Winner of the Children’s Literature Association’s 2020 Edited Book Award Contributions by Hena Ahmad, Linda Pierce Allen, Mary J. Henderson Couzelis, Sarah Park Dahlen, Lan Dong, Tomo Hattori, Jennifer Ho, Ymitri Mathison, Leah Milne, Joy Takako Taylor, and Traise Yamamoto Often referred to as the model minority, Asian American children and adolescents feel pressured to perform academically and be disinterested in sports, with the exception of martial arts. Boys are often stereotyped as physically unattractive nerds and girls as petite and beautiful. Many Americans remain unaware of the diversity of ethnicities and races the term Asian American comprises, with Asian American adolescents proving to be more invisible than adults. As a result, Asian American adolescents are continually searching for their identity and own place in American society. For these kids, being or considered to be American becomes a challenge in itself as they assert their Asian and American identities; claim their own ethnic identity, be they immigrant or American-born; and negotiate their ethnic communities. The contributors to Growing Up Asian American in Young Adult Fiction focus on moving beyond stereotypes to examine how Asian American children and adolescents define their unique identities. Chapters focus on primary texts from many ethnicities, such as Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Japanese, Vietnamese, South Asian, and Hawaiian. Individual chapters, crossing cultural, linguistic, and racial boundaries, negotiate the complex terrain of Asian American children’s and teenagers’ identities. Chapters cover such topics as internalized racism and self-loathing; hypersexualization of Asian American females in graphic novels; interracial friendships; transnational adoptions and birth searches; food as a means of assimilation and resistance; commodity racism and the tourist gaze; the hostile and alienating environment generated by the War on Terror; and many other topics.

A collection of thirty heartfelt, witty, and hopeful thought pieces “that highlights the humanity and multitudes of being Asian American” (Kirkus Reviews, starred), for fans of Minor Feelings. There are 23 million people, representing more than twenty countries, each with unique languages, histories, and cultures, clumped under one banner: Asian American. Though their experiences are individual, certain commonalities appear. -The pressure to perform and the weight of the model minority myth. -The proximity to whiteness (for many) and the resulting privileges. -The desexualizing, exoticizing, and fetishizing of their bodies. -The microaggressions. -The erasure and overt racism. 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. Edited by CAPE and with an introduction by renowned journalist SuChin Pak, My Life: Growing Up Asian in America is a celebration of community, a call to action, and “a vital record of the Asian American experience” (Publishers Weekly). It’s the perfect gift for any occasion. Featuring contributions from bestselling authors Melissa de la Cruz, Marie Lu, and Tanaïs; journalists Amna Nawaz, Edmund Lee, and Aisha Sultan; TV and film writers Teresa Hsiao, Heather Jeng Bladt, and Nathan Ramos-Park; and industry leaders Ellen K. Pao and Aneesh Raman, among many more.

A powerful novel about ethnically fluid California, and the corrosive relationship between two Filipino brothers. Told with a hard-edged purity that brings to mind Cormac McCarthy and Denis Johnson, American Son is the story of two Filipino brothers adrift in contemporary California. The older brother, Tomas, fashions himself into a Mexican gangster and breeds pricey attack dogs, which he trains in German and sells to Hollywood celebrities. The narrator is younger brother Gabe, who tries to avoid the tar pit of Tomas's waywardness, yet moves ever closer to embracing it. Their mother, who moved to America to escape the caste system of Manila and is now divorced from their American father, struggles to keep her sons in line while working two dead-end jobs. When Gabe runs away, he brings shame and unforeseen consequences to the family. Full of the ache of being caught in a violent and alienating world, American Son is a debut novel that captures the underbelly of the modern immigrant experience. A Los Angeles Times Best Book, New York Times Notable Book, and a Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize Finalist

People's experiences of racial inequality in adulthood are well documented, but less attention is given to the racial inequalities that children and adolescents face. Growing Up in America provides a rich, first-hand account of the different social worlds that teens of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds experience. In their own words, these American teens describe, conflicts with parents, pressures from other teens, school experiences, and religious beliefs that drive their various understandings of the world. As the book reveals, teens' unequal experiences have a significant impact on their adult lives and their potential for social mobility. Directly confronting the constellation of advantages and disadvantages white, black, Hispanic, and Asian teens face today, this work provides a framework for understanding the relationship between socialization in adolescence and social inequality in adulthood. By uncovering the role racial and ethnic differences play early on, we can better understand the sources of inequality in American life.

A sly debut story collection that conjures the experience of adolescence through the eyes of Chinese American girls growing up in New York City—for readers of Zadie Smith and Helen Oyeyemi. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction • Finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • NPR • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Guardian • Esquire • New York • BuzzFeed A fresh new voice emerges with the arrival of Sour Heart, establishing Jenny Zhang as a frank and subversive interpreter of the immigrant experience in America. Her stories cut across generations and continents, moving from the fraught halls of a public school in Flushing, Queens, to the tumultuous streets of Shanghai, China, during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. In the absence of grown-ups, latchkey kids experiment on each other until one day the experiments turn violent; an overbearing mother abandons her artistic aspirations to come to America but relives her glory days through karaoke; and a shy loner struggles to master English so she can speak to God. Narrated by the daughters of Chinese immigrants who fled imperiled lives as artists back home only to struggle to stay afloat—dumpster diving for food and scamming Atlantic City casino buses to make a buck—these seven stories showcase Zhang’s compassion, moral courage, and a perverse sense of humor reminiscent of Portnoy’s Complaint. A darkly funny and intimate rendering of girlhood, Sour Heart examines what it means to belong to a family, to find your home, leave it, reject it, and return again. Praise for Sour Heart “[Jenny Zhang’s] coming-of-age tales are coarse and funny, sweet and sour, told in language that’s rough-hewn yet pulsating with energy.”—USA Today “One of the knockout fiction debuts of the year.”—New York “Compelling writing about what it means to be a teenager . . . It’s brilliant, it’s dark, but it’s also humorous and filled with love.”—Isaac Fitzgerald, Today “[A] combustible collection . . . in a class of its own.”—Booklist (starred review) “Gorgeous and grotesque . . . [a] tremendous debut.”—Slate

"You're not allowed to have a girlfriend until college," my mother warned. "And you'd better get into an Ivy League school " David Tung Can't Get a Girlfriend until He Gets into an Ivy League College is the first official young adult novel from Ed Lin, author of the acclaimed novels Waylaid and This Is a Bust. Humorous and socially complex, the book tells the story of an Asian American New Jersey high-school student as he navigates multiple social circles as well as parental pressures to get As and conform to cultural norms and expectations. Amid these pressures from outside is the fear he will die alone, whether he gets into Harvard or not. Exploring class tensions (for example, regular school in an upscale, Asian-majority suburb versus weekend Chinese school in working-class Chinatown) and contemporary social neuroses, David Tung Can't Get a Girlfriend is an already hotly anticipated book from an author whose debut novel, Waylaid, established him as a pioneering, provocative, welcome new voice in young adult fiction. Ed Lin, a journalist by training, is the author of several award-winning books, including: Waylaid, his literary debut; the Robert Chow crime series, set in 1970s Manhattan Chinatown (This Is a Bust, Snakes Can't Run and One Red Bastard); and the Taipei Night Market crime series (Ghost Month, Incensed and 99 Ways to Die). Lin is the first author to win three Asian American Literary Awards. He lives in New York with his wife, actress Cindy Cheung.

We Heard It When We Were Young tells the story of a young boy, first-generation Mexican American, who is torn between cultures: between immigrant parents trying to acclimate to midwestern life and a town that is, by turns, supportive and disturbingly antagonistic.