A good book can take you places near and far. To some authors, a great book also has characters that look like its readers. But for some book lovers, finding characters like them can be tough. Four writers wanted to make those characters easier to find.
Vincent Yee, Yobe Qiu, Tracy Guan, and Serena Li are all Asian American authors. They first met in 2021. The writers worried that not enough books had AAPI characters in them. “When you don’t see yourself as the hero, it becomes limiting,” Yee told News-O-Matic. “Reading stories featuring AAPI characters helps us overcome this.”
May is AAPI Heritage Month. To celebrate, the four authors came up with a plan. They are sending 500 of their books to school libraries. Yee’s book, Clara Wu and the Portal Book, is on that list. It’s about a Chinese American girl. She gets sucked into a magical world. Yee said that he hopes Asian American readers can “see themselves doing amazing” things.
Yobe Qiu’s book is called Our Lunar New Year. “It’s about different Asian American communities,” she told News-O-Matic. “They share their unique ways to ring in the New Year.” The author added, “I hope students will appreciate the .” She explained that it is important to learn about other . “We are not all the same,” she said. “But our passions are just as warm.”
Author Tracy Guan agreed. “There are many ways to learn about culture,” she said. “That includes the food you eat!” Her book, Lunchtime with Samnang, stars a boy from the Asian nation of Cambodia. He learns more about where he comes from by munching on Cambodian foods!
AAPI stories show characters from many different backgrounds. For example, Meera Sriram’s A Gift for Amma is about a young girl in India. The girl looks for a present for her mother. And Kao Kalia Yang’s The Most Beautiful Thing tells the story of a from a group of Indigenous people in Asia.
But no matter where people come from, author Serena Li said, “I hope my readers learn to celebrate differences.” Her book, I Love You More, is all about showing kindness.
The author told News-O-Matic that, in the end, “everyone’s story is worth telling.”
Updated May 3, 2023, 5:02 P.M. (ET)
By Tyler Burdick
