New & Upcoming Nonfiction & Poetry by AAPI Authors to Read & Preorder

Black Avatar by Amit Majmudar (May 5th)

In his archetypal enactment of nonfiction, writer Amit Majmudar blends memoir, societal commentary, history, literate criticism, and more. Among different things, helium explores past Indian texts and what they mightiness person to thatch america astir clime change; the relation of colonialism successful continuing colorism successful India; and the analyzable legacies of warfare photography. His essays are sharp, beautifully written, and afloat of intricate connections betwixt disparate subjects.

Flawless: Lessons successful Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital by Elise Hu (May 23rd)

In this blend of governmental commentary and investigative reporting, Elise Hu, writer and big of NPR’s TED Talks Daily, takes a heavy dive into the K-beauty industry. This cardinal dollar-industry has taken disconnected successful caller years, and its occurrence poses large questions astir beauty, culture, technology, gender, and consumerism. Hu interrogates what it means to unrecorded successful a satellite obsessed with quality and youth, the injustices this obsession helps perpetrate, and what we tin bash astir it. It’s a thoughtful, fascinating, and rigorously researched book.

Horse Barbie by Geena Rocero (May 30th)

This memoir traces Rocero’s beingness from her clip arsenic a trans pageant queen successful the Philippines, to the years she spent arsenic a closeted exemplary successful New York City, to her eventual coming retired and vocation arsenic an activistic and advocate. It’s a almighty communicative astir the powerfulness of celebrating your existent self, and the galore intersecting injustices that marque doing truthful so hard for truthful galore people. Rocero’s penning is afloat of warmth, humor, and earthy honesty — this is simply a memoir that volition enactment with you for a agelong time.

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A Plucked Zither by Phuong T. Vuong (June 6th)

This poesy postulation explores migration, memory, language, and the acquisition of being a refugee. The poems question done clip and space, betwixt Vietnam and the U.S., arsenic the talker looks for belonging and connection. Many of the poems straight code the ways that war, imperialism, and forced migration signifier families and communities. But Vuong besides makes abstraction for joyousness and healing, with poems that wage homage to legacies of originative resistance, antiwar activism, and the powerfulness of taste and intergenerational memory.

The Curious Human Knee by Han Yu (June 6th)

How overmuch clip person you spent reasoning astir the quality knee? Knees are beauteous weird, erstwhile you deliberation astir it, and prone to scrapes and injuries. They’re besides crucially important, not conscionable to quality anatomy, but to however we deliberation astir and recognize everything from subject to history. In this informative read, subject writer Han Yu provides a vastly entertaining past of the knee. She writes astir fashion, the signifier of kneeling, past quality history, contention and sex ground successful medicine, taste and literate representations of the knee, and more. You’ll ne'er look astatine your ain knees (or anyone else’s!) the aforesaid mode again.

Shrines by Sagaree Jain (June 20th)

Like its rubric suggests, this poesy postulation is simply a publication of shrines. Jain writes odes to each the joys and challenges, large and small, that travel with being a queer idiosyncratic of color. They observe queer tendency and eroticism, research fraught relationships, and delight successful the acquisition of uncovering connection, love, community, and self. These poems are playful and sad, afloat of vivid imagery and ecstatic seeking.

Owner of a Lonely Heart by Beth Nguyen (July 4th)

Beth Nguyen came to America erstwhile she was conscionable 8 months old, astatine the extremity of the Vietnam War, accompanied by her begetter and sister. Her parent remained successful Vietnam, and Nguyen didn’t conscionable her until she was successful her precocious teens. In this beauteous memoir astir motherhood and immigration, Nguyen recounts the assorted visits she’s shared with her parent implicit the years, exploring not lone their relationship, but her ain narration to being a parent.

‘Āina Hānau / Birth Land by Brandy Nālani McDougall (June 13th)

In these lyrical, accessible poems, KanakaʻŌiwi poet Brandy Nālani McDougall writes astir the the earthy scenery of Hawaiʻi, and the plants, creatures, oceans, geological formations, and mountains that are inextricably linked to the past, present, and aboriginal of Native Hawaiian people. She writes astir the devastating effects of colonization, tourism, and biology destruction, arsenic good arsenic the agelong past of absorption among KanakaʻŌiwi. This is simply a unsocial and almighty postulation astir what it means to beryllium to, love, grieve for, celebrate, and grant a place.