Books by Korean-American Authors

 

Thanks to Grace Fell, senior publicist at Spark Point Studio for the ebook on NetGalley and the hard copy of Kinda Korean by Joan Sung (February 25, She Writes Press). Grace recommends the memoir as perfect for Korean American Day (January 13) 

Very personal stories about growing up in America with Korean immigrant parents.

Publisher description of Kinda Korean :

For fans Minor Feelings | Korean diaspora | Coming-of-age angst & pain

Torn between her two identities as a Korean woman and a first-generation American, Sung bares her struggles in an honest and bare confessional. From her experiences with microaggressions to the over-fetishization of Asian women, Sung connects the COVID pandemic with the decades of violence and racism experienced by Asian American communities through her research on race and representation.

 

Joan Sung breaks the generational silence that curses her family in this courageous memoir of parental love, inter- generational trauma, and perseverance. By intentionally overcoming the stereotype that all Asians are quiet, Sung tells her stories of coming-of-age with a Tiger Mom who did not understand American society.

Cathy Park Hong was born to Korean immigrants in 1976 and raised in a bilingual home. She recalls her childhood in Los Angeles as a “profoundly lonely experience,” during which she first began to comprehend the cultural invisibility of Asian Americans in the United States.Jan 14, 2022

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER, FINALIST FOR PULITZER PRIZE, WINNER OF NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD, AMERICAN BOOK AWARD, ONE OF BEST TIME’S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE OF 2021

Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • ONE OF TIME’S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE • A ruthlessly honest, emotionally charged, and utterly original exploration of Asian American consciousness

“Brilliant . . . To read this book is to become more human.”—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen

In development as a television series starring and adapted by Greta Lee • One of Time’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year • Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, New Statesman, BuzzFeed, Esquire, The New York Public Library, and Book Riot

Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative—and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world.

Binding these essays together is Hong’s theory of “minor feelings.” As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these “minor feelings” occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality—when you believe the lies you’re told about your own racial identity. Minor feelings are not small, they’re dissonant—and in their tension Hong finds the key to the questions that haunt her. 

With sly humor and a poet’s searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche—and of a writer’s search to both uncover and speak the truth.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold Books: Sunday Salon

 

Before the Coffee Gets Cold book series

Before the Coffee Gets Cold is the first of the five books in the series by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. I have listed the books in reverse order. They are considered in the Healing Fiction genre.

I have Before Your Memory Fades and Before We Forget Kindness, the third and fifth books. I think there is no need to read the series in order as the stories are separate, but there are several coffeeshop workers who appear in all the books, so it might be useful to start with the first book, Before the Coffee Gets Cold. 

What is the series about? In each book, people visit a mysterious cafe, hoping to go back or forward in time for a brief time. They are given a cup of steaming coffee at a special table, are then transported to the past, and must return to the present time before their coffee gets cold. There are other strict rules for this to work, however.

I have read only a couple books in the series but I have found the themes - life lessons learned by the ones who time travel to meet loved ones. Relationships don't end with death, for example. Indecisiveness is self destructive. Each story gives a different lesson, and some show the dilemmas of having to make certain choices in life. 

Before We Forget Kindness has stories that explore Memories, Family Bonds, and Forgiveness. Before Your Memory Fades explores Grief, Healing, and Second Chances.

This next book is to be published May 2026

Comparable books with stories about people being helped in a magical place are the full moon coffee shop books include The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop by Takuya Asakura and the Full Moon Coffee Shop two-book series by Mai Mochizuki, which focuses on personal astrology.

 I was entertained by the books I've read so far in both series of books, and also intrigued by thoughtful stories that present life lessons as you read. 

What books are on your reading list now? 

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves 

A New Pre-2026 Post: Sunday Salon

 Hello again!

I have been absent from this blog for a while, working on my second blog, Harvee Reads. I thought I would revisit this blog and hope it will still have followers/readers! 

I have been busy getting ARC ebooks through NetGalley! Of course, I also visit the library and borrow from there as well. How about you? Where are you finding books, and what have you been reading? 

New Purchase

I think Natsume Soseki, who wrote in the early 20th century, might have started the modern Japanese book craze featuring cats of all types. 

Book description: "I Am a Cat" by Natsume Sōseki is a satirical and witty novel that offers a unique perspective on Meiji-era Japan through the eyes of an observant and unnamed cat. This feline narrator provides humorous insights into the lives and quirks of the human characters that populate its surroundings. Sōseki's sharp social commentary and keen observations make "I Am a Cat: I" a delightful and thought-provoking literary exploration of Japanese society during a time of profound cultural and societal changes.

This is the new translation of the old favorite. I am eager to see how this version differs from the previous one. 

A Midnight Pastry Shop by Lee Onhwa will be published Jan. 13, 2026 by William Morrow, available now on NetGalley. 

Book description: a magical and uplifting novel about a  young woman who inherits an enchanted bakery that spirits visit on their last stop before the afterlife.

I think I see a cat or two on the cover. 

Publication on New Year's Day

Written by first generation Ghanaian-American, Yasmin Angoe, the novel Behind These Four Walls is set in the U.S.A. Publication by Thomas & Mercer, NetGalley 

Yasmin Angoe’s thriller explores revenge, morality, corruption, and wealth as a woman sets out to uncover the truth behind her friend’s disappearance and expose the powerful family behind it.

What are you reading now? 

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves 

The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

 

The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A young Indian marine biologist, Piya Roy, travels to the remote Sunderbans area of West Bengal, India near the border with Bangladesh, to find and study the habits of two rare river dolphins, one of them the Irawaddy dolphin. She gets help from an illiterate yet knowledgeable boatman, Fokir, who knows and understands the extensive mangroves, the shifting tides of the river, and the multiple small islands that make up the marshland area. He is able to take her to where the dolphins regularlly gather to feed.

I loved the extensive and detailed descriptions of the Sunderbans islands, the poetic vision of man and nature and their interactions. The tenacious and determined personality of Piya and her bravery and courage in her research fits well with the astute and competent boatman Fokir, and their attraction to each other does not come as a surprise.

The force of nature and its effects on humans and their frail habitations in a wilderness of wood and water is made over and over again when the incoming tides completely cover many of the islands each day. The main event for the inhabitants is when a cyclone threatens their lives and houses in the Sunderbans. The mangroves are also home to ferocious tigers, crocodiles, and snakes.

The main character is the land - the land of wood, water, and the tides that swallow them up at will. The love story between Piya and Fokir is also heart breaking. But the redemption of having environmental groups fund Piya's further study of the Sunderbans is a reward for her efforts.

May is Asian and Pacific Heritage Month: Four Authors and more

 Asian American/Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Here are some AAPI writers of note

Bad, Bad Girl by Gish Jen, not yet published (Oct. 21, 2025; Knopf, NetGalley)

A very rocky mother-daughter relationship between a Chinese born mother and an American born daughter, with expectations and disappointments leading to the mother often scolding her strong willed daughter: 

"Bad, bad girl. You don't know how to talk." 

 (See my full review here )

Gish Jen, author of 38 books, grew up in New York, where she spoke more Yiddish than Chinese. She has been featured in a PBS American Masters program on the American novel. She has received: National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Fulbright fellowship, and a Radcliffe Institute fellowship; a Lannan Literary Prize in 1999 and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2003. Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, she has published in many magazines. 

 

  

My Life: Growing Up Asian in America, thirty pieces edited by CAPE, April 25, 2023; MTV Books

Book description:

There are 23 million people, representing more than twenty countries, each with unique languages, histories, and cultures, clumped under one Asian American. Though their experiences are individual, certain commonalities appear.

Through a series of essays, poems, and comics, thirty creators give voice to moments that defined them and shed light on the immense diversity and complexity of the Asian American identity.

The Girls of Good Fortune by Kristina McMorris, not yet published (May 20, 2025; Sourcebooks Landmark, NetGalley

Description: 

Portland, 1888. Amid the subterranean labyrinth of the notorious Shanghai Tunnels in Portland, a woman awakens in an underground cell, drugged and disguised. 

Celia soon realizes she's a "shanghaied" victim on the verge of being shipped off as forced labor, leaving behind those she loves most. Although well accustomed to adapting for survival—being half-Chinese, passing as white during an era fraught with anti-Chinese sentiment—she fears that far more than her own fate lay at stake. 

 

Kristina McMorris  is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of two novellas and seven historical novels, including the bestseller Sold on a Monday and, most recently, the bestseller The Ways We Hide, selected as Target’s top-five reads of 2022. 

Kristina splits her time between San Diego and Portland, Oregon, where she’s the mom of two teenage boys who recently stripped her of her longstanding boast of being “tall for an Asian.”

 

Ginko Season by Naomi Xu Elegant (published May 20, 2025; W.W. Norton Company, NetGalley

Description: 

A beguiling debut novel about finding oneself after heartbreak.

After suffering her first big heartbreak two years earlier, Penelope Lin has built a quiet life with no romantic entanglements. She spends her days cataloging a museum’s vast collection of Qing Dynasty bound-foot shoes and in the company of close friends. One day, she meets Hoang, who confesses to releasing mice from the cancer research lab where he works. Hoang’s openness catches Penelope off guard; from then on, her carefully constructed life slowly starting to unravel. 

 

Naomi Xu Elegant is a writer and journalist living in New York City. Her first novel, Gingko Season, will be published on May 20, 2025 by W.W. Norton.

Transplants by Daniel Tam-Claiborne, May 13, 2025; Regalo Press, NetGalley

Description:

A poignant novel of two young women in pursuit of kinship and self-discovery who yearn to survive in a world that doesn’t know where either of them belongs.

On a university campus in rural Qixian, Lin and Liz form an unlikely friendship. Lin is a Chinese student closer to her menagerie of pets than to her peers, and Liz, a Chinese American teacher grieving her mother’s sudden death. They’re each met with hostility on campus—Lin by her classmates, who mock her for dating a white foreigner; Liz by her fellow English teachers, who exploit their privilege.

Alternating between Liz and Lin’s perspectives, it is a lyrical and moving exploration of race, love, power, and freedom that reveals how our differences may bring us closer than we might ever imagine.

Daniel Tam-Claiborne is a multiracial writer, multimedia producer, and nonprofit director. He is the author of the short story collection What Never Leaves, and his writing has appeared in Catapult, Literary Hub, Off Assignment, The Rumpus, HuffPost, and elsewhere. He is a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. Daniel holds degrees from Oberlin College, Yale University, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he lives with his wife and daughter in Seattle.

These are just a handful of the Asian American Pacific Islander authors currently being published. Have you read any books by AAPI writers?  

What are you reading now? 

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves