some books written by asian authors that you should support because they’re really really good and overshadowed by their white counterparts:
🏳️🌈 means there is queer rep
Out Already:
- the poppy war series 🏳️🌈 (extremely popular. fantasy based off the Song Dynasty, amoral/morally grey brown bi (?) asian girl protagonist. i haven’t read this yet but all of my poc mutuals have this as their favorite book of all time. pls read tw warnings. no romance only faint subtext)
- jade city series 🏳️🌈 (another favorite of the poc that i haven’t read. no romance)
- the bone shard daughter trilogy 🏳️🌈 (set on a strand of fantasy islands based on imperial china but has a healthy mix of various asian representation - south asian, southeast asian. queernormative and no patriarchy. main lesbians. one of my favs)
- these violent delights duology 🏳️🌈 (a side mlm couple, 1920s gangster shanghai, romeo and juliet retelling. one of my favs)
- warcross duology 🏳️🌈 (set in futuristic tokyo. ft. a side mlm couple, sci fi. one of my favs)
- not your sidekick triology 🏳️🌈 (sapphic superheroes and sidekicks. vietnamese bisexual protag, sci fi)
- girls of paper and fire triology 🏳️🌈 (extremely popular, chinese lesbian protag but other asian rep as well, fantasy)
- parachutes 🏳️🌈 (side sapphic couple, read tw warnings, contemporary).
- huntress 🏳️🌈 (east asian sapphics)
- last night at the telegraph club 🏳️🌈 (chinese lesbian protag. 1900s fiction)
- forest of a thousand laterns (morally grey angry chinese female protag)
- the space between worlds 🏳️🌈 (main southeast asian and east asian sapphics, sci fi dystopian. read tw)
- everything i never told you 🏳️🌈 (mlm rep. 1900s biracial family deals with the death of their daughter)
- the gilded wolves 🏳️🌈 (be gay do crime, indian love interest. historical fantasy)
- the weight of our sky (set in 1960s malaysia. historical fiction)
- spin the dawn (fantasy)
- descendant of the crane (fantasy)
Out In 2021:
- she who became the sun 🏳️🌈 (one of my most anticipated releases. genderqueer sapphic protag with a sapphic love interest, mlm main characters. set in the ming dynasty of china. the official advertisement is the song of achilles meets the untamed meets mulan)
- jade fire and gold 🏳️🌈 (the pitch was “what if katara was the dark avatar and zuko was chasing her down?” main sapphics)
- the ones we’re meant to find (i literally don’t know what this is about but the cover is gorgeous)
- counting down with you 🏳️🌈 (fake dating romcom b/w a south asian brown girl and the bad boy who is a himbo. ft. diverse girl gang so im interpreting that as lgbtq)
- the jasmine throne 🏳️🌈 (morally grey lesbians tearing an emperor from his throne/washing each other’s hair/holding sharp-edged knives to each other’s ribs. set in india)
- gearbreakers 🏳️🌈 (cyberpunk japanese sapphics. there is a tender tattooing scene)
- six crimson cranes (fantasy)
- black water sister 🏳️🌈 (sapphic malaysian protag, fantasy/sci-fi)
- how we fall apart (dark academia murder mystery thriller but make it asian american)
- you’ve reached sam (contemporary)
- love and other natural disasters 🏳️🌈 (sapphic fake dating b/w japanese girls)
- the chosen and the beautiful 🏳️🌈 (queer sapphic retelling of the great gatsby)
- hani and ishu’s guide to fake dating 🏳️🌈 (south asian sapphics)
one last thing, i realize that a lot of these are east asian, so if you have more to add on, please do!
if anyone wanted more books in addition to this, i read a shit ton of asian books and im always updating and reviewing on goodreads here with organized tags like “enemies to lovers” and “found family” :)
#@ white ppl looking for reccomendations from this#please don’t limit yourself only to the queer stories#cishet poc are not ‘less interesting’#you should be able to empathize with our racial struggles#without having to have smth about us that you can consume and relate to for your own enjoyment#sexuality is not the only experience that makes us human
BESTIE I COULDN’T HAVE SAID IT BETTER THANK YOU SO MUCH. i’ve been seeing so many replies in my notifs that’s like ‘ill just read the lgbtq ones!’ shut the fuck up, just say you’re a white gay and go. the purpose of this fucking list is to boost asian authors the lgbtq shit is just there because im a lesbian and my books are typically queer
A few more 2021 YA/adult releases:
- A Clash of Steel: A Treasure Island Remix 🏳️🌈: a historical fantasy set in 1820s China, also inspired by Ching Shih’s pirate exploits and features a main WLW couple + multiple queer side pairings
- The Keeper of the Night: set in 1890s Japan, a half-British reaper, half-Japanese Shinigami girl flees London and enters the Japanese underworld under the service of Izanami, the goddess of death.
- Sisters of the Snake: an Indian-inspired fantasy where twins separated at birth—one now a princess, the other a street thief— must switch places in a bid to stop a catastrophic war that threatens to tear their kingdom apart
- The Forest of Stolen Girls: a historical mystery set in 1400s Joseon Korea, focused on a pair of estranged sisters who reluctantly reunite after their detective father vanishes from Jeju Island
- Luck of the Titanic: twin British-Chinese acrobats travel aboard the Titanic on its ill-fated maiden voyage. Loosely inspired by the recently uncovered account of six Titanic survivors of Chinese descendants
- The Infinity Courts: a Japanese American teen finds herself in a limitless world where the human consciousness goes after death, where she battles an AI entity posing as a queen that has hacked its way into the afterlife
- The Great Destroyers: set in alt-history, 1960s America where WWI & WII were fought with giant mechs, a biracial Chinese American teen is Team USA’s most unlikely pick in the annual Pax Games, an Olympic-style competition that pits mecha pilots against each other
- Iron Widow 🏳️🌈: blending Chinese history and mecha science, Wu Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. Features a poly F/M/M main romance
- Tokyo Ever After: an ordinary Japanese American girl discovers that her long-lost father is the crown prince of Japan, making her a real-life princess, and also features a swoonworthy bodyguard romance
- A Pho Love Story: two Vietnamese American teens fall in love and must navigate their newfound relationship amid the whirlwind caused by their respective families’ age-old feud about their competing, neighboring pho eateries
- A Taste for Love: a Pride and Prejudice-inspired rom-com about a Taiwanese American girl who agrees to help her traditional, opinionated mother with her annual local baking competition, only to find out it’s a set-up—all of the contestants are young Asian American men handpicked for her to date
- Sister of the Bollywood Bride: set in Boston, an Indian American teen plans her sister’s Bollywood-style Indian wedding, but a monster hurricane threatens it all
-The Marvelous Mirza Girls: a Pakistani American Muslim girl takes a gap year in New Delhi and pursues a relationship with a local boy, but a family scandal soon threatens their budding relationship
- Radha & Jai’s Recipe for Romance: two Indian American teens at a performing arts academy, one trained in kathak and the other in Bollywood style, must face their fears (and their families) if they want a taste of a happily ever after.
- The Jasmine Project: a Korean American adoptee unwittingly finds herself at the center of a competition for her heart, orchestrated by her overbearing but loving family
- Folklorn: a “ghost story, family saga, parable, feminist reimagined myth” based in Korean mythology
- Fireheart Tiger 🏳️🌈: “The Goblin Emperor meets Howl’s Moving Castle in a pre-colonial Vietnamese-esque world,” featuring a main, WLW romance
- Arsenic and Adobo: Filipino cozy mystery
- Build Your House Around My Body: “A time-traveling novel that brings a century of Vietnam’s history and folklore to life” which is part puzzle, part revenge tale, and part ghost story
- The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu: the classic Western reimagined through the eyes of a Chinese American assassin who embarks on a quest to rescue his kidnapped wife and exact his revenge on her abductors
I’m just going to add one of the most underrated YA series ever:
- Penryn and the end of days by Susan Ee (set in the apocalypse, a human girl teams up with an angel to save her little sister.)
