Nonfiction for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! Explore these nonfiction and memoir titles that highlight AAPI history and lived experience, selected by a librarian at The Seattle Public Library.
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Seattle Samurai
Between 2012 and 2018, Sam Goto drew over 250 multi-paneled Seattle Tomodachi ("friend of Seattle") comic strips for The North American Post. These comics chronicled the lives and stories of early Japanese settlers and their American-born offspring. Through his work, he captured elements of culture, nostalgia, and history, while infusing his characters - Shigeru Tomo and his alterego Samurai Shigeru - with the samurai values of courage, respect, and continuous improvement and compassion. (Publisher description)
Format: Book
Availability: In-library use only at this time
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Of Floating Isles
Blending memoir and cultural critique, Kawika Guillermo examines how video games shaped their identity as a queer, mixed-race grandchild of preachers, a migrant, scholar, and parent. Of Floating Isles reimagines gaming not as isolation but as a search for belonging - a space for queer, trans, and racialized communities to imagine and heal. Through poetic reflection, Guillermo reveals games as realms of resistance, solace, and truth-telling amid loss and systemic oppression. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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How to Tell When We Will Die
In these sharp essays, novelist Hedva reflects on living with chronic illness. Probing and sophisticated, this is worth seeking out. (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Feeding Ghosts
Hulls’s epic, elegantly etched graphic memoir debut tangles with trauma’s long tentacles as she follows three generations of her family from Mao’s China to Hong Kong in the 1960s and eventually to contemporary Northern California. The result is a revelatory work as layered as the history it explores. (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Graphic Novel
Availability: Available
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The Light Between the Apple Trees
Nature writer Kumar explores the history and diversity of apples in this thorough mix of memoir and ecology. Growing up in northern India, Kumar started foraging for apples at age 5 in the Himalayan foothills. Now living in New Mexico, where grocery store apples are “cardboard-like” and “hollow,” she began searching for wild apple trees and exploring America’s frayed relationship with the fruit. (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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I'll Love You Forever
This perceptive debut from food writer Kwon folds piercing examinations of fandom and Korean pop culture into a candid self-portrait. This entertaining blend of criticism and personal history will captivate even those who've never pressed play on a K-pop track. (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Things in Nature Merely Grow
In this intimate memoir, novelist Li remembers her teenage sons, James and Vincent, after their deaths by suicide. Readers who've dealt with their own tragedies will find comfort and understanding here. (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Unassimilable
A scholar and activist provides a socio-political critique of Asian Americans who resist assimilation, exploring the cultural and political dynamics within their communities from the nineteenth century to today, while advocating for a new understanding of identity that embraces collective care, anti-imperialism, and cross-racial solidarity. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Local
Born and raised in Hawai'i by a father whose ancestors are indigenous to the land and a mother from the American South, Jessica Machado wrestles with what it means to be "local." Interwoven with a rich and nuanced exploration of Hawaiian history and traditions, Local is a personal and moving narrative about family, grief, and reconnecting to the land she tried to leave behind. (Publisher description)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Night Owl
In her latest poetry collection, Aimee Nezhukumatathil plumbs the depths of nighttime, crafting a series of nocturnes that explore the magic, sensuality, and life that emerge as the rest of the world goes to bed. (Publisher description)
Format: Book
Availability: On order
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