five books to read during aapi heritage month

celebrate asian & pacific american heritage month by learning about and from our communities

May 1 marks the beginning of Asian & Pacific American Heritage Month (also known as AAPI History Month). This celebration highlights the many contributions Asian Americans have made to American life.

The history of Asians in America is a tumultuous one filled with stories of immigration and exclusion, mythologies of perpetual foreignness and model minority, and a quest to find our place in a society perceived and structured through the lens of a Black-white binary.

It is through these experiences and the histories we inherit that Asian Americans continue to write, speak, challenge, and lead. While there are many books I could recommend, below are five books to read this May to learn more from Asian Americans today.

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Kathryn Gin Lum, Heathen

In a sweeping historical narrative, Kathryn Gin Lum shows how the idea of the heathen has been maintained from the colonial era to the present in religious and secular discourses―discourses, specifically, of race. Americans long viewed the world as a realm of suffering heathens whose lands and lives needed their intervention to flourish. The term “heathen” fell out of common use by the early 1900s, leading some to imagine that racial categories had replaced religious differences. But the ideas underlying the figure of the heathen did not disappear.

Amitav Gosh, The Great Derangement

Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability—at the level of literature, history, and politics—to grasp the scale and violence of climate change.

Sabrina S. Chan, Linson Daniel, E. David de Leon, and La Thao, Learning Our Names

Asian American Christians need to hear and own our diverse stories beyond the cultural expectations of the model minority or perpetual foreigner. A team from East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian backgrounds explores what it means to learn our names and be seen by God. They encourage us to know our history, telling diverse stories of the Asian diaspora in America who have been shaped and misshaped by migration, culture, and faith. As we live in the multiple tensions of being Asian American Christians, we can discover who we are and what God may have in store for us and our communities.

Jonathan Tran, Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism

Any serious consideration of Asian American life forces us to reframe the way we talk about racism and antiracism. There are two contemporary approaches to antiracist theory and practice. The first emphasizes racial identity to the exclusion of political economy, making racialized life in America illegible. This approach's prevalence, in the academy and beyond, now rises to the level of established doctrine. The second approach views racial identity as the function of a particular political economy—what is called “racial capitalism” and therefore analytically subordinates racial identity to political economy. Jonathan Tran develops arguments in favor of this second approach...In pursuing a research agenda that pushes beyond the narrow confines of racial identity, Tran reaches back to trusted modes of analysis that have been obscured by the prevailing antiracist orthodoxy and proposes reframing antiracism in terms of a theologically salient account of political economy.

Daniel D. Lee, Doing Asian American Theology

In doing Asian American theology, Daniel D. Lee focuses on Asian American identity and its relationship to faith and theology, providing a vocabulary and grammar, and laying out a methodology for Asian American theologies in their ethnic, generational, and regional differences…With interdisciplinary insights from interpersonal neurobiology and trauma theory, he offers a process of integration and reconciliation for Asian American theologies in service of Asian American communities of every kind.

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Bonus Reading:

Ashish Varma, “‘I see you as a white guy, like me,’” in God Here & Now

To some, these words will read as affirmation: whoever said it, liked me! Others are likely triggered. Perhaps a few people will read no further, sensing a potentially uncomfortable conversation ahead. Regardless of your reaction—and I certainly had one (see below)—such words powerfully inscribed me into a story. Just as significantly, the story is a theological one, deeply rooted in the practice of faith. After all, faith and story belong intimately together.

Yanan Melo, “Haunted by Home,” in BitterSweet Monthly

The tensions of my identity formation call me to choose to make a home in a place that does not feel like home. In becoming vulnerable to the land, I am finding myself situated in where I am now, living with the life before me: my loved ones, friends, strangers, plants, animals, soil, and water. With them, I set off to wrestle for belonging in this foreign land.

Shreya Ramachandran, “Pressure Cooker,” published in the Center for Asian American Christianity

The monotonous routine of the Indian woman
Was the pillar of our household
When everything else was falling apart
The rich spices were strong and bold
like coffee, the daily aroma functioning as an alarm
Flavors that burnt my nose
but comforted my heart

Michelle Zauner, “Crying in H-Mart,” a book excerpt in The New Yorker

Sometimes my grief feels as though I’ve been left alone in a room with no doors. Every time I remember that my mother is dead, it feels like I’m colliding into a wall that won’t give. There’s no escape, just a hard wall that I keep ramming into over and over, a reminder of the immutable reality that I will never see her again.

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Bonus Listening: a South Asian soundtrack for AAPI month

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