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire.
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences… Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American—in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from R.F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel.
Queen Salote of Tonga: The Story of an Era 1900-1965 by Elizabeth Wood-Elldem
When Queen Salote of Tonga attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London in 1953, she was greeted as the tallest queen of the smallest kingdom and gained universal admiration by her natural dignity and the warmth of her personality. This event reinforced Queen Salote's reputation as a universally beloved monarch.
Vulnerable at the beginning of her reign, Queen Salote succeeded to her titles under threat of annexation and with the enmity of a powerful clique of chiefs who perpetuated dynastic quarrels and resisted centralized government. Queen Salote soon won the confidence and loyalty of significant people, not least the representatives of the British government in the Western Pacific, and profoundly influenced the opinion and behaviour of her subjects by personal example. This account of Queen Salote's life and times is more than a biography, for it also describes the politics and social structure of a small kingdom that was a world in microcosm.