Celebrating AAPI Heritage Month Through Inspiring Must Read Books
- BirdieMama
- 5 days ago
- 18 min read
AAPI heritage month marks the time of year that is meant to celebrate the diverse cultural contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to the tapestry that makes up the melting pot of the United States of America. This observance takes place every May and offers an opportunity to recognize and honor the histories, culture, traditions, and achievements of individuals from various Asian and Pacific Islander backgrounds. It is a time to reflect on the trials and tribulations of these communities, acknowledging the challenges they have faced while also highlighting their resilience and contributions to the nation.
AAPI heritage month is not only a time to celebrate the cultures and traditions of AAPI communities but can also aid in raising awareness about the issues they continue to confront head on such as discrimination, under-representation, and social justice. It is important to discuss and explore the dynamic histories of AAPI individuals and their significant roles that helped shape American history. With this in mind, it is a time to uplift AAPI voices and stories, ensuring that they are heard and recognized within the broader narrative of American identity. Please join me in celebrating and supporting AAPI heritage month not only throughout the month of May but through the duration of the whole year. Here are some books and authors that I feel can aid in honoring the legacy of those who came before us and those who are committed to continuing the legacy of making America more inclusive and diverse.
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-Memoir / True Crime-
Stay True by Hua Hsu
Published: September 12, 2023
Description
In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken—with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity—is that he is exactly like everyone else.
Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes ’zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn’t seem to have a place for either of them.
But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet.
Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends—his memories—Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he’s been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Stay True, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780593315200>.
-Historical Fiction / Biographical Fiction-
Forbidden City by Vanessa Hua
Published: April 18, 2023
Description
On the eve of China’s Cultural Revolution and her sixteenth birthday, Mei dreams of becoming a model revolutionary. When the Communist Party recruits girls for a mysterious duty in the capital, she seizes the opportunity to escape her impoverished village. It is only when Mei arrives at the Chairman’s opulent residence—a forbidden city unto itself—that she learns that the girls’ job is to dance with the Party elites. Ambitious and whip-smart, Mei beelines toward the Chairman.
Mei gradually separates herself from the other recruits to become the Chairman’s confidante—and paramour. While he fends off political rivals, Mei faces down schemers from the dance troupe who will stop at nothing to take her place and the Chairman’s imperious wife, who has secret plans of her own.
When the Chairman finally gives Mei a political mission, she seizes it with fervor, but the brutality of this latest stage of the revolution makes her begin to doubt all the certainties she has held so dear.
Forbidden City is an epic yet intimate portrayal of one of the world’s most powerful and least understood leaders during this extraordinarily turbulent period in modern Chinese history. Mei’s harrowing journey toward truth and disillusionment raises questions about power, manipulation, and belief, as seen through the eyes of a passionate teenage girl.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Forbidden City, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780399178825>.
-Historical Fiction / Domestic Fiction-
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Published: November 14, 2017
Description
There could only be a few winners, and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones.
In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant--and that her lover is married--she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.
Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters--strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis--survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Pachinko, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781455563920>.
-Domestic Fiction-
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
Published: November 17, 2020
Description
“A shattering and darkly comic send-up of racial stereotyping in Hollywood” (Vanity Fair) and a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.
Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it?
After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he’s ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family. Infinitely inventive and deeply personal, exploring the themes of pop culture, assimilation, and immigration—Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu’s most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Interior Chinatown, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780307948472>.
-Biography-
Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong by Katie Gee Salisbury
Published: March 12, 2024
Description
Set against the glittering backdrop of Los Angeles during the gin-soaked Jazz Age and the rise of Hollywood, this debut book celebrates Anna May Wong, the first Asian American movie star, to bring an unsung heroine to light and reclaim her place in cinema history.
Before Constance Wu, Sandra Oh, Awkwafina, or Lucy Liu, there was Anna May Wong. In her time, she was a legendary beauty, witty conversationalist, and fashion icon. Plucked from her family’s laundry business in Los Angeles, Anna May Wong rose to stardom in Douglas Fairbanks’s blockbuster The Thief of Bagdad. Fans and the press clamored to see more of this unlikely actress, but when Hollywood repeatedly cast her in stereotypical roles, she headed abroad in protest.
Anna May starred in acclaimed films in Berlin, Paris, and London. She dazzled royalty and heads of state across several nations, leaving trails of suitors in her wake. She returned to challenge Hollywood at its own game by speaking out about the industry’s blatant racism. She used her new stature to move away from her typecasting as the China doll or dragon lady, and worked to reshape Asian American representation in film.
Filled with stories of capricious directors and admiring costars, glamorous parties and far-flung love affairs, Not Your China Doll showcases the vibrant, radical life of a groundbreaking artist.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 April 2025,
-Saga / Psychological Fiction / Domestic Fiction-
The Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
Published: April 3, 2018
Description
In their remote mountain village, Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. For the Akha people, ensconced in ritual and routine, life goes on as it has for generations—until a stranger appears at the village gate in a jeep, the first automobile any of the villagers has ever seen.
The stranger’s arrival marks the first entrance of the modern world in the lives of the Akha people. Slowly, Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, begins to reject the customs that shaped her early life. When she has a baby out of wedlock—conceived with a man her parents consider a poor choice—she rejects the tradition that would compel her to give the child over to be killed, and instead leaves her, wrapped in a blanket with a tea cake tucked in its folds, near an orphanage in a nearby city.
As Li-yan comes into herself, leaving her insular village for an education, a business, and city life, her daughter, Haley, is raised in California by loving adoptive parents. Despite her privileged childhood, Haley wonders about her origins. Across the ocean Li-yan longs for her lost daughter. Over the course of years, each searches for meaning in the study of Pu’er, the tea that has shaped their family’s destiny for centuries.
A powerful story about circumstances, culture, and distance, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane paints an unforgettable portrait of a little known region and its people and celebrates the bond of family.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781501154836>.
-Humor / Satire / Autobiography / Essays-
Dear Girls by Ali Wong
Published: October 6, 2020
Description
In her hit Netflix comedy special Baby Cobra, an eight-month pregnant Ali Wong resonated so strongly that she even became a popular Halloween costume. Wong told the world her remarkably unfiltered thoughts on marriage, sex, Asian culture, working women, and why you never see new mom comics on stage but you sure see plenty of new dads.
The sharp insights and humor are even more personal in this completely original collection. She shares the wisdom she’s learned from a life in comedy and reveals stories from her life off stage, including the brutal single life in New York (i.e. the inevitable confrontation with erectile dysfunction), reconnecting with her roots (and drinking snake blood) in Vietnam, tales of being a wild child growing up in San Francisco, and parenting war stories. Though addressed to her daughters, Ali Wong’s letters are absurdly funny, surprisingly moving, and enlightening (and gross) for all.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Dear Girls, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780525508854>.
-Memoir-
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
Published: April 18, 2020
Description
Universally acclaimed, rapturously reviewed, and an instant New York Times bestseller, Chanel Miller's breathtaking memoir "gives readers the privilege of knowing her not just as Emily Doe, but as Chanel Miller the writer, the artist, the survivor, the fighter." (The Wrap). Her story of trauma and transcendence illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicting a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shining with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.
Know My Name will forever transform the way we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing. Entwining pain, resilience, and humor, this memoir will stand as a modern classic.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Know My Name, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780735223721>.
-Coming of Age / Urban Fiction-
Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
Published: May 3, 2011
Description
From the author of Searching for Sylvie Lee, the iconic, New York Times-bestselling debut novel that introduced an important Chinese-American voice with an inspiring story of an immigrant girl forced to choose between two worlds and two futures.
When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life—like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition—Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.
Through Kimberly's story, author Jean Kwok, who also emigrated from Hong Kong as a young girl, brings to the page the lives of countless immigrants who are caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires, exposing a world that we rarely hear about. Written in an indelible voice that dramatizes the tensions of an immigrant girl growing up between two cultures, surrounded by a language and world only half understood, Girl in Translation is an unforgettable and classic novel of an American immigrant-a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Girl in Translation, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781594485152>.
-Coming of Age / Magical Realism / Indigenous Mythology-
The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera
To Be Published: August 5, 2025
Description
Eight-year-old Kahu craves her great-grandfather’s love and attention. But he is focused on his duties as chief of a Māori tribe in Whangara, on the east coast of New Zealand—a tribe that claims descent from the legendary “whale rider.” In every generation since the whale rider, a male has inherited the title of chief.
But now there is no male heir—there’s only Kahu. She should be the next in line for the title, but her great-grandfather is blinded by tradition and sees no use for a girl. Kahu will not be ignored. And in her struggle, she has a unique ally: the whale rider himself, from whom she has inherited the ability to communicate with whales. Once that sacred gift is revealed, Kahu may be able to reestablish her people’s ancestral connections, earn her great-grandfather’s attention, and lead her tribe to a bold new future.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Whale Rider, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780143137450>.
-Biography / Memoir-
Almost American: A Mongolian Girl's American Story by Billie Tuvshinbayar
Expected Release: April 11, 2020
Description
Why do so many Americans have negative perceptions of immigrants? What kind of struggles come with moving to a foreign country?In Almost American, author Billie Tuvshinbayar talks openly about what it means to be an immigrant in America. After moving from Mongolia to the U.S. at just 19 years old, Billie noticed that many Americans held negative beliefs about immigrants.Learn about the struggles that immigrants face as Billie shares her firsthand experiences and stories of influential creators to show that immigrants are not a threat to America, but rather a blessing. In these pages, you'll find:
An outside perspective on American culture
Stories of the entrepreneurs that created lucrative businesses such as YouTube, Google, and Forever 21
How immigrants contribute greatly to America's economy
Throughout America's history and now at this time of heightened nativist sentiment, it is critical to understand the contributions that immigrants made and continue to make to America's success. If you are an immigrant or looking to see the positive side of immigrants, then this book is for you.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Almost American, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 25 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781641374569>.
-Suspenful Romance-
Mongolian Horse by David E. Yee
Expected Release: July 1, 2022
Description
MONGOLIAN HORSE is a collection of stories about Asian American experience, about Maryland, about youth and music. Each story delves into the place where love meets estrangement. These are the narratives each character worries over, and in that anxiety, their person is defined.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Mongolian Horse, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 25 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781625570383>.
-Romantasy-
Across Many Mountains by Yangsom Brauen
Expected Release: October 30, 2012
Description
A powerful, emotional memoir and an extraordinary portrait of three generations of Tibetan women whose lives are forever changed when Chairman Mao's Red Army crushes Tibetan independence, sending a young mother and her six-year-old daughter on a treacherous journey across the snowy Himalayas toward freedom
Kunsang thought she would never leave Tibet. One of the country's youngest Buddhist nuns, she grew up in a remote mountain village where, as a teenager, she entered the local nunnery. Though simple, Kunsang's life gave her all she needed: a oneness with nature and a sense of the spiritual in all things. She married a monk, had two children, and lived in peace and prayer. But not for long. There was a saying in Tibet: "When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the face of the earth." The Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950 changed everything. When soldiers arrived at her mountain monastery, destroying everything in their path, Kunsang and her family fled across the Himalayas only to spend years in Indian refugee camps. She lost both her husband and her youngest child on that journey, but the future held an extraordinary turn of events that would forever change her life--the arrival in the refugee camps of a cultured young Swiss man long fascinated with Tibet. Martin Brauen will fall instantly in love with Kunsang's young daughter, Sonam, eventually winning her heart and hand, and taking mother and daughter with him to Switzerland, where Yangzom will be born.
Many stories lie hidden until the right person arrives to tell them. In rescuing the story of her now 90-year-old inspirational grandmother and her mother, Yangzom Brauen has given us a book full of love, courage, and triumph, as well as allowing us a rare and vivid glimpse of life in rural Tibet before the arrival of the Chinese. Most importantly, though, ACROSS MANY MOUNTAINS is a testament to three strong, determined women who are linked by an unbreakable family bond.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Across Many Mountains, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 25 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781250012036>.
-Historical Fantasy-
An Arrow to the Moon by Emily X.R. Pan
Expected Release: October 31, 2023
Description
Romeo and Juliet meets Chinese mythology in this magical novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Astonishing Color of After !
Hunter Yee has perfect aim with a bow and arrow, but all else in his life veers wrong. He's sick of being haunted by his family's past mistakes. The only things keeping him from running away are his little brother, a supernatural wind, and the bewitching girl at his new high school.
Luna Chang dreads the future. Graduation looms ahead, and her parents' expectations are stifling. When she begins to break the rules, she finds her life upended by the strange new boy in her class, the arrival of unearthly fireflies, and an ominous crack spreading across the town of Fairbridge.
As Hunter and Luna navigate their families' enmity and secrets, everything around them begins to fall apart. All they can depend on is their love...but time is running out, and fate will have its way. An Arrow to the Moon, Emily X.R. Pan's brilliant and ethereal follow-up to The Astonishing Color of After, is a story about family, love, and the magic and mystery of the moon that connects us all.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, An Arrow to the Moon, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 25 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780316464024>.
-Romance-
The Incendiaries by R. O. Kwon
Expected Release: July 30, 2019
Description
A powerful, darkly glittering novel of violence, love, faith, and loss, as a young woman at an elite American university is drawn into a cult's acts of terrorism.
Phoebe Lin and Will Kendall meet in their first month at prestigious Edwards University. Phoebe is a glamorous girl who doesn't tell anyone she blames herself for her mother's recent death. Will is a misfit scholarship boy who transfers to Edwards from Bible college, waiting tables to get by. What he knows for sure is that he loves Phoebe.
Grieving and guilt-ridden, Phoebe is drawn into a secretive cult founded by a charismatic former student with an enigmatic past. When the group commits a violent act in the name of faith, Will finds himself struggling to confront a new version of the fanaticism he's worked so hard to escape. Haunting and intense, The Incendiaries is a fractured love story that explores what can befall those who lose what they love most.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, The Incendiaries, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 25 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780735213906>.
-YA Fantasy-
Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha
Expected Release: July 28, 2020
Description
In the wake of the police shooting of a black teenager, Los Angeles is as tense as it’s been since the unrest of the early 1990s. But Grace Park and Shawn Matthews have their own problems. Grace is sheltered and largely oblivious, living in the Valley with her Korean-immigrant parents, working long hours at the family pharmacy. She’s distraught that her sister hasn’t spoken to their mother in two years, for reasons beyond Grace’s understanding. Shawn has already had enough of politics and protest after an act of violence shattered his family years ago. He just wants to be left alone to enjoy his quiet life in Palmdale.
But when another shocking crime hits LA, both the Park and Matthews families are forced to face down their history while navigating the tumult of a city on the brink of more violence.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Your House Will Pay, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 25 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780062868848>.
-YA Fantasy-
Love Love by Sung J. Woo
Expected Release: September 01, 2015
Description
Judy Lee’s life has not turned out the way she’d imagined. She’s divorced, she’s broke, and her dreams of being a painter have fallen by the wayside. Her co-worker Roger might be a member of the Yakuza gang, but he’s also the only person who’s asked her on a date in the last year.
Meanwhile, her bother Kevin, a former professional tennis player, has decided to donate a kidney to their ailing father — until it turns out that he’s not a genetic match. His father reluctantly tells him he was adopted, but the only information Kevin is given about his birth parents is a nude picture of his birth mother. Ultimately Kevin’s quest to learn the truth about his biological parents takes him across lines he never thought he’d cross: from tony Princeton to San Francisco’s seedy Tenderloin district, from the squeaky clean tennis court to the gritty adult film industry.
Told in alternating chapters from the points of view of Judy and Kevin, Love Love is a story about two people figuring out how to live, how to love, and how to be their best selves amidst the chaos of their lives.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Love Love, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 25 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781619026759>.
-Romantasy-
Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
Expected Release: April 5, 2016
Description
The New Yorker, The Best Books of Poetry of 2016 New York Times, Critics PickBoston Globe, Best Books listingMiami Herald, Best LGBTQ BooksSan Francisco Chronicle, Top 100 Books of the YearLibrary Journal, Best Books of 2016
"There is a powerful emotional undertow to these poems that springs from Mr. Vuong's sincerity and candor, and from his ability to capture specific moments in time with both photographic clarity and a sense of the evanescence of all earthly things."-New York Times
"From the outside, Vuong has fashioned a poetry of inclusion."--New Yorker
"Extraordinary."--Los Angeles Times
"Ecstatic, bawdy, haunted, and brilliant with the pressures of its arrival."--Boston Globe
Ocean Vuong's first full-length collection aims straight for the perennial "big"--and very human--subjects of romance, family, memory, grief, war, and melancholia. None of these he allows to overwhelm his spirit or his poems, which demonstrate, through breath and cadence and unrepentant."
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781556594953>.
-LGBTQ+ Fiction-
Asian American Dreams by Helen Zia
Expected Release: May 15, 2001
Description
The fascinating story of the rise of Asian Americans as a politically and socially influential racial group
This groundbreaking book is about the transformation of Asian Americans from a few small, disconnected, and largely invisible ethnic groups into a self-identified racial group that is influencing every aspect of American society. It explores the junctures that shocked Asian Americans into motion and shaped a new consciousness, including the murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, by two white autoworkers who believed he was Japanese; the apartheid-like working conditions of Filipinos in the Alaska canneries; the boycott of Korean American greengrocers in Brooklyn; the Los Angeles riots; and the casting of non-Asians in the Broadway musical Miss Saigon. The book also examines the rampant stereotypes of Asian Americans.
Helen Zia, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, was born in the 1950s when there were only 150,000 Chinese Americans in the entire country, and she writes as a personal witness to the dramatic changes involving Asian Americans.
Written for both Asian Americans—the fastest-growing population in the United States—and non-Asians, Asian American Dreams argues that America can no longer afford to ignore these emergent, vital, and singular American people.
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Asian American Dreams, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 25 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9780374527365>.
-Literary Fiction-
Samoan Queer Lives by Dan Taulapapa McMullin and Yuki Kihara
Expected Release: March 31, 2024
Description
Samoan Queer Lives is a collection of personal stories from one of the world's unique indigenous queer cultures. The first of its kind, this book features a collection of autobiographical pieces by fa`afafine, transgender, and queer people of Sāmoa, one of the original continuous indigenous queer cultures of Polynesia and the Pacific Islands.
Featuring 14 autobiographical stories from fa`afafine and LGBTIQ Samoans based in Sāmoa, Amerika Sāmoa, Australia, Aotearoa NZ, Hawai`i and USA. Includes a foreword and introduction by co-editors Dan Taulapapa McMullin and Yuki Kihara. Each story is accompanied by a portrait.
"I've never really tried to be either a girl or a guy. I've always been me. And I suppose being me is fa`afafine. Then, all of the expression I put in my work is I. It's not colored by any gender of any kind. I've never been cautious of what is man or woman, how I see my perspective of any situation, and it was not ever politicised or in a contest where a fa`afafine or a man or a woman is treated in any way."
Source Citation:
Bookshop.org 2025, Samoan Queer Lives, Bookshop.org website, Accessed 15 April 2025, <https://bookshop.org/a/109400/9781877484278>
Remember this is just part one of the AAPI heritage month article, click the button below to read the second part. Did any of these titles or authors catch your eye? Or maybe you've read some of these, let me know in the comments below and be sure to check out part two. Happy celebrating and reading!
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