Monthly Collection Spotlight
May 2025
Highlighting Asian Voices 
A man of two faces : a memoir, a history, a memorial
by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Exploring the necessity of both forgetting and of memory, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization and ideas about Vietnam and America as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.
American flygirl
by Susan Tate Ankeny

This story of the first Asian American woman to earn a pilot's license details how she overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles of prejudice and sexism to fly for the United States military during World War II. Illustrations.
Real Americans : a novel
by Rachel Khong

In this intricately woven tapestry of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance, 15-year-old Nick Chen, who can't shake the feeling his mother is hiding something, sets out to find his biological father—journey that raises more questions than provides answers.
Viewfinder : a memoir of seeing and being seen
by Jon M. Chu

Long before he directed Wicked, In The Heights, or the groundbreaking film Crazy Rich Asians, Jon M. Chu was a movie-obsessed first-generation Chinese American, helping at his parents' Chinese restaurant in Silicon Valley and forever facing the cultural identity crisis endemic to children of immigrants. Growing up on the cutting edge of 21st-century technology gave Chu the tools he needed to make his mark at USC film school, and to be discovered by Steven Spielberg, but he soon found himself struggling to understand who he was. In this book, for the first time, Chu dives deep into his life and work, telling the universal story of questioning what it means when your dreams collide with your circumstances, and showing how it's possible to succeed even when the world changes beyond all recognition. With striking candor and unrivalled insights, Chu offers a firsthand account of the collision of Silicon Valley and Hollywood--what it's been like to watch his old world shatter and reshape his new one. Ultimately, Viewfinder is about reckoning with your own story, becoming your most creative self, and finding a path all your own.
The golden screen : the movies that made Asian America
by Jeff Yang

Written by NYT bestselling author Jeff Yang, The Golden Screen is a first-of-its-kind history and celebration of Asian Americans on the big screen. Covering more than 130 films, spanning more than 100 years--from Cecil B. DeMille's 1915 film The Cheat to Wayne Wang's The Joy Luck Club to the Danielses' Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2022--this groundbreaking book explores how these iconic films have shaped how America sees Asians and how Asian Americans see themselves.
Staff Picks
Homeseeking
by Karissa Chen

Separated by war and reunited after 60 years, Haiwen and Suchi navigate decades of love, loss and survival across continents, as their shared past clashes with their hopes for a second chance at life.
I leave it up to you : a novel
by Jinwoo Chong

Jack Jr. awakens from a coma to an unfamiliar world, so he returns to Korean American enclave Fort Lee, New Jersey, to work at his parents' restaurant Ioja, spar with alcoholic brother James, connect with the male nurse who cared for him, and become underqualified sage to his teenage nephew.
Orphan bachelors : a memoir : on being a confession baby, Chinatown daughter, baa-bai sister, caretaker of exotics, literary balloon peddler, and grand historian of a doomed American family
by Fae Myenne Ng

Raised by a seafaring father and a seamstress mother, by San Francisco's Chinatown and its legendary Orphan Bachelors—men without wives or children—the author recounts how her family built a life in a country bent on exclusion and how she absorbed the Orphan Bachelor's suspicious, lonely, barren nature.
You know what you did : a novel
by K. T. Nguyen

When her mother, a Vietnam War refugee, dies suddenly, Annie Shaw finds her OCD coming back with a vengeance, and when the investigation zeroes in on her, her mind increasingly fractures and the only thing she knows is this: she will do anything to protect her daughter even if it means losing herself.
The night of the storm : a novel
by Nishita Parekh

Hunkering down with her sister in her fancy house in Sugar Land, along with her brother-in-law's family, as Hurricane Harvey bears down on Houston, single mom Jia Shah and her 12-year-old son, Ishaan, finds tensions escalating along with the storm, resulting in murder.
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