Katherine by Anchee Min [in What Do I Read Next? Multicultural Literature]
In post-Mao China, Katherine, a young American, teaches English to a group of Chinese workers. Her life becomes especially entwined with two of her students, Zebra and Lion Head, eventually resulting in a disastrous love triangle....
When famine strikes northern China in 1871, Lalu Nathoy is sold off at age 13, is eventually taken by a slave merchant to America, and auctioned off to a seedy...
A memorable first collection of stories that explores the Asian American experience, with a spectrum of memorable characters – from a woman who pretends to speak no English to a young sushi...
Eric Chung begins his American life as an engineering graduate student. From Lubbock, he heads to Dallas to climb the corporate ladder. He meets fast-talking Roger Holton, creator of the...
Maibelle Chung, in spite of her last name, is a tall, curly red-haired woman with green eyes. Her father is Chinese-born, her mother from the Midwest. After years of running away, Maibelle returns to her Chinatown...
Soon after Kai Ting, the only American-born son of a once noble Chinese family now living in San Francisco, loses his beloved mother, his father remarries and brings home a cold, uncaring stepmother. ...
Yifeng Chang arrives in the U.S., is renamed “Ralph” by an impatient official, and pursues an engineering degree. He is reunited with his older sister, Theresa, marries Helen, and moves to suburbia in search...
Kingston’s first novel about the often comic mishaps and adventures of Wittman Ah Sing, who is one year out of Berkeley, a slacker before his time. Set in the 1960s, Wittman’s dream is to...
A collection of short stories and journalistic writings by Sui Sin Far, whose work was the first ever to focus on the Chinese experience in the U.S. and Canada. Her short stories,...
American-born Ben Loy and Chinese-born Mei Oi are, at first, blissfully married until Ben Loy finds himself overworked and impotent. Mei Oi, lonely and isolated in the new...
At 12, Donald Duk dislikes his name and is less than comfortable with his Chinese heritage. Chinese New Year is just around the corner, but he’s hardly in a festive mood. Little by little,...
The story of a group of young, idealistic friends in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in 1945. Caught between an ancient culture overwhelmed by Western colonialism, each of the friends must try and find his...
The author returns to her ancestral homeland, guided by the stories her father – her "Baba" – has told her. There she begins a personal odyssey through northern China of the 1930s and ‘40s, following the...
A collection of interrelated short stories that begins in 1953 Macao, where a sickly Wei lives with his overprotective grandmother and ineffective father. Wei eventually emigrates to Honolulu, gets married, and has two children,...
Raymond Ding, a divorced Chinese American man in his 30s who prides himself on his strong ethnic identity and his politically correct views, is in love with Aurora Crane, a half-Japanese, half-Caucasian photojournalist in...
At 14, fourth-generation Chinese American Rainsford Chan is orphaned. Alone and searching, he recreates his family’s 125-year-long history in the U.S., wandering among his male ancestors, learning their stories and experiencing their lives. But even after...
Mahi Wong grows up in post-World War II Hawai'i, surrounded by a large and complicated family of parents, siblings, and endless uncles and aunties. She is immersed in...
At age 6, Olivia meets for the first time, her adult half-sister Kwan, just arrived from China. Kwan shares with a disbelieving Olivia her stories of the Yin people – people not...
Helen and Winnie share a past that spans over 50 years and two continents, filled with hidden secrets. Now Helen thinks she’s dying, and feels she must tell all. Winnie realizes she...
Since 1949, four Chinese-born women, now living in San Francisco, gather regularly to play mah-jong and share their lives. Together they make up the Joy Luck Club. They share stories of the...