For Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, observed annually during the month of May, we asked our member presses and literary magazines to share some of the literature by Asian American and Pacific Islander American writers they recommend reading in celebration.
Fiction
A Splintering by Dur e Aziz Amna
Dzanc Books | 2026
ISBN: 9781938603778
Amna’s novel “traces the class struggle of a woman stuck between province and metropolis, between motherhood and ambition.”
Bitter Over Sweet by Melissa Llanes Brownlee
Santa Fe Writers Project | 2025
ISBN: 9781951631512
These stories “of resilience offer readers a glimpse behind the bird-of-paradise curtains and a look at what’s not in the travel magazines.”
Dispatches from the Cold by Leonard Chang
Black Heron Press | 2009
ISBN: 978-0-930773-93-9
This novel about reading misdirected letters “blurs the distinction between the real and the imaginary, and negotiates the exterior world and the interior workings of a vengeful mind.”
The Parted Earth by Anjali Enjeti
Hub City Press | 2021
ISBN: 9781938235-96-2
Enjeti’s debut novel “is a heartfelt and human portrait of the long shadow of the Partition of the Indian subcontinent on the lives of three generations.”
Black Heron Press | 2012
ISBN: 978-0-930773-88-5
In this historical novel, narrator Tai “witnesses the beheading of his father, a notorious bandit, and sets out to recover his head and then to find the man who betrayed his father to the authorities.”
Her: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha
Gival Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1940724454
According to Wayne Karlin, this novel tells the “almost folkloric saga of a royal eunuch, his adopted daughter and the tragedies and triumphs of love in their lives from the days of the emperor’s court to the war with America.”
Black Lawrence Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62557-156-4
Hom’s novella “takes place during a Sunday breakfast shift as the homeless hero waits tables at a popular ‘Cash Only’ diner tucked in the Redwoods, frequented by growers, rock stars, Dreamers, tycoons, and tourists alike.”
The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali by Uzma Aslam Khan
Deep Vellum | 2026
ISBN: 9781646054381
In this novel, Khan “writes into being the interwoven stories of people caught in the vortex of colonial collision, powerless save for their own bravery and empathy.”
The Burning Heart of the World by Nancy Kricorian
Red Hen Press | 2025
ISBN: 9781636281933
In this story of a Beirut Armenian family before, during, and after the Lebanese Civil War, Kricorian “conjures up the lost worlds and intergenerational traumas that haunt a family in permanent exile.”
Stories from the Edge of the Sea by Andrew Lam
Red Hen Press | 2025
ISBN: 9781636282428
The fourteen stories in this collection “explore love and loss, lust and grief, longing and heartbreaks through the lives of Vietnamese immigrants and their children in California.”
Chitra Demands to Go Home by Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay
Modern Artist Press | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-964403-06-9
This novel “explores mother-son relationships, cross-cultural conversations, and the tribulations of getting older as Chitra plots her triumphant return to her home in Kolkata.”
Pagpag: The Dictator’s Aftermath in the Diaspora by Eileen R. Tabios
Paloma Press | 2020
ISBN: 9781732302549
According to S. Lily Mendoza, this book is “a provocation, connoting both debris and creative refashioning of memory fragments from the Marcos dictatorship.”
Blue Dragon, White Tiger by Trần Văn Dĩnh
Kaya Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781935717102
This new edition of Trần’s book—the first Vietnamese American novel published in the United States, now reprinted for the first time in forty years—features an afterword by Sydney Van To.
A Professional Lola by E. P. Tuazon
Red Hen Press | 2024
ISBN: 9781636281186
This collection blends “literary fiction with the surreal to present the contemporary Filipino American experience and its universal themes of love, family, and identity.”
Water All Around by Elli Que Vu
Catalyst Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781963511475
This young adult novel tells the story of ten-year-old Linh, who is “separated from her mother during an attempt to escape Vietnam in 1979” with her father and brother.
Unsolicited Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-956692-50-1
According to Brenda Janowitz, this novel is “a thoughtful exploration of the choices we make, and how one chance meeting (or lack thereof) can change your life in complicated and unexpected ways.”
Blu’s Hanging by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
Kaya Press | 2025
ISBN: 9781935717010
Kaya Press’s new edition of this acclaimed novel, originally published in 1997, “includes an interview with Yamanaka about her career and the controversies surrounding this novel, along with a contextualizing afterword by Asian American scholar erin Khuê Ninh.”
Mongolian Horse by David E. Yee
Black Lawrence Press | 2022
ISBN: 978-1-62557-038-3
According to Lee Martin, these “are unforgettable stories of the ways we fail one another despite our best intentions and the spirit it takes to keep believing in redemption.”
Ruined a Little When We Are Born by Tara Isabel Zambrano
Dzanc Books | 2024
ISBN: 9780983740582
This collection of short fiction “weaves elements from both the physical and supernatural worlds to beg the question: are we all ruined a little from our first breath?”
Nonfiction, Drama & Multi-Genre Works
Hub City Press | 2020
ISBN: 978-1-938235-71-9
Edited by Cinelle Barnes, the essays in this anthology—by Jennifer Hope Choi, M. Evelina Galang, Aruni Kashyap, and more—“confront the complexities of the South’s relationship with race, uncovering the particular difficulties and profound joys of being a Southerner in the 21st century.”
Dream Pop Origami by Jackson Bliss
Unsolicited Press | 2022
ISBN: 978-1-956692-74-7
Made up of “choose-your-own-essays and autobiographical lists,” Bliss’s collection explores “mixed-race identity, love, travel, AAPI masculinities, and personal metamorphosis.”
Flowers of Hawai‘i by Lee Cataluna
Bamboo Ridge Press | 2022
ISBN: 978-1943756070
Flowers of Hawai‘i features “scripts and photos from four plays written and produced in the last dozen years that capture various aspects of Hawai‘i life and culture.”
Fit Into Me: A Novel: A Memoir by Molly Gaudry
Rose Metal Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-941628-37-9
In this book, Gaudry “embarks on a search for belonging amid loss, framing her memoir around a fictional narrative featuring the tea house woman.”
Backyard Alchemy: on life with other creatures in a time of salvage by J. D. Ho
River River Books | February 24, 2026
ISBN: 979-8-9926116-2-5
This collection of environmental essays “transforms the loss of climate stability, relationships, health, and ecological integrity into sites of repair and restoration.”
Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through Music, Performance, and the Science of Time by Natalie Hodges
Bellevue Literary Press | 2022
ISBN: 9781942658979
Concert solo violinist Hodges “traces her own passage through difficult family dynamics, prejudice, and enormous personal expectations to come to terms with the meaning of a life reimagined.”
Wendy’s Subway | 2022
ISBN: 979-8-9863375-0-0
The Book of Na “reflects on the violent fragmentation of bodies while refusing the containment of geographic and corporeal borders.”
Guess and Check by Thaddeus Rutkowski
Gival Press | 2017
ISBN: 978-1940724119
According to Kirkus Reviews, this memoir is “a stark, engrossing, Hemingway-esque portrait of a life spent in the margins.”
Deep Vellum | 2025
ISBN: 9781646053568
This novel-in-verse “tells the story of Lua Mater, an obscure Roman goddess who re-imagines herself as an assassin coming to terms with an emerging performance artist identity in the late-20th century.”
She Will Last as Long as Stones by kathy wu
Wendy’s Subway | 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9909878-8-3
Wu’s book “mines data from the United States Geological Survey, pairing it with (mis)translations of conversations with the author’s mother, narratives of racialized and gendered labor, and elegies on end-of-life care.”
Poetry
University of Nebraska Press | 2019
ISBN: 9781496215703
Winner of the 2018 Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, in this book Aber “explores the historical and personal implications of Afghan American relations” through lyric and documentary poems and essayistic fragments.
Let the Moon Wobble by Ally Ang
Alice James Books | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-949944-88-4
According to Chen Chen, in this collection Ang “refuses the deadening distances of capital, borders, and patriarchy, embracing instead the richest, queerest intimacies of uncouth body, kinky breath, and collective revolt.”
Desire/Halves by Jaia Hamid Bashir
Nine Syllables Press | 2024
ISBN: 979-8988164913
In this chapbook, Bashir “navigates between English, Urdu, and Spanish, examining the interplay of these languages and the experience of being Pakistani-American.”
Alice James Books | 2026
ISBN: 9781949944778
According to Cathy Linh Che, Reverse Requiem “addresses the ghosts of history, which through language and tender attention, Cariño exhumes and brings to aliveness with sumptuous naming.”
Airlie Press | 2025
ISBN: 9781950404179
This collection “examines the ‘real’ and imagined history of Riverside, California’s Chinatown, juxtaposed with a speculative shiny city of the global future.”
Perennial Counterpart by Yongyu Chen
Nightboat Books | 2026
ISBN: 9781643623108
Chen’s collection is “a poetic study in magical modes of connection over distance—how both friendship and reading are similar ways of being together while being alone.”
Discount Guillotine | 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9921642-0-6
According to Thom Eichelberger-Young, in these poems “that geoposition ‘home’—so pivotal here—is as food to Tantalus, an ever furtive site sought after, yet infinitely unobtainable despite all our intimate entanglements within it.”
Night Sessions by David S. Cho
CavanKerry Press | 2011
ISBN: 978-1-933880-24-2
Cho’s poems explore “the clash between the expectations of becoming medical doctors, versus the desire to play American sports; work on the Sears assembly line, or fulfill aspirations to write.”
Abode Press | 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9900598-6-3
This hybrid poetry collection “weaves theories of survival and transformation in the face of negotiating rage, grief, pleasure, kinship, and the Korean diaspora.”
peminology by Melinda Luisa de Jesús
Paloma Press | 2018
ISBN: 9781387483686
In this collection, de Jesús “speaks in multiple voices and registers, as a daughter, to a daughter, as a mother, to a mother, as a storyteller, drudging up a past and confronting fiercely the present.”
Each Crumbling House by Melody S. Gee
Perugia Press | 2010
ISBN: 978-0979458231
In Each Crumbling House, Gee “asks about inheriting a language that isn’t hers and a culture that died during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, while she tangles with the loss of her mother’s culture, food, history, and home.”
Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms by Joan Kwon Glass
Perugia Press | 2024
ISBN: 9781646053568
Glass’s latest collection is “part lamentation and part hymn—an illumination of diasporic hungers, hauntings, absence, and resilience.”
What We Must Remember by Ann Inoshita, Juliet S. Kono, Christy Passion, and Jean Yamasaki Toyama
Bamboo Ridge Press | 2017
ISBN: 9780910043977
In this collection of twenty-eight linked poems, each of these four authors “investigates, interrogates, and brings to light the racial, ethical, and moral complexities of one of Hawaii’s most controversial criminal cases.”
These Aren’t My Woods Anymore by Soon Jones
Poetose | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64672-365-2
Jones’s debut poetry collection “captures the experience of living as a mixed-race, queer, Asian American from the rural South.”
In Our Beautiful Bones by Zilka Joseph
Mayapple Press | 2021
ISBN: 978-1-952781-07-0
This collection “traces various stages in the poet’s journey as an immigrant from India who makes a new life in the US, and her encounters with racism and otherness.”
Sweet Malida: Memories of a Bene Israel Woman by Zilka Joseph
Mayapple Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-952781-19-3
According to Joan Roland, in these poems and short prose pieces Joseph “provides the reader with a rich, multilayered portrait of the Bene Israel—and of herself.”
Finally: The Mixtape by Asela Lee Kemper
Gnashing Teeth Publishing | 2023
This special-release CD with microchapbook “explores grief and identity with an homage to the musical pop culture to which Kemper escapes.”
River River Books | February 24, 2026
ISBN: 979-8-9926116-0-1
“Meditating on acts of care, science, light, translation, girlhood, and Korean-American identity,” Kim’s poetry acts as “a safeguard against forgetting, a hedge against devastation.”
Trio House Press | 2025
ISBN: 9781949487367
Kim’s debut collection “evokes modes of language and culture that shape the contours of memory and expose the fault lines of family and self.”
Purple Ink Press | 2026
ISBN: 9798989279364
This collection “captures the intimate textures of everyday life in Singapore: from the steam rising off a bowl of bak chor mee to the glisten of coconut syrup on ondéh ondéh.”
Kaya Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781935717263
In First Contact, Liu “presents a hilarious, polyphonic poem that narrates the agonizingly slow-motion progress of a first contact encounter between coastal natives and shipwrecked would-be colonizers.”
Dialect of Distant Harbors by Dipika Mukherjee
CavanKerry Press | 2022
ISBN: 9781933880938
These poems are “incantations to our connections to the human family—whether in Asia, or Europe, or the United States—and focus on what is most resilient in ourselves and our communities.”
Still Out of Place by Christy Passion
Bamboo Ridge Press | 2016
ISBN: 9780910043953
“Honoring a world of fishermen and glass floaters, old train tracks and Sand Island weekends,” Passion’s debut collection “looks unflinchingly at what is broken in this world and what, happily for all of us, remains.”
The Daughter Industry by Soham Patel
Nightboat Books | 2026
ISBN: 9781643623085
In this “genre-defying” collection, Patel “transforms medical language, pop culture fragments, and dream sequences into an unflinching examination of what it means to exist in a world that doesn’t want you.”
From Unincorporated Territory [Åmot] by Craig Santos Perez
Omnidawn | 2023
ISBN: 9781632431189
Winner of the 2023 National Book Award for Poetry, this book “explores how storytelling can become a symbolic form of åmot, offering healing from the traumas of colonialism, militarism, migration, environmental injustice, and the death of elders.”
The Bamboo Wife by Leona Sevick
Trio House Press | 2024
ISBN: 9781949487299
The Bamboo Wife “captures the experiences of an imperfect woman held up against the standard of “good” wife and mother.”
No Rhododendron by Samyak Shertok
University of Pittsburgh Press | 2025
ISBN: 9780822967484
This collection “is haunted by an existential question about Shertok’s oral mother tongue, Tamang: How do you write about a language that has no script?”
Noemi Press | 2019
ISBN: 978-1-934819-78-4
According to Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, these poems are “injurious wounds, moving through a cavernous politics, breaking off, turning in, and restructuring memory as scaffolding, pain as terrifying recurrence.”
Savage Pageant by Jessica Q. Stark
Birds, LLC | 2020
ISBN: 9780982617731
This book “recounts the history of the defunct zoo, Jungleland, which housed Hollywood’s show animals up until its closure in 1969.”
That Blue Trickster Time by Amy Uyematsu
What Books Press | 2022
ISBN: 978-0-9962276-9-8
According to Brynn Saito, Uyematsu’s final collection “revisits her family’s experience of the Japanese American incarceration, while also focusing our gaze on the present ‘unceasing drone / of America’s long winter rain.’”
We the Gathered Heat: Asian American and Pacific Islander Poetry, Performance, and Spoken Word
Haymarket Books | 2024
ISBN: 9798888900871
This intergenerational anthology features poets who “challenge, expand, and illuminate the meaning of the label ‘Asian American and Pacific Islander’ in today’s world.”
But Octopi Don’t Sing by Li Zhuang
Purple Ink Press | 2026
ISBN: 9798989279371
According to Shangyang Fang, in these poems Zhuang turns the “act of ‘mistaking’ into a generative center of imagination, a site where error becomes art, and language bends toward revelation.”
Literary Magazines
Epistemic Literary | 2025
This poem begins, “What remains — long after — / is the scent in the pillows, / the clothes folded neatly in drawers…”
Philly Chapbook Review | 2024
This poem begins, “The word ‘whenua’ can mean / ground, country, domain, after / birth, land/s, and placenta in te reo / Māori.”
beestung | 2024
The poem “The Love Museum Is Offering Free Admission,” begins, “plus a 20% discount at the gift shop for anyone / on the precipice of heartbreak. I’ve been / meaning to go for over a year…”
Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month Playlist
Shō Poetry Journal | 2026
This playlist features sixteen audio recordings by poets recently published in Shō Poetry Journal, including Sean Cho A., Courtney Alyce, Shlagha Borah, Vasvi Kejriwal, and more.
“The Trials of Subu Vedam” by Gopal Balachandran
New England Review | 2025
This essay begins, “Subramanyam Vedam, forty-year resident of the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, didn’t cause my dreams, which have recurred…”
“On Becoming” by J. Mae Barizo
Tupelo Quarterly | 2025
This poem begins, “My restless, I wait for you / on the emerald lawn. My fingers / write a dictionary, pen your face / upon the streets…”
“Never Stay Still” by Sylvia Chan
Hayden’s Ferry Review | 2025
Chan’s piece is published in Issue 76 of Hayden’s Ferry Review.
“Love Language” by Madelyn Chen
The Sun | 2026
This poem begins, “I read somewhere that most men receive flowers / for the first time at their funeral. So I filled a vase / in your apartment with puckered roses…”
“Gestas and Dismas” by Daniel Choe
Apple Valley Review | 2025
This story begins, “After midnight, the patrol called my dad and reported a sighting on the roof of his restaurant. Dad asked if I wanted to come, to hurry up if I did.”
“Necessary Protocols of the Iron Dresses” by Pauline Chow
Space & Time | 2026
Chow’s story is published in Issue 149 of Space & Time.
Critical Special Issue: Myanmar
The Upper New Review | 2025
According to editor Mia Sasaki, the narratives featured in this special edition of The Upper New Review “are a testament to the continued courage of Myanmar youth in these years of conflict.”
“from ‘Substitute Heart’” by Tsering Wangmo Dhompa
Poetry | 2022
This poem begins, “A single human life migrates through many lifetimes, / according to the books she read to me. / The word migrant is cousin to nomad which is what her ancestors were.”
“Pleco” by Louise Ling Edwards
The Cincinnati Review | 2025
This poem begins, “A field with a lonely base / is a fish. If you want to be / traditional, start a fire. / My grandfather fell in love / learning Chinese.”
“Corpse Flower POV (Titan Arum)” by Emdash
ALOCASIA | 2025
This poem begins, “Humans gotta lot to say about me. / Say my aroma is ‘rotting flesh’ / complain I ‘only’ bloom / 48 hours max. The disrespect!”
“The Forty-First Day: Selurong Arrival” by Monica T. S. Flores
The Faoileánach Journal | 2026
This story begins, “Three datus peer at turquoise ocean. They squat, spears angled respectfully away from each other, and bend their heads.”
ALOCASIA | 2023
The poem “Paper Birch Lullaby” begins, “Summer of my youthfire, / tender liking of my token sun, / there is always a close.”
New England Review | 2026
This story begins, “In his version, I tell Sam he won’t ever have sex with another woman, so he sleeps with the first willing candidate to prove otherwise.”
“The Blessed Knot” by Li-Young Lee
Philly Chapbook Review | 2025
This poem begins, “Look upon me, Love, / my mother said to God. / Love looked down, / God saw her, / and I was born / the first time. / That’s my mother’s story.”
“Ignoring the Blood on My Pillow, I Listen to Debussy” by Rita Mookerjee
Half Mystic Journal | 2025
Mookerjee’s poem is published in Opus II, Issue II: Sevdah of Half Mystic Journal.
Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing | 2023
ISBN: 9780824897253
This issue—featuring Rob Arnold, Yasmine Romero, Humlåo Evans, Mary Therese Perez Hattori, and more—introduces readers to “the vibrancy of CHamoru literature, culture, histories, migrations, politics, memories, traumas, and dreams.”
Poetry | 2016
Edited by Craig Santos Perez, this special issue features writing by Teresia Teaiwa, No‘u Revilla, Dan Taulapapa McMullin, and more.
Tupelo Quarterly | 2026
The poem “Dear Father” begins, “In the photograph, you’ve dyed your hair black as a bear hide. What youth are you clinging to?”
“M-O-T-H-E-R” by Sameer Pandya
Epiphany | 2007
This story begins, “In high school and college, Uma Shastri was good at math and economics because she studied hard. But with a field hockey stick or a tennis racquet in her hand…”
ANMLY | 2024
The poem “On the Incompatibility of Homosexuals,” begins, “The first time I laid finger on a man’s abs, / I thought I hit bone—the world excavated / and pried away.”
Four Poems by Pamela K. Santos
ANMLY | 2025
The poem “Hey Siri, Define: An·i·me Gen·e·sis Req·ui·em” begins, “You retcon the canon of your father’s / Adultery with Schrodinger’s cat eyes : / Blue blinks once for truth, Red unceasingly / Flickers…”
“CONGRESSIONAL INCEPTION MEETS TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS” by arushi (aera) rege
beestung | 2024
This poem begins, “kiss vampire red lips on the back of the bus / nyx shade copenhagen / elegantly discuss DEMOCRATIC BACKSLIDING & tell the boy you love him right…”
“Desolation Wilderness” by Mariah Rigg
Hayden’s Ferry Review | 2023
This piece begins, “I had a dream that all the things you ever lost found their way back to you. That red bike you bought for $70 in Eugene. Your last girlfriend.”
The Sun | 2025
This story begins, “Matty has all the good ideas. Every break he comes up with a new trick that keeps us busy all summer.”
“Mango Season” by Preeti Talwai
The Cincinnati Review | 2025
This essay begins, “The little patience I have, I learn from a mango tree. In Bangalore’s monsoon thunderstorms I stand with my grandmother, face tilted to the leafy sky…”
“Daughter of Bays and Hills” by Penny Wei
West Trestle Review | 2026
This poem begins, “In my hometown, God takes the shape of a cleaver. / So the first time I lied was to a rooster. I promised / not to watch but its blood arced ways, thin and bright.”
“Collage of Wreckage” by Hana Widerman
Southern Humanities Review | 2025
This poem begins, “when the earthquake hit / Japan I remember / it rained / in California / I walked outside / and imagined what it’d be like / to be carried / by light and light and / water…”
Oyster River Pages | 2025
This story begins, “Grandma hates cats. She’s on her ninth life and has spit in death’s face eight times.”
The Panacea Review | 2025
The poems “After the Field” and “Saltanat” are published in Issue 2 of The Panacea Review.
