Books to Read by Chinese and Chinese American Authors

The dramatic real life stories of four young people caught up in the mass exodus of Shanghai in the wake of China’s 1949 Communist revolution—revealing the dignity and triumph of personal survival and a heartrending precursor to the struggles faced by emigrants today.

Ali Wong’s heartfelt and hilarious letters to her daughters cover everything they need to know in life, like the unpleasant details of dating, how to be a working mom in a male-dominated profession, and how she trapped their dad. Though addressed to her daughters, Ali Wong’s letters are absurdly funny, surprisingly moving, and enlightening (and gross) for all.

Where Reasons End trespasses into the space between life and death as mother and child talk, free from old images and narratives. Deeply moving, these conversations portray the love and complexity of a relationship. Written with originality, precision, and poise, Yiyun Li’s work is suffused with intimacy, inescapable pain, and fierce love.

Vanessa Yu never wanted to see people’s fortunes—or misfortunes—in tealeaves. This delightful novel is about exploring all the magical possibilities of life in the most extraordinary city of all: Paris.

Know My Name will forever transform the way we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing. Entwining pain, resilience, and humor, this memoir will stand as a modern classic.

In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. Amy Tan’s classic novel examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between these four women and their American-born daughters.

Tackling some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only Ted Chiang could imagine, these nine — stunningly original, provocative, and poignant — stories will change the way you think, feel, and see the world.

An urgent, timely novel that follows a famous Chinese singer severed from his country as he works to find his way in the United States. A Song Everlasting is a story of hope in the face of hardship, from one of our most celebrated authors.

America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like seventeen-year-old Lily Hu. With deportation looming over her father, Lily and Kathleen Miller risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

From the author of The Downstairs Girl comes the richly imagined story of Valora and Jamie Luck, twin British-Chinese acrobats traveling aboard the Titanic on its ill-fated maiden voyage.

In her award-winning book The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston created an entirely new form—an exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities—immigrant, female, Chinese, American.