Queer Books for AANHPI Heritage Month 🪷
Which of these queer AANHPI books are on your tbr?❓ What is the last AANHPI book you read and loved?❓
[ Sapphic Books for AANHPI Heritage Month ]
seen from India
seen from Malaysia
seen from Australia
seen from Serbia
seen from Bolivia
seen from Serbia
seen from Serbia
seen from Serbia
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from Malaysia
seen from Serbia
seen from Serbia
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Bulgaria
seen from Singapore
seen from Serbia
seen from Netherlands
Queer Books for AANHPI Heritage Month 🪷
Which of these queer AANHPI books are on your tbr?❓ What is the last AANHPI book you read and loved?❓
[ Sapphic Books for AANHPI Heritage Month ]
Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda takes the vampire motif and applies it to a mixed race Asian woman in the UK, born to a Japanese human father and a Malaysian vampire mother, both women struggling to fit in with society and with feeling at ease in their "unnatural" bodies; to the extent that they start practicing self-denial and austerity because the more they consume what their bodies need them to, the further away they are moved from the status quo, being alienated by society. Relegated to something monstrous.
Mixed with the idea of vampirism is the idea of food. Food in the sense of something that nurtures humans, that makes them what they are, food as love, food as proof that things can be fed to the body to change its composition, to make it a malleable subject. To be denied this sustenance (for vampires can only leech off the blood of others, their bodies forever preserved and eternal) is to cling defiantly to hunger, to say I don't belong here with normal folks, this space is not mine; I don't suppose there is anything I can do about it–do I deserve to remain unsatiated?
Food is also cultural and local identity. In one scene, the protagonist watches a Korean vegan social media influencer speak about how she is shunned by her community because of rejecting meat: a staple aspect of Korean cuisine (interestingly, this exact idea forms the basis of the The Vegetarian the 2007 novel by Han Kang). She speaks, too, of how much prominence food plays in Asian culture–New Year noodles, rice-cake soup, beans and ceremonial dishes. Food is the most primitive currency of human life, a cultural language that gives places and people their identity. For a vampire, cut off from human meals, there is no tradition, no history. The only way a vampire can experience life is by stealing the lives of others, by glimpsing the memories that pass down through blood and DNA, as an outsider, a parasite.
The allegory of cultural disconnection/conflicted racial identity is mixed with the internalized shame of a body that cannot access the most fundamental of human experiences: to belong to a system, to consume, to be consumed.
I guess you could say it is a good book, and that I have been thinking about it. It is flawed, but still has something new and fresh to say about vampires, about different identities connected to different diets, and about loneliness and marginalization. It made me feel the same way Earthlings (Sayaka Murata) and Walking Practice (Dolki Min) did. Even if I hate the cover and think it is the most uninspiring litfic Caravaggio painting aesthetic, and the cover designer's note is absurdly reductive. Good read for a modern work, that turns vampirism as a concept on its head.
hello, my sweet sweet tumblr friends. i have a new book out one month from saturday. here we are together, the book and i:
this one was fun. i wrote it with my sister! when we were young, we were cutthroat competitive. she (older) would forbid me from reading the books on her shelves, and i (gremlin) would booby-trap her room, so you decide which of us committed the greater sin. now we have a blast.
our names are pronounced REE-uh-nock and SHEE-fra, and our book was pitched as THE PARENT TRAP meets THE VANISHING HALF. it releases August 15th, 2023. logline is "Two half-Chinese half-siblings collide for the first time at a summer art camp, not knowing they're related—and begin to understand who they are as artists, as brother and sister, and as Asian-Americans."
it's a book about summer camp hijinks, about passing, about what we long for and where we belong. it also says "Robinson & Robinson" on the spine, which makes us sound like an accidental injury law firm. sweet.
of all the books with my name on it, this one is probably the "book club"-iest. if you like coming-of-age novels or stories about the AAPI diaspora, you might like this one :)
you can preorder a signed copy from my local indie here, or non-signed copies from Bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon. i really cannot stress enough how much every single preorder helps, as i am what the industry calls "a midlist author," also known as "an obscure author who has difficulty placing projects with publishers because of sales figures lmao." (this is not to whinge. the majority of working authors exist in this financially & existentially precarious position)
alternatively, i would be totally thrilled if you reblogged this post, or mentioned the book to any teachers, librarians, bookstore workers, or other readers in your life :)
happy summer everybody—may it be the lazy river of your dreams. xoxoxo
summer 2023
what’s happened so far
A grueling yet enjoyable summer job carries on
Been taking more walks lately, it’s been a strangely cool summer and I intend to take advantage of it
Reading more than during the school year. Daughters of the New Year by E.M. Tran was a heart wrencher and I cannot recommend it enough
Met my grad school mentor, she’s lovely
Got adopted by a cat, happy to be her second home and her owner doesn’t mind in the least (not that she could stop her if she did. She’s very persistent)
what’s still to come
A (hopefully annual) summer visit from a good friend
More plants! Just picked up a new planter off the curb
More books, just started Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
More time with friends and more adventures to find come July and August
I hope summer is treating you well
Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month: Nonfiction Recommendations
Speak, Okinawa by Elizabeth Miki Brina
Elizabeth's mother was working on U.S.-occupied Okinawa when she met the American soldier who would become her husband. The language barrier and power imbalance defining their early relationship followed them to the predominantly white, upstate New York suburb where they moved to raise their daughter. There, Elizabeth grew up with the trappings of a typical American childhood, while feeling almost no connection to her mother's distant home and out of place among her peers. This account is a heartfelt exploration of identity and what it means to be an American.
Asian American Histories of the United States by Catherine Ceniza Choy
Original and expansive, this volume is a nearly 200-year history of Asian migration, labor, and community formation in the U.S. Reckoning with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the surge in anti-Asian hate and violence, historian Catherine Ceniza Choy presents an urgent social history of the fastest growing group of Americans. The book features the lived experiences and diverse voices of immigrants, refugees, US-born Asian Americans, multiracial Americans, and workers from industries spanning agriculture to healthcare.
Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow
Born two years after her parents' only son died just hours after his birth, Kat Chow became unusually fixated with death. She worried constantly about her parents dying - especially her mother. Four years later when her mother dies unexpectedly from cancer, Kat, her two older sisters, and their father are plunged into a debilitating, lonely grief. In this memoir, Kat weaves together what is part ghost story and part excavation of her family's history of loss spanning three generations and their immigration from China and Hong Kong to America and Cuba.
Rise by Jeff Yang, Phil Yu, & Philip Wang
In this intimate, eye-opening, and frequently hilarious guided tour through the pop-cultural touchstones and sociopolitical shifts of the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and beyond, authors Yang, Yu, and Wang chronicle how we’ve arrived at today’s unprecedented diversity of Asian American cultural representation through engaging, interactive graphics, charts, graphic essays from major AAPI artists, exclusive roundtables with Asian American cultural icons, and more.
AUTHOR FEATURE:
﹒R.F. Kuang﹒
Three Books Written By this Author:
The Poppy War
Babel
Yellowface
___
Happy reading!
Cover Art | Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang
Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. 1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he'll enroll in Oxford University's prestigious Royal Institute of Translation — also known as Babel. Babel is the world's center of translation and, more importantly, of silver-working: the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation through enchanted silver bars, to magical effect. Silver-working has made the British Empire unparalleled in power, and Babel's research in foreign languages serves the Empire's quest to colonize everything it encounters. Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, is a fairytale for Robin; a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge serves power, and for Robin, a Chinese boy raised in Britain, serving Babel inevitably means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to sabotaging the silver-working that supports imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide: Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence? What is he willing to sacrifice to bring Babel down?
Artwork by Nico Delort
Release date | Aug 23, 2022 Goodreads