Manette Trogani Snow always wondered why her father, Martin “Pop” Trogani punished his children by forcing them to kneel on raw rice, arms outstretched, with a stack of books piled high on their hands. In a quest to understand why Pop treated Manette and her eleven siblings so horribly, she unearthed not only her own family’s hidden histories, but also a previously unknown chapter in US history about racism, immigration, and war. In a fascinating memoir created from a twenty-five-year mission to excavate information from archives, articles, books, and interviews, Manette chronicles her journey through a childhood darkened by fear, brutality, secrets, and lies while detailing the story of her father’s family’s experiences as the only known survivors—despite being starved and tortured during the Japanese occupation of World War II—of an orchestrated campaign to expel them from the United States under the Filipino Repatriation Act of 1935. Included throughout are a treasure trove of personal and historic images, as well as additional insights obtained after the completion of Manette’s extensive research. American Aswang intertwines the true story of a Filipino-American girl’s challenging coming-of-age journey with the often horrific experiences of her father’s family as they were repatriated to the Philippines.

Asian American literature dates back to the close of the 19th century, and during the years following World War II it significantly expanded in volume and diversity. Monumental in scope, this encyclopedia surveys Asian American literature from its origins through 2007. Included are more than 270 alphabetically arranged entries on writers, major works, significant historical events, and important terms and concepts. Thus the encyclopedia gives special attention to the historical, social, cultural, and legal contexts surrounding Asian American literature and central to the Asian American experience. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and cites works for further reading, and the encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography of essential print and electronic resources. While literature students will value this encyclopedia as a guide to writings by Asian Americans, the encyclopedia also supports the social studies curriculum by helping students use literature to learn about Asian American history and culture, as it pertains to writers from a host of Asian ethnic and cultural backgrounds, including Afghans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, Iranians, Indians, Vietnamese, Hawaiians, and other Asian Pacific Islanders. The encyclopedia supports the literature curriculum by helping students learn more about Asian American literature. In addition, it supports the social studies curriculum by helping students learn about the Asian American historical and cultural experience.

The Philippine Aswang is a mythic, monstrous creature which has, since colonial times, been associated with female transgression, scapegoating, and social shaming, known in Tagalog as hiya. In the 21st century, and in diaspora, she manages to endure.Barbara Jane Reyes's To Love as Aswang, the poet and a circle of Filipino american women grapple with what it means to live as a Filipina, Pinay,in a world that has silenced, dehumanized, and broken the Pinay body. These poems of PInay tragedy and perseverance, of reappropriating monstrosity and hiya, sung in polyphony and hissed with forked tongues.

Rachelle Cruz's debut collection is beyond ready to burst itself open, and bleed. Savor these poems, suck the marrow from their bones. These are lovely, complex poems, "sweet and bitter as a plum," a braised heart, blood-warmed and wet. -Barbara Jane Reyes

Vampires are much more complex creatures than Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Twilight, True Blood, or scores of other movies and television shows would have you believe. Even in America. American vampire lore has its roots in the beliefs and fears of the diverse peoples and nationalities that make up our country, and reflects the rich tapestry of their varied perspectives. The vampires that lurk in the American darkness come in a variety of shapes and sizes and can produce some surprising results. Vampires in North Carolina are vastly different from those in South Carolina, and even more different from those in New York State. Moreover, not all of them are human in form, and they can’t necessarily be warded off by the sight of a crucifix or a bulb of garlic. Dr. Bob Curran visits the Louisiana bayous, the back streets of New York City, the hills of Tennessee, the Sierras of California, the deserts of Arizona, and many more locations in a bid to track down the vampire creatures that lurk there. Join him if you dare! This is not Hollywood’s version of the vampire—these entities are real!

Spanning myth, history, and contemporary culture, a terrifying and illuminating excavation of the meaning of cannibalism. Every culture has monsters that eat us, and every culture repels in horror when we eat ourselves. From Grendel to medieval Scottish cannibal Sawney Bean, and from the Ghuls of ancient Persia to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, tales of being consumed are both universal and universally terrifying. In this book, Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. explores the full range of monsters that eat the dead: ghouls, cannibals, wendigos, and other beings that feast on human flesh. Moving from myth through history to contemporary popular culture, Wetmore considers everything from ancient Greek myths of feeding humans to the gods, through sky burial in Tibet and Zoroastrianism, to actual cases of cannibalism in modern societies. By examining these seemingly inhuman acts, Eaters of the Dead reveals that those who consume corpses can teach us a great deal about human nature—and our deepest human fears.