Memoirs for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
May is Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month. Celebrate with these memoirs highlighting lived experiences by Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander authors. List created by a librarian at The Seattle Public Library, annotations as noted. (April 2024)
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No Country for Eight-spot Butterflies
An attorney and environmental activist from Guam turns a searching eye on the fate of his homeland in a time of undeniable climate change. (Kirkus)
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Uncle Rico's Encore
Autobiographical essays explore the experiences of Filipino Americans in Seattle from the 1950s-1970s, from everyday moments and celebrations to coordinated acts of defiance and activism. (staff annotation)
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Fatty Fatty Boom Boom
A memoir about food, body image, and growing up in a loving but sometimes oppressively concerned Pakistani immigrant family. (Publisher description)
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Mott Street
A Chinese American writer searches for roots not easily uncovered. A lively memoir that limns a long family history and helps us understand the troubled history of our nation. (Kirkus)
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Everything I Learned, I Learned in A Chinese Restaurant
Chin, a cofounder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, debuts with a captivating account of growing up gay and Chinese in 1980s Detroit. (Publishers Weekly)
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Uncommon Measure
Korean American violinist Hodges debuts with a literary mosaic of invention, inquiry, and wonder that interrogates classical music, quantum entanglement, the Tiger Mother stereotype, and the fluidity of time. This impresses at every turn. (Publishers Weekly)
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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
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Stay True
A Taiwanese American writer remembers an intimate but unexpected college friendship cut short by tragedy. A stunning, intricate memoir about friendship, grief, and memory. (Kirkus)
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Starry Field
Lee ... was born in the U.S. to Korean parents, and for years, she felt a deep sense of cultural dislocation. In an attempt to bring solidity to her unsettled life, she started to investigate the story of her grandfather, a shadowy figure whom nobody wanted to talk about. A poignant reclamation of a hidden history, leavened by a sense of personal growth and understanding. (Kirkus)
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The Manicurist's Daughter
A Chinese Vietnamese woman uses performance art to grieve her mother’s death. An intimate Asian American memoir about family, memory, and grief. (Kirkus)
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