Books like Real Americans — picked by fans

I first read Maxine Hong Kingston in college, but I can’t remember if I was assigned China Men or The Woman Warrior (the more famous counterpoint to China Men). All I know is that whichever one I read, I loved it so much that I immediately sought out the companion piece, which I also loved. In China Men, Kingston weaves together fiction and nonfiction, history and myth, story and memory. Is it a novel? A tapestry? I’m not quite sure what to call it, and that’s part of what I love about the book. Brief interludes of two or three pages present a single scene; longer stories narrate entire sagas. I love that this volume covers so much literal ground but ultimately feels incredibly personal.

Among U.S. immigrants and racially and culturally marginalized peoples, Asian Americans have a particularly complicated history in our national culture. Chinese and other ethnic Asians are still less than 7% percent of the U.S., a modicum at least partly conditioned by Chinese Exclusion, a federal law that for more than sixty years (from 1882-1943) severely restricted ethnic Asians from immigrating to and settling within the U.S.

But just as Neil Gabler and Lin-Manuel Miranda emphasize the migrants and racial-ethnic minorities at the core of America’s founding myths, novelist Lisa See details an eclectic group of artists, movie stars, and other creatives who gathered in Los Angeles Chinatown since the 1930s. This multimedia, multicultural milieu included both whites and ethnic Asians and spanned Hollywood, fine art, and commercial design.

Now a classic Asian American history, See's bestselling 1995 family history documents the enduring impact of the Chinatown residents and creatives who… show more.

Stanford isn’t a happy camper when, because of a failing grade in English, he has to go to summer school instead of basketball camp. Used to being a star basketball player, he’s embarrassed by this new turn of events. Millicent Min as his tutor is the last straw. I love how the plot and various situations, along with his parents’ bickering and his grandmother entering a nursing home, feel real and something today’s kids can relate to. And also how, despite Stanford’s disappointments, he puts forth his best efforts all the while he tries to manage his problems. There’s plenty of humor, too.

This book was extremely poignant. It may not be intended for the youngest of readers. I admit, I read it on my own. But the message was deep. Children from preschool to teenage can have strong feelings about their parents’ behaviors. But what young children don’t often (can’t often) understand is where, in their parents’ history, those behaviors are born out of.

This story takes something as simple as foraging for watercress on the side of the road and examines where, in the narrator’s parents’ history, that behavior comes from. It’s sorrowful, haunting, and hopeful all at the same time. This is a beautiful book to address the “big feelings” of embarrassment kids may feel about their parents without understanding the reasoning behind their patent’s actions.

This one captured my heart completely, and I sobbed at the end. Although dystopian, it is a timely story about the consequences of racism, oppression, and fear in America. The main characters are a boy and his missing mother. His quest to find her will touch you deeply.

I love emotionally gripping books that carry a deep message or meaning, and this one does that beautifully.

I can’t think of this book without picturing my own little girl when she was 3 years old with pigtails sticking out, just like Amy Wu.

She and I read this over and over again to the point that she could quote the whole book. It is such a sweet story about family traditions and pushing through the challenge it can be for little hands to learn how to do something new.

The story is precious and the illustrations are delightful.

Weike Wang is kind of a master at dry, unadorned, razor-sharp writing. This book made me both cry and laugh. Joan is doing perfectly fine—great, even—if anyone asks her. Her life is efficient and successful and—empty.

When her father dies, her mother returns from China, and their subsequent interactions force Joan to stop just going through the motions and actually take a look at her life. This book is sweet but not saccharine, and its humor comes from Joan’s quirky observations which felt very relatable to me. 

When talking with younger writers, sooner or later I ask them to name a writer or a book they can point to and say, “That’s the goal. That’s what I care about. That’s what I want to do.” If I asked myself this question, one of my answers would be Karen Joy Fowler’s first novel, a pitch-perfect account of 19th-century America and the mysterious title character, a weird woman whose weirdness confirms how weird everything else already is.

In this book, Lisa See drops us into the lives of three young women of Asian descent who were fighting to make their way in a city and society that saw them as “dolls” rather than people. The friendship at the heart of the novel is compelling, but I am equally impressed by See’s historical research.

She weaves her fictional characters through real events, people, places, and cultures. I often shy away from “historical fiction” as a genre, cringing at the license some authors take with the history side of things, but See is an excellent social historian and storyteller. I loved this opportunity to visit World War II America, the entertainment industry, and, most especially, San Francisco’s Chinatown through the eyes of these women. 

Reading this graphic novel just feels good. It’s so positive and full of all kinds of sweet relationships—romantic, friends, and family.

It’s also a fantastic portrayal of numerous people with something that makes them different from most others, including wearing hearing aids, lesbian grandmas, large bodies, and last but not least, being nonbinary. None of these things is an issue in the book, and instead they’re presented as being as normal as breathing.

I just love the normalization of human differences. Add to that the fun urban fantasy elements of magic and werewolves, and it’s a perfect mix.