10 YA Books About Southeast Asian Americans
A couple of weeks ago we were asked for books about Southeast Asian American characters. Southeast Asia is a big region of the world, and yet it’s very difficult to find books about Southeast Asians in the contemporary United States. Some of the books here are technically upper middle-grade, but because it was so hard to find them, we included them anyway. Descriptions are from WorldCat, and links go to Barnes & Noble.
Growing Up Filipino: Stories for Young Adults collected and edited by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard (PALH, 2003)
Twenty-nine stories about the saga of what it means to be young and Filipino.
Little Cricket by Jackie Brown (Hyperion Books for Children, 2004)
After the upheaval of the Vietnam War reaches them, twelve-year-old Kia and her Hmong family flee from the mountains of Laos to a refugee camp in Thailand and eventually to the alien world of Saint Paul, Minnesota.
She’s So Money by Cherry Cheva (HarperTeen, 2009)
Good girl Maya teams up with an unlikely ally Camden, the popular jock, plotting a devious plan to help her recover from a serious mistake.
Children of the River by Linda Crew (Delacorte Press, 1989)
Having fled Cambodia four years earlier to escape the Khmer Rouge army, seventeen-year-old Sundara is torn between remaining faithful to her own people and enjoying life in her Oregon high school as a “regular” American.
Fresh Off the Boat by Melissa de la Cruz (HarperCollins, 2005)
When her family emigrates from the Philippines to San Francisco, California, fourteen-year-old Vicenza Arambullo struggles to fit in at her exclusive, all-girl private school.
Sophomore Undercover by Benjamin Esch (Disney/Hyperion, 2009)
Despite obstacles, high school reporter Dixie Nguyen, an adopted Vietnamese orphan, doggedly investigates a drug scandal that may extend far beyond the football team.
Shadow of the Dragon by Sherry Garland (Harcourt Brace, 1993)
High school sophomore Danny Vo tries to resolve the conflict between the values of his Vietnamese refugee family and his new American way of life.
Roots and Wings by Many Ly (Delacorte Press, 2008)
While in St. Petersburg, Florida, to give her grandmother a Cambodian funeral, fourteen-year-old Grace, who was raised in Pennsylvania, finally gets some answers about the father she never met, her mother’s and grandmother’s youth, and her Asian-American heritage.
Trouble by Gary Schmidt (Clarion Books, 2008)
Fourteen-year-old Henry, wishing to honor his brother Franklin’s dying wish, sets out to hike Maine’s Mount Katahdin with his best friend and dog. But fate adds another companion–the Cambodian refugee accused of fatally injuring Franklin–and reveals troubles that predate the accident.
Tangled Threads: A Hmong Girl’s Story by Pegi Deitz Shea (Clarion Books, 2003)
After ten years in a refugee camp in Thailand, thirteen-year-old Mai Yang travels to Providence, Rhode Island, where her Americanized cousins introduce her to pizza, shopping, and beer, while her grandmother and new friends keep her connected to her Hmong heritage.
In honor of Children’s Book Week, here’s a photo of an awesome kid.
(Source: unapproachableblackchicks)
the urge to drive five hours to you
is always stronger than it is to write about you,
and the way you are the first one to really see me,
and the way you make me feel when you tell me that I am
beautiful
and the way your eyes light up when you smile,
and the way I am finding your heart to be home
and your ribs to be the place I take shelter
and the way you never cease to find me, miles and miles away
but you are miles, and miles away
and writing about you is easier
Sleep deprived song writing!
Got That Wild (The Werewolf and Vampire Song)
I prefer the moonrise to the sunrise
When what is wearing the wolf out of me is life
Everyones got that wild threaded through their tendons like thick brush
Like thick overcast skies
Everyones got that wild threaded through their tendons like thick brush
Like the color of my name
Gray’s not a color but a shade
A lesser acknowledged way to be painted
Paint me black, hold everything inside of me
How clearly you can see into the waves before they break
Look into me
I’ve got bat wings and I’m shape shifting
The echo of engines are carrying me
I am not written in stone, my atoms are rearranging as I go
Go, go, going, gone
Paint me black, hold everything inside of me
Would you slip into these sheets/Sail your ship into these seas/The folds between me and my body
I am not the first person you loved.
You are not the first person I looked at
with a mouthful of forevers. We
have both known loss like the sharp edges
of a knife. We have both lived with lips
more scar tissue than skin. Our love came
unannounced in the middle of the night.
Our love came when we’d given up
on asking love to come. I think
that has to be part
of its miracle.
This is how we heal.
I will kiss you like forgiveness. You
will hold me like I’m hope. Our arms
will bandage and we will press promises
between us like flowers in a book.
I will write sonnets to the salt of sweat
on your skin. I will write novels to the scar
of your nose. I will write a dictionary
of all the words I have used trying
to describe the way it feels to have finally,
finally found you.
And I will not be afraid
of your scars.
I know sometimes
it’s still hard to let me see you
in all your cracked perfection,
but please know:
whether it’s the days you burn
more brilliant than the sun
or the nights you collapse into my lap
your body broken into a thousand questions,
you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I will love you when you are a still day.
I will love you when you are a hurricane.
Told me so often in fact that one day I started to believe them,
Until I asked my photographer father ‘Hey daddy could I be a hand model?’,
to which he said ‘No way’.
I don’t remember the reason he gave me,
and I would’ve been upset but there were far too many stuffed animals to hold, too many homework assignments to write, too many boys to wave at, too many years to grow.
We used to have a game, my dad and I, about holding hands.
Cause we held hands everywhere.
And every time either he or I would whisper a great big number to the other, pretending that we were keeping track of how many times we had held hands.
That we were sure this one had to be 8, 002, 753.
Hands learn more than minds do.
Hands learn to hold other hands.
How to grip pencils and mold poetry.
How to tickle piano keys, dribble basketballs and grip the handles of a bicycle.
How to hold old people and touch babies.
I love hands like I love people.
They are the maps and compasses with which we navigate our way through life.
Some people read palms to tell your future, but I read hands to tell your past.
Each scar makes a story worth telling. Each callused palm each cracked knuckle a missed punch or years working in a factory.
Now I’ve seen middle eastern hands clenched in middle eastern fists, pounding against each other like war drums,
Each country sees their fists as warriors and others as enemies.
Even if fists alone are only hands.
But this is not about politics, no hands are not about politics. This is a poem about love, and fingers. Fingers interlock like a beautiful zipper of prayer.
One time I grabbed my dad’s hand so that our fingers interlocked perfectly. But he changed position saying “no, that hand hold is for your mom!”
Kids high-five but grown up, we learn how to shake hands… You need a firm handshake, but don’t hold on too tight, but don’t let go too soon, but don’t hold on for too long but…
Hands are not about politics. When did it become so complicated? I always thought it simple.
The other day my Dad looked at my hands as if seeing them for the first time and with laughter behind his eyelids, and with all the seriousness a man of his humor could muster he said, “You know you’ve got nice hands, you could’ve been a hand model!
it’s never polite to throw back the tear gas.
just like it’s never polite to bring enough life rafts…
they crowd the balconies where the wealthy shine their jewels.
but what if love, what if real love is fucking rude?
I have fallen off the cliff of the Mariana Trench of my love and I am floating a few hundred feet below.
