We hope you enjoy this selection of items to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month throughout May 2021. These items plus others can be found in the lobby of the Westmont Public Library starting on Wednesday, April 21, 2021.
“In 1949, four Chinese women–drawn together by the shadow of their past–begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks and “say” stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club–and forge a relationship that binds them for more than three decades. A celebrated novel in the tradition of Alice Adams and Margaret Atwood from the bestselling author of The Kitchen God’s Wife.” – Provided by Publisher
Available Formats: Book, eBook, Audiobook, eAudiobook
Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
“When New Yorker Rachel Chu agrees to spend the summer in Singapore with her boyfriend, Nicholas Young, she envisions a humble family home and quality time with the man she hopes to marry. But Nick has failed to give his girlfriend a few key details. One, that his childhood home looks like a palace; two, that he grew up riding in more private planes than cars; and three, that he just happens to be the country’s most eligible bachelor. On Nick’s arm, Rachel may as well have a target on her back the second she steps off the plane, and soon, her relaxed vacation turns into an obstacle course of old money, new money, nosy relatives, and scheming social climbers.” – Provided by Publisher
Available Formats: Book, eBook, Audiobook, eAudiobook
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
“In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned — from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren — an enigmatic artist and single mother — who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town — and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides.”–Provided by Publisher.
Available Formats: Book, eBook, Audiobook, eAudiobook
“A new tour de force from the bestselling author of Free Food for Millionaires, for readers of The Kite Runner and Cutting for Stone. PACHINKO follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan. So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history. Through desperate struggles and hard-won triumphs, its members are bound together by deep roots as they face enduring questions of faith, family, and identity”– Provided by publisher
Available Formats: Book, eBook, Audiobook, eAudiobook
“Khai Diep has no feelings. Well, he feels irritation when people move his things or contentment when ledgers balance down to the penny, but not big, important emotions–like grief. And love. He thinks he’s defective. His family knows better–that his autism means he just processes emotions differently. When he steadfastly avoids relationships, his mother takes matters into her own hands and returns to Vietnam to find him the perfect bride. As a mixed-race girl living in the slums of Ho Chi Minh City, Esme Tran has always felt out of place. When the opportunity arises to come to America and meet a potential husband, she can’t turn it down, thinking this could be the break her family needs. Seducing Khai, however, doesn’t go as planned. Esme’s lessons in love seem to be working…but only on herself. She’s hopelessly smitten with a man who’s convinced he can never return her affection. With Esme’s time in the United States dwindling, Khai is forced to understand he’s been wrong all along. And there’s more than one way to love”– Provided by publisher.
Available Formats: Book, eBook, Audiobook, eAudiobook
“Nestled in New York’s Hudson Valley is a luxury retreat boasting every amenity: organic meals, private fitness trainers, daily massages–and all of it for free. In fact, you’re paid big money to stay here–more than you’ve ever dreamed of. The catch? For nine months, you cannot leave the grounds; your movements are monitored, and you are cut off from your former life while you dedicate yourself to the task of producing the perfect baby. Jane, an immigrant from the Philippines, is in desperate search of a better future when she commits to being a Host at Golden Oaks, or the Farm as residents call it. But now pregnant, fragile, consumed with worry for her own family, Jane is determined to reconnect with her life outside. Yet she cannot leave the Farm or she will lose the life-changing fee she’ll receive on delivery.” – Provided by publisher.
Available Formats: Book, eBook, Audiobook, eAudiobook
Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong
“Asian Americans inhabit a purgatorial status: neither white enough nor black enough, unmentioned in most conversations about racial identity. In the popular imagination, Asian Americans are all high-achieving professionals. But in reality, this is the most economically divided group in the country, a tenuous alliance of people with roots from South Asia to East Asia to the Pacific Islands, from tech millionaires to service industry laborers. How do we speak honestly about the Asian American condition–if such a thing exists? Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively confronts this thorny subject, blending memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose the truth of racialized consciousness in America. Binding these essays together is Hong’s theory of “minor feelings.” As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these “minor feelings” occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality–when you believe the lies you’re told about your own racial identity. With sly humor and a poet’s searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and artmaking, and to family and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche–and of a writer’s search to both uncover and speak the truth”– Provided by publisher.
Available Formats: Book, eAudiobook
“Brothers Subhash and Udayan Mitra pursue vastly different lives–Udayan in rebellion-torn Calcutta, Subhash in a quiet corner of America–until a shattering tragedy compels Subhash to return to India, where he endeavors to heal family wounds.” – Provided by Publisher
Available Formats: Book, eBook, Audiobook, eAudiobook
What We Carry: A Memoir by Maya Shanbhag Lang
“How much can you judge another woman’s choices? What if that woman is your mother? Maya Lang grew up idolizing her brilliant mother, an accomplished psychologist who immigrated to the United States from India, completed her residency and earned an American medical degree–all while nurturing young children and keeping a traditional Indian home. Maya grew up with her mother’s stories ringing in her ears, motivating her, encouraging her, offering solace when she needed it. But after Maya moves across the country and becomes a mother herself, everything changes. Their connection, which had once seemed so invulnerable, begins to fray. Maya’s mother, once attentive and capable, becomes a grandmother who is cold and distant. As Maya herself confronts the challenges of motherhood, she realizes that the one person on whom she has always relied cannot be there for her. But she does not understand why. Maya begins to reexamine the stories of her childhood in search of answers to her questions about what is happening to her family. Who is her mother, really? Were the stories she told–about life in India, about what it means to be an immigrant in America, about what it means to be a mother–ever really true? Affecting, raw, and poetic, The Woman in the River is one woman’s investigation into her mother’s past, the myths she believed, the truths she learned, and her realization that being able to accept both myth and reality is what has finally brought her into adulthood. This is the story of a daughter and her mother, of lies and truths, of being cared by and caring for; it is the story of how we can never really grow up until we fully understand the people who raised us”– Provided by publisher.
Available Formats: Book, eBook
Unmarriageable : a Novel by Soniah Kamal
“In this retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in modern-day Pakistan, Alys Binat has sworn never to marry–until an encounter with one Mr. Darsee at a wedding makes her reconsider. A scandal and vicious rumor in the Binat family have destroyed their fortune and prospects for desirable marriages, but Alys, the second and most practical of the five Binat daughters, has found happiness teaching English literature to schoolgirls. Knowing that many of her students won’t make it to graduation before dropping out to marry and start having children, Alys teaches them about Jane Austen and her other literary heroes and hopes to inspire them to dream of more. When an invitation arrives to the biggest wedding their small town has seen in years, Mrs. Binat excitedly sets to work preparing her daughters to fish for eligible–and rich–bachelors, certain that their luck is about to change. On the first night of the festivities, Alys’s lovely older sister, Jena, catches the eye of one of the most eligible bachelors. But his friend Valentine Darsee is clearly unimpressed by the Binat family. Alys accidentally overhears his unflattering assessment of her, and quickly dismisses him and his snobbish ways. But as the days of lavish wedding parties unfold, the Binats wait breathlessly to see if Jena will land a proposal–and Alys begins to realize that Darsee’s brusque manner may be hiding a very different man from the one she saw at first glance”– Provided by publisher.
Available Formats: Book, eBook
“In her hit Netflix comedy special Baby Cobra, an eight-month pregnant Ali Wong resonated so heavily that she became a popular Halloween costume. Wong told the world her remarkably unfiltered thoughts on marriage, sex, Asian culture, working women, and why you never see new mom comics on stage but you sure see plenty of new dads. The sharp insights and humor are even more personal in this completely original collection. She shares the wisdom she’s learned from a life in comedy and reveals stories from her life off stage, including the brutal singles life in New York (i.e. the inevitable confrontation with erectile dysfunction), reconnecting with her roots (and drinking snake blood) in Vietnam, tales of being a wild child growing up in San Francisco, and parenting war stories. Though addressed to her daughters, Ali Wong’s letters are absurdly funny, surprisingly moving, and enlightening (and disgusting) for all”– Provided by publisher.
Available Formats: Book, eBook, eAudiobook
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yuh
From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe comes a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.”– Provided by publisher.
Available Formats: Book, eBook, eAudiobook
Chemistry by Weike WangAvailable Formats: Book, eBook
“Lucas and Margo are fed up. Margo is a brilliant programmer tired of being talked over as the company’s sole black employee, and while Lucas is one of many Asians at the firm, he’s nearly invisible as a low-paid customer service rep. Together, they decide to steal their tech start-up’s user database in an attempt at revenge. The heist takes a sudden turn when Margo dies in a car accident, and Lucas is left reeling, wondering what to do with their secret–and wondering whether her death really was an accident. When Lucas hacks into Margo’s computer looking for answers, he is drawn into her secret online life and realizes just how little he knew about his best friend. With a fresh voice, biting humor, and piercing observations about human nature, Kevin Nguyen brings an insider’s knowledge of the tech industry to this imaginative novel. A pitch-perfect exploration of race and start-up culture, secrecy and surveillance, social media and friendship, New Waves asks: How well do we really know each other? And how do we form true intimacy and connection in a tech-obsessed world?”– Provided by publisher.
Available Formats: Book, eBook
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