Asian American Memoir

Celebrate AAPI heritage and learn about the Asian American experience through first-person memoir, narratives, and personal histories, selected by RCL editors. Resources for College Libraries (RCL) features core titles for academic libraries, curated by Choice/ACRL subject specialists. In Syndetics Unbound, RCL Librarians recommend a selection of the 90,000+ titles available at rclweb.net.

Updated April 1, 2025
RCL Librarians
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Minor feelings : an Asian American reckoning
Hong, Cathy Park
Paper Book
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...
Beautiful country : a memoir of an undocumented childhood
Wang, Qian Julie
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * The moving story of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world--an incandescent debut from an astonishing new talent * A TODAY SHOW #READWITHJENNA PICK In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates...
Citizen 13660
Okubo, Miné
Paper Book
Mine Okubo was one of 110,000 people of Japanese descent - nearly two-thirds of them American citizens - who were rounded up into ?protective custody? shortly after Pearl Harbor. Citizen 13660, her memoir of life in relocation centers in California and Utah, was first published in 1946,...
Crying in H Mart : a memoir
Zauner, Michelle
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American--"in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself" (NPR). * CELEBRATING...
Farewell to Manzanar : a true story of Japanese American experience during and after the World War II internment
Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki.
Paper Book
The powerful true story of life in a Japanese American internment camp. During World War II the community called Manzanar was hastily created in the high mountain desert country of California, east of the Sierras. Its purpose was to house thousands of Japanese American internees. ...
The woman warrior ; China men
Kingston, Maxine Hong.
Paper Book
Here--for the first time in one volume--are two classic, brilliantly original works on the experience of Chinese immigrants in America. In both books the acclaimed author mines her family's past and her culture's stories, weaving myth and memory to fashion works of enormous revelatory power.<...

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