By Shalra Azeem, Spring 2025 Intern
Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Month is a time to reflect on the experiences, culture, and contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders throughout American history and in our country today. AAPI Month highlights the how the immense diversity of Asia is reflected in the fabric of America and uplifts the voices of Pacific Islanders that have so often been erased. In this reading list, we present a few key titles that not only recount the history of Asian Americans but call attention to immigrant experiences and tackle the question of what it means to be American today. Through oral histories, descriptive historical and analytical research, and poetic fiction, the books on this list reveal the joys and complexities of dual culture, language, and identity.
Use code TNP30 at checkout to save 30% on your purchase of these books.
In this comprehensive volume of oral histories, Joann Faung Jean Lee conducts interviews in English and several dialects of Chinese to collect the reflections of communities of East, South, and Southeast Asians from first- to fourth- generation Americans on how they view themselves and how they are viewed by American society. Asian Americans is the first book of its kind, filling the wide gap of knowledge on the Asian American experience.
Following up her 1992 book Asian Americans, Lee returns with Asian Americans in the Twenty-First Century, an updated, vast collection of oral histories featuring Asian Americans of a multitude of different nationalities and from different ethnic groups. Including interviews with students, lawyers, engineers, politicians, stay-at-home moms, and activists, Lee expertly creates a mosaic of experiences that reveals the complexities of Asian American lives.
Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today
In this bold, candid book, Vijay Prashad navigates the post–9/11 landscape in America to investigate identity and belonging among South Asian Americans in a country that had become hostile to them. Additionally, Uncle Swami parses out the distinctions and vast diversity in the broad category of South Asians, as well as confronting the differing experiences of migration across these groups.
Tropic of Football: The Long and Perilous Journey of Samoans to the NFL
Award-winning sports historian Rob Ruck uncovers why players from American Samoa are becoming the most disproportionately overrepresented culture in American football. Through this investigation, Ruck unravels the complex relationship between American Samoa and the U.S., while also revealing the harsh conditions of the territory and how star football players emerge from the Samoan islands.
Lily Wang’s fictional novel Silver Repetition centers on its protagonist’s dual identities formed from becoming an Asian immigrant at a young age. Though Yuè Yuè is Asian Canadian, the struggle to understand one’s identity, family, language, and relationships is one that can be understood by all Asian immigrants and first-generation Asian Americans. Wang’s stunning poeticism offers a raw, honest portrait of conflicting identities.
