#aapi author

[elliepassmore]

Zhara review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: fantasy, multiple POVs, secret groups, humor Big thanks to Netgalley, Wednesday Books, and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review! While there are two POVs in this book, it's really Zhara's story. She undergoes a lot of development throughout this book and comes out stronger, and more herself, on the other side. At the same time, Han does play a major role in the story and has some of his own growth, it's just at a milder scale than Zhara. It's clear from the beginning that Zhara loves her sister and would do pretty much anything for her, even if it means dealing with her stepmother. That loyalty and sense of protection also carries through to some of the other people, particularly the kids, that Zhara comes across that are in need of help. She's also smart and fairly resourceful, despite her not thinking much of herself at times. Han is definitely a himbo. He works out a lot and prizes being in physical shape but is often one of, if not the last, person to put things together. Like Zhara, Han is also desperate to try and save his younger brother, though from a very different threat. He is fairly innocent (and as the synopsis says, easily flustered), which the other characters tease him mercilessly about, and makes him a fun character to read. Xu is Han's best friend and might be one of my favorite characters. I love how upbeat they are and yet at the same time they have their moments when they can be more serious. I also feel like Xu has a very strong sense of identity. They don't get a POV, but they have a lot of character to them that I enjoyed and I think it would be fun if we do get their POV at some point. I also really treasure their friendships with Han, Zhara, and Jiyi. Jiyi comes into the story a bit later and is endearing for different reasons. She's fairly straightforward about things, to the point of coming across as gruff, but it's clear that she's very knowledgeable about her field of study (and very accomplished) and that she cares about what happens if the worst were to come to pass. Yulana is also a late-comer in the story, but I absolutely love her. She's got somewhat of a mysterious vibe when she's first introduced, and things stay like that for a bit, but she's actually a pretty open person once we get past that. Like with Xu, I hope we get her POV at some point, and I suspect she's a more likely candidate for that than Xu is, lol. This book does a good job of including some lighter and more humorous moments amid the more high drama/stakes scenes. At times it did feel a but juvenile, but overall I think the effect worked. The funny moments allowed for relationships to develop between the characters and so we as readers cared when those relationships were put to the test or were in jeopardy. On the surface, magic is banned because magicians turn into abominations, but of course things are never so simple. Learning about the magic system and how things had gotten bad was interesting. The linguistic element of magic was definitely something that I enjoyed. There's a whole history and culture that's been driven underground or erased because of the abominations, but so few people know the truth of what happened, and what happened is very different from what people think it is. Of course there are allegories a plenty here, and a lot of aspects of the magical purge can be related to history or current events in our world in a way that's written very neatly without being overbearing. Overall, I enjoyed this book and that the high stakes were interspersed with lighter moments. I look forward to seeing the characters in the future books and am definitely hoping for more page time from Xu and Yulana in particular.

[thesophiewhit]

PHONING FAUST -- A Sapphic Novel of Demonic Contracts, Demisexuality, and Yearning by me! A cool queer author ~

Are you LGBT+ or BIPOC or just REALLY LOVE BOOKS? Interested in being an ARC reader and reading a book and helping a fellow queer indie author out? (Pretty please? -- ARC links all the way at the bottom of this post (beneath the rainbow banner) for those who like Sapphic demon x human angst books ~)

AND LOOK AT THE CHARACTER ART OF MEMPHIS (BADASS DEMON) AND DIAN (HUMAN) BY MY ARTIST FRIEND SNAX

https://linktr.ee/artsnaxk

ABOUT ME

Demisexual?? Queer? Nonbinary? All these were magical words to me until it hit...

Oh-- that's me.

It took me a while to come out as queer, longer to come out as nonbinary, and then some more time to reconcile all this with being a mixed Indonesian kid. A dash of mental health, a sprig of figuring out asexuality and neurodivergence. But atop all that? One thing has been constant.

I've always been a writer.

That's some live footage of me summoning some forces to reign my characters in from being feral.

WHY I WROTE PHONING FAUST

Well, well, well, after years of battling imposter's syndrome, I did it. I wrote another book! It's called PHONING FAUST and it's getting published with queer indie publishing company @ninestarpress-blog because they're all cool and LGBT+ and super talented!

Why did I write PHONING FAUST?

What is... a Faust?

A Faustian bargain is what's popularly known as the devil's bargain. A usually losing situation or a trick where the devil tricks someone out of their soul in exchange for ULTIMATE POWER!

I rewrote Faust to be Sapphic as can be. It stars a mixed Indonesian lesbian named Dian Faust who battles depression tooth and nail and ends up calling a mental health crisis hotline. Bc... she's lonely.

PAUSE-- and this is a horror comedy. Comedy. COMEDY-- you might say?

WHY? HOW? Sounds sad and depressing, right?

WHAT'S FAUST?

Well... in the original retelling version of Goethe's Faust (who retold it from folklore etc etc) the main character of Dr. Faustus accidentally summons the devil or something when he too is about to consider the meaning of life and it gets sad bc he doesn't see one so he makes the devil's bargain FOR ULTIMATE POWER. Or something.

But in my version-- it's based off my experiences as a queer person. Before I had community. Before I understood and accepted myself-- I had a rough time. For a whole bunch of factors outside of that-- I didn't feel like my life was in a good place. And even worse-- I felt isolated.

THE PLOT

I didn't want to bother my friends with my problems. So-- I'd call the Trevor Project or a crisis hotline just to have somebody to talk to. In the same way-- Dian Faust is struggling with depression in the story I write. So she calls a hotline like the Trevor Project just to not be alone.

And guess who she finds?

A super hot genderfluid devil called MEMPHIS, short for Mephistopheles. A pierced and tatted punk rocker who has an interest for telling tall tales and serving Dian Faust's every wish and command! (No, not like that!)

Because Dian Faust, like me, is a mixed Indonesian kid trying to figure out what it means to be queer AND demisexual (finding attraction only after really getting to emotionally connect with someone and feeling, as I explain in the book, a lack of that before then for anyone). And she's figuring plenty out--- including how to save her immortal soul and her feelings for a certain genderfluid demon but if you want to know more-- YOU CAN BUT YOU HAVE TO SCROLL TO THE END OF THIS POST TO FIND OUT !

I wrote this book PHONING FAUST (coming out in 2025 sometime with NineStar Press btw. I have these books CATCH LILI TOO and WAKE THE DEAD also starring Sapphic demiace MCs if it's helpful while you wait!

I WROTE MORE QUEER BOOKS (if interested)! (ARC SIGN UP LINK IS STILL BELOW THIS ONE THO! > FOLLOW THE RAINBOW !!)

MY OTHER QUEER BOOKS: https://sophiawhittemore.com/books/ ) <3 <3 <3

I wrote PHONING FAUST (train of thought, sorry, that's the neurodivergence) because I wanted people to feel less alone.

I was, like Dian Faust and like a lot of people, a queer person who felt like I was on an island unto myself. I didn't know who to turn to-- so I turned to no one. By reaching out to hotlines (no hot devils unfortunately), I managed to get the help I needed to avoid making rash decisions-- to get the help I needed to get better. To take that first step.

PHONING FAUST is a novel that raises the importance of mental health and finding community, and most importantly, not giving up. As Dian Faust says in my upcoming book...

There are stars out there-- I had only to see it.

***

🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈

🌈🌈🌈🌈ARC LINK SIGN UPS HERE 🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈

ARC LINK SIGN UPS IN LINKTREE <3

Want to be an ARC reader for this queer book starring a demisexual Sapphic couple and BIPOC cast?

Sign up here! : https://tr.ee/mWPM8I9Zev

***

Hmmm, demon contracts...now where might young 2010 emo me have heard that before... ? ?

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🌸 Books for AAPI Month

❤️ Celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month with this list featuring some of the FEW empowering, vibrant stories written by AAPI authors or starring AAPI protagonists.

🌸 What books did you read for AAPI month?

✨ 2024 Releases ❤️ Night for Day - Roselle Lim 🌸 The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years - Shubnum Khan 🏮The Great Reclamation - Rachel Heng ❤️ Lies and Weddings - Kevin Kwan 🌸 Valley Verified - Kyla Zhao 🏮 The Catch - Amy Lea ❤️ Your Utopia - Bora Chung 🌸 Tehrangeles - Porochista Khakpour 🏮 Horse Barbie - Geena Rocero ❤️ Memory Piece - Lisa Ko 🌸 The Fetishist - Katherine Min 🏮 Real Americans - Rachel Khong ❤️ The Kamogawa Food Detectives - Hisashi Kashiwai 🌸 Manila Takes Manhattan - Carla de Guzman 🏮 The Last Phi Hunter - Salinee Goldenberg and Ilya Nazarov ❤️ May the Best Player Win - Kyla Zhao 🌸 Are You Nobody Too? - Tina Cane 🏮 The Design of Us - Sajni Patel ❤️ Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop - Hwang Bo-Reum 🌸 Heir - Sabaa Tahir 🏮 Maya's Laws of Love - Alina Khawaj ❤️ Midnights with You - Clare Osongco 🌸 Vilest Things - Chloe Gong 🏮 This Place is Magic - Irene Te ❤️ Guilt and Ginataan - Mia P. Manansal 🌸 Icon and Inferno - Marie Lu 🏮 Calling of Light - Lori M. Lee ❤️ Bite Me, Royce Taslim - Lauren Ho 🌸 Rules for Rule Breaking - Talia Tucker 🏮 What's Eating Jackie Oh? - Patricia Park ❤️ How to End a Love Story - Yulin Kuang 🌸 Dark Star Burning, Ash Falls White - Amélie Wen Zhao 🏮 This Is How You Fall in Love - Anika Hussain ❤️ Just Playing House - Farah Heron 🌸 The Boyfriend Wish - Swati Teerdhala 🏮 A Tempest of Tea - Hafsah Faizal

✨ Romance ❤️ Dating Dr. Dil - Nisha Sharma 🌸 King of Wrath - Ana Huang 🏮 The Kiss Quotient - Helen Hoang ❤️ Girl Gone Viral - Alisha Rai 🌸 Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors - Sonali Dev 🏮 Role Playing - Cathy Yardley ❤️ The Hurricane Wars - Thea Guanzon 🌸 Ayesha at Last - Uzma Jalaluddin

✨ Fantasy ❤️ She Who Became the Sun - Shelley Parker-Chan 🌸 Babel - R.F. Kuang 🏮 Daughter of the Moon Goddess - Sue Lynn Tan ❤️ The Deep Sky - Yume Kitasei 🌸 The Jasmine Throne - Tasha Suri 🏮 Kaikeyi - Vaishnavi Patel ❤️ Light from Uncommon Stars - Ryka Aoki 🌸 Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro

✨ Mystery ❤️ Arsenic and Adobo - Mia P. Manansala 🌸 Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers - Jesse Q. Sutanto 🏮 The Cartographers - Peng Shepherd ❤️ Miracle Creek - Angie Kim 🌸 A Disappearance in Fiji - Nilima Rao 🏮 The Leftover Woman - Jean Kwok ❤️ The Widows of Malabar Hill - Sujata Massey 🌸 Things We Do in the Dark - Jennifer Hillier

✨ Young Adult ❤️ The Wrath and the Dawn - Renée Ahdieh 🌸 All My Rage - Sabaa Tahir 🏮 Forget Me Not - Alyson Derrick ❤️ Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating - Adiba Jaigirdar 🌸 These Violent Delights - Chloe Gong 🏮 This Book Won't Burn - Samira Ahmed ❤️ American Betiya - Anuradha D. Rajurkar 🌸 Dragonfruit - Makiia Lucier

[inkcurlsandknives]

SO thrilled to see Saints in such good company!! Check out Book Riots 10 Best New Fantasy books by Asians and Pacific Islanders list! (Linked in the thread) https://bookriot.com/new-aapi-fantasy-2024/

[batmansymbol]

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

[ink-stained-clouds]

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

[joshualunacreations]

A few weeks ago, I shared the cover art I worked on for my partner’s paranormal romance book, Love in the Occult Traumatic. The first review is in, and it’s five stars! 🎉🥳 I’m so proud and excited for Alexis’ debut. Please show her some love and support by buying a copy of the book from the retailer of your choice through this universal link: https://books2read.com/love-in-the-occult-traumatic (includes Amazon, Kobo, Apple, Google Play, B&N, Vivlio, Tolino, Smashwords, etc.)

[rockislandadultreads]

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.

[opal-stars]

they might or might not have to fake date, and they might or might not be salty about it 🫣

🍧 Sarang and River from “Bingsu for Two” by Sujin Witherspoon

instagram 🍧 @ opal.stars

[kemetic-dreams]

When and why yellow was first applied to people of East Asian descent is rather murky.

The process occurred over hundreds of years. As some scholars have noted, it's not as if there were people with yellow skin. The whole "yellow equals Asian" thing had to be invented. And in fact, there was a time when there was no such thing as "Asian" — even that had to be invented.

Enter Carl Linnaeus, an influential Swedish physician and botanist now known as the "father of modern taxonomy." In 1735, Linnaeus separated humans into four groups, including Homo Asiaticus — Asian Man. The other three categories, European, African and American, already had established — albeit arbitrary — colors: white, black and red. Linnaeus, searching for a distinguishing color for his Asian Man, eventually declared Asians the color "luridus," meaning "lurid," "sallow," or "pale yellow."

I get this bit of history from Michael Keevak, a professor at National Taiwan University, who writes in his book Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinkingthat "Luridus also appeared in several of Linnaeus's botanical publications to characterize unhealthy and toxic plants."

Keevak argues that these early European anthropologists used "yellow" to refer to Asian people because "Asia was seductive, mysterious, full of pleasures and spices and perfumes and fantastic wealth." Yellow had multiple connotations, which included both "serene" and "happy," as well as "toxic" and "impure."

He tells me that there was "something dangerous, exotic and threatening about Asia that 'yellow' ... helped reinforce."

Which might explain why the fear that East Asian countries would take over the West became known as yellow peril.

In 1956, Marvel's short-lived Yellow Claw comic featured a villain of the title's name. He was drawn with a bald head, long scraggly beard, slanted eyes and, yes, fingers that resembled claws. True to the name, his skin had a distinct yellow hue.

That was all make-believe. The real-life consequence of vilifying a race included things like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese immigration to the United States until 1943; the violence against hundreds of Filipino farmworkers in Exeter and Watsonville, Calif., who were mobbed and driven out of their homes by white Americans in 1929 and 1930; and the incarceration of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.

For as long as Asians have lived in the United States, white people have been trying to label us: who we are, what we look like and how we should be described. It was also white people who defined our terminology — for many decades, "Orientals" was the moniker of choice. (And when people hurled slurs at us, we've been called Chinamen, Japs, gooks, Asiatics, Mongols and Chinks.)

That started to shift in the 1960s.

That's when the term "Asian American" was born. At the time, it was linked to political advocacy. Yuji Ichioka, then a graduate student and activist at the University of California, Berkeley, who would later become a leading historian and scholar, is widely credited with coining the term.

This period, often referred to as the Yellow Power Movement, was one of the first times these disparate people — Korean Americans, Vietnamese Americans, Japanese Americans, Indian Americans, Laotian Americans, Cambodian Americans, to name only some — grouped themselves under one pan-ethnic identity.

There was power in numbers, which Ichioka knew as founder of the Asian American Political Alliance. In a letter and questionnaire to new members, AAPA made clear that its organization was not just advocating for the creation of Asian American studies courses, but for broader social causes. That included adopting socialist policies and supporting the Black Liberation Movement, the Women's Liberation Movement, and anti-Vietnam and anti-imperialist efforts.

Spurred in part by the activism of the times, the term "Asian American" rose to popularity. It also helped that the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was passed, allowing an influx of Asian immigrants to the U.S.

But over the years, the term Asian American revealed itself to be a complicated solution to the problem of identity.

For one thing, most people who technically fit into the "Asian American" category refer to themselves based on their ethnic group or country of origin, according to the National Asian American Survey (NAAS).

Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, and the leader of NAAS, says he and his colleagues found that most Americans think of "Asian Americans" as East Asians.

Karen Ishizuka, who wrote Serve the People: Making Asian America in the Long Sixties, says that "Asian American" is still an important identifier because of the political power it has carried for decades. But it's crucial for people to be educated about what it once meant, she says, because the term has become "more like an adjective now, rather than a political identity."

Ramakrishnan and Ishizuka seem to reinforce why I've been searching for a term like yellow. In all my conversations about this issue, I've found myself remarking how the question of "What about yellow?" feels so hair-pullingly existential. Maybe it's because Asian American seems like it has been watered down from activism to adjective. I find myself wanting a label that cuts a little deeper.

In 1969, a Japanese American activist named Larry Kubota wrote a manifesto called "Yellow Power!" that was published in Gidra, a radical magazinecreated by Asian American activists at the University of California, Los Angeles.

His words were a rallying cry. "Yellow power is a call for all Asian Americans to end the silence that has condemned us to suffer in this racist society and to unite with our black, brown and red brothers of the Third World for survival, self-determination and the creation of a more humanistic society," he wrote.

Kubota wasn't the only one using yellow in a new and different way.

Ishizuka tells me about a bunch of different groups in the 1960s and 1970s: Yellow Seeds was a radical organization in Philadelphia that published a bilingual English-Chinese newspaper of the same name. The Yellow Identity Symposium was a conference at Berkeley that helped ignite the Third World Liberation strikes. The Yellow Brotherhood was an Asian group made up mostly of former gang members in Los Angeles that tried to disband gangs and curb drug addiction. Yellow Pearl, a play on "yellow peril," was a music project started by an activist group in New York's Chinatown.

I call up Russell Leong. He is a professor emeritus at UCLA and was the longtime editor of the radical Amerasia journal. As a kid, he used to make Yellow Power posters in San Francisco's Chinatown.

"Do you call yourself yellow?" I ask him.

"That's an interesting question," Leong says. "If I'm with a group of yellow people like my close friends, I'll call myself a Chink, a Chinaman, a yellow. But in public, I'm not gonna call anyone else that .... it depends what I'm comfortable with. It's the same with my English or Chinese name. Sometimes I'll use my American name. Sometimes I'll use my Chinese name."

Whatever the word, he adds, "I think it's better that we have more words to describe ourselves."

I get it. Despite the incompleteness of any one term, together they can become a powerful tool.

Still, if there were no term like "Asian American" — if it didn't exist, if we gave up on it entirely — then what could we have to anchor ourselves? After all, it's not just about a word; it's about an entire identity.

Ellen Wu, the historian from Indiana, digs into that point: "To circle back to this question of, do we use something like yellow or brown? ... Why do we even feel like we have to?"

Wu acknowledges that we're always craving words that might come closer to encapsulating who we are.

"I think that invisibility — that feeling that we don't matter, that worse, we're statistically insignificant — in some ways really fuels that desire to have a really concise and meaningful way of talking about ourselves," she says.

I pose all of this to Jenn Fang, an activist and writer who runs the appropriately-named blog Reappropriate.

She's not so convinced that yellow would resolve the issues that plague Asian American. It might be a useful identifier if yellow was used very intentionally and people knew its history, she says. But it could also fall into the same traps as Asian American. With ubiquity, it could eventually lose its power.

Fang also thinks that if people were to identify as yellow, there would be more people staying in their own lanes, so to speak — that, say, East Asians who call themselves yellow might not advocate on behalf of Asians who call themselves brown.

"Are you reclaiming the slur, or reclaiming our history?" Fang asks me. "The thing I'm concerned about is — is [yellow] a truly reflective way of talking about the East Asian American experience? Is yellow more nuancing? ... Or more flattening?"

In the pinnacle of the civil rights era, activists used yellow as a term of empowerment — a term they chose for themselves. In some ways, I'm still seeing that today.

When the director of Crazy Rich Asians, Jon Chu, wanted to include a Mandarin version of Coldplay's song "Yellow" in a pivotal scene of his movie, some people were concerned that including it might not fly in such a high-profile movie about Asians. But that was exactly Chu's point. He wrote a letter to the band pleading his case — he wanted to attach something gorgeous to the word.

"If we're going to be called yellow," Chu wrote, "we're going to make it beautiful."

I can't help but think back to a group of people I spoke to late last year.

The Yellow Jackets Collective is an activist group, the name an echo of the 1960s. They're four people in New York City who identify themselves with a wide swath of terms, in addition to yellow: she/her, womxn, brown, Asian American, femme, child of Chinese immigrants, Korean American, 1st gen., first gen. diasporic and "collaborating towards futures that center marginalized bodies."

I send them an e-mail. "Why yellow?"

They point out that they don't just walk around the world calling every East Asian person they meet "yellow."

"Identity ideally is about you and how you feel and what you believe has shaped you," Michelle Ling responds.

I let Ling's words percolate. I don't know if I'll walk around in the world calling myself yellow — maybe to people who have similar experiences to mine; certainly not around people who've flung slurs at me.

Even so, having different words to choose from is itself a comfort. Having yellow in my arsenal makes me feel like my identity doesn't hinge on just one thing — one phrase, one history or one experience.

After a back-and-forth with the group, something they've written stops me in my metaphorical tracks. It's from the Yellow Jackets mantra; a snapback comment that I can't help but appreciate:

"We say Yellow again because at our most powerful we are a YELLOW PERIL and those who oppress us should be afraid. We are watching you. We are making moves."

In “The Travels of Marco Polo,” the people of China are described as “white.�� Records left by eighteenth century missionaries also report the skin color of Japanese and other East Asian people as clearly white. Yet in the nineteenth century, this perception quietly gave way to descriptions as “yellow.” In travel books, scientific discourse, and works of art, portrayals of East Asians began presenting them as having yellow skin. What happened in between?

In his 2011 book “Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking,” National Taiwan University professor Michael Keevak delves deeply into the origins and history of how and why East Asians went from being seen as “white” to being classified as “yellow.”

The first suspect implicated in applying the “yellow” label to East Asian faces is the famed Carl Linnaeus (1707-78). At first, Linnaeus used the Latin adjective “fuscus,” meaning “dark,” to describe the skin color of Asians. But in the tenth edition of his 1758-9 “Systema Naturae,” he specified it with the term “luridus,” meaning “light yellow” or “pale.”

It was Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) who went beyond the coloring ascribed by Linnaeus to apply the completely different label of “Mongolianness.” Regarded as a founder of comparative anatomy, the German zoologist did more than just use the Latin word “gilvus,” meaning “light yellow,” to describe East Asian skin color: he also implicated the Mongols, a name with troubling and threatening connotations for Europeans with their memories of Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, and Timur.

While the references remained anomalous at first, travelers to East Asia gradually began describing locals there more and more as “yellow.” By the nineteenth century, Keevak argued, the “yellow race” become a key part of anthropology.

But the yellow label came associated with discrimination, exclusion, and violence. Just as no one in the world is purely white or black, neither does anyone actually have skin that is deep yellow. By “creating” a skin color and investing traits such as “Mongolian eyes,” the Mongolian birthmark, and mongolism (the old name for Down syndrome), Westerners made the perceived yellow race synonymous with abnormality. They also responded to the arrival of immigrants from Asia by sounding the alarm over the “yellow peril” - a term with a whole range of negative associations from overpopulation to heathenism, economic competition, and political and social regression. The hidden agenda of this racial color-coding becomes apparent when one considers who benefits from a hierarchy that places “yellow” and “black” beneath “white.”

[rogloptimist]

book recs for aapi heritage month 🕺🕺

a bit late, but happy aapi heritage month! i’ve been getting back into reading this past year after my pandemic slump, so here’s some books that i really enjoyed by aapi authors 

the poppy war trilogy by rf kuang - this series is a fantasy based on 19th-20th century china. it’s hilariously written with some of my favorite characters of all time, and deals with some really heavy topics like colonialism, the effects of warfare, and classism in a brutally honest fashion. i have so much to say about it but that’s for a much longer post-

babel: an arcane history by rf kuang - at this point i will read this woman’s grocery list, she is such a skilled writer and genius storyteller. babel is set in an alternate 1800s oxford university, in a world which the british empire’s power is built upon magic silver. babel unpacks the intrinsic ties between academia and empire from the perspective of someone on the inside and the concept of resistance. it also really hits home to the feeling of disconnect from your native language as a bilingual/third culture kid- overall just brilliant book imo. the magic system is also really interesting (as is that of rf kuang’s other work)- she builds upon the real world to create a fantasy that is engaging, but also very representative of the motifs of her work?? idk how to explain it but 🙏rebecca🙏

you’re the only one i’ve told: the stories behind abortion by meera shah - you’re the only one i’ve told is a collection of stories about abortion entrusted to shah, a medical practitioner who works as an abortion provider. the book humanizes these people and their experiences from a variety of different backgrounds and circumstances, and is a really compelling read. 

we have always been here: a queer muslim memoir by samra habib - we have always been here is a memoir about  habib’s experience growing up as an ahmadi muslim in pakistan, coming to canada as refugees in their teenage years, and grappling with queer identity within an environment where their body and personhood was thought to have been needed to be controlled. habib discusses faith, sexuality, and love through a lens of self discovery and finding community that you didn’t know existed. 

the henna wars by adiba jaigirdar - this book is set in dublin, and follows a young bangladeshi girl named nishat. nishat has fallen for an estranged childhood friend, flávia, who just so happens to be her rival in an upcoming school business competition. and by some luck, they both have chosen to create the same business; henna tattoos. i’m a sucker for fluff so this book got me, but it also deals with appropriation and queer romance (particularly from a 3rd culture experience) quite delicately. nishat’s relationship with her sister was also so well written, and i think was one of the most compelling bonds in this book!

this is how you lose the time war by amal el-mohtar - okay i’m still in the process of finishing this book, but it has been so good so far! this is a story about two rival agents moving through a war that stretches across time, fighting tooth and nail for their own victory in a vaguely apocalyptic world. they begin a correspondence that spills into something that could change the course of time extremely literally. the writing style and descriptions are gorgeous, and the fragmented format of letters jumping across thousands of years is a really interesting reading experience. very cool book!

on earth we’re briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong - god this man is such a talent- everything good you’ve heard about his work is true and you should go read it rn. on earth we’re briefly gorgeous is written in the form of a letter from a son to his illiterate mother, and tells a story that crosses over 3 generations with it’s epicenter rooted in vietnam. the narrator unpacks how the effects of warfare, immigration and generational trauma have shaped his relationship with his mother and his own life. i’m not doing it justice (not for any of these rlly i cannot elevator pitch books), but vuong’s writing is so beautiful and intimate yet quiet? 💃💃🙏🫶👍🙏👌💃

that’s all i have for now, if you have any recs pls do tell!! to my fellow asian/pacific islander americans, your voices and stories deserve to be uplifted and celebrated without being fetishized, appropriated or pigeonholed. have a great may! 

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🦇 We shouldn't wait until May every year to delve into the beauty of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voices. In May, I shared a list of the NEWEST AAPI books out this year. To keep promoting AAPI authors, characters, and stories, here are a few Young Adult AAPI books you can add to your TBR for the remainder of the year!

🏮 The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han 🏮 My Summer of Love and Misfortune by Lindsay Wong 🏮 Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi 🏮 When We Were Infinite by Kelly Loy Gilbert 🏮 To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han 🏮 I Will Find You Again by Sarah Lyu 🏮 Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi 🏮 American Panda by Gloria Chao 🏮 When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon 🏮 Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman 🏮 Our Wayward Fate by Gloria Chao 🏮 Rent a Boyfriend by Gloria Chao 🏮 Want by Cindy Pon 🏮 The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf 🏮 A Place to Belong by Cynthia Kadohata 🏮 Of Curses and Kisses by Sandhya Menon 🏮 Everyone Wants to Know by Kelly Loy Gilbert 🏮 A Pho Love Story by Loan Le 🏮 The Wild Ones by Nafiza Azad 🏮 Prepped by Bethany Mangle 🏮 The Infinity Courts by Akemi Dawn 🏮 Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi 🏮 Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim by Patricia Park 🏮 This is Not a Personal Statement by Tracy Badua 🏮 The Cartographers by Amy Zhang 🏮 The Love Match by Priyanka Taslim 🏮 This Place is Still Beautiful by Xixi Tian 🏮 Chasing Pacquiao by Rod Pulido 🏮 I'm Not Here to Make Friends by Andrew Yang 🏮 The Queens of New York by E. L. Shen 🏮 Hungry Ghost by Victoria Ying 🏮 These Infinite Threads by Tahereh Mafi 🏮 Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim 🏮 The Marvelous Mirza Girls by Sheba Karim 🏮 A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I. Lin

[inkcurlsandknives]

The Of Stardust anthology releases June 1 just in time for pride month! If you want more Sapphic Filipino mythology retellings from me you'll love The dugong wife and the Raincape Weaver

[bookaddict24-7]

AUTHOR FEATURE:

﹒R.F. Kuang﹒

Three Books Written By this Author:

The Poppy War

Babel

Yellowface

___

Happy reading!

[elliepassmore]

Dragonfruit review

4/5 stars Recommended if you like: fantasy, dragons, Polynesian characters, quests

This book has an interesting premise: dragons in fantasy Polynesia. I enjoyed getting to know the characters and the magic system of the book and found myself interested in the plot. However, this does feel like a younger YA or MG book rather than a typical YA. Even when bad stuff happened to the characters, I didn't really feel the teeth of the novel and knew everything would be okay. The stakes just weren't there.

That being said, I did enjoy learning about the dragons. I found them to be interesting and Hanalei knows a bit about them as a result of her job. They're mostly aquatic creatures, but at times will venture onto land and change their morphology slightly to accommodate land living. The parts of a dragon are also a hot commodity, particularly the eggs, which can grant wishes. Through her studies, Hanalei has a deeper understanding of the creatures than most people do, though even among everyday people there seems to be a wide range in how people perceive the dragons. The dragoneers hunt them for their parts, but the people of Tamarind don't want to hurt them unless they themselves are being threatened.

Hanalei was exiled prior to the start of the story as a result of her father stealing a dragon egg meant for the crown princess in order to save her instead. But through a string of bad luck, she ends up back on Tamarind. It's clear from the get-go that Hanalei feels a lot of guilt over what her father did, and when given the chance she's willing to do almost anything to make it up to the royal family, people she once called friends. As the journey progresses, Hanalei begins to learn even more about the dragons than she already knew, and we see her developing a better grasp of how their magic works as well as a deep empathy for the creatures. She's very practical about things, even when emotions are running high, and I liked seeing how she worked to solve conflicting problems.

Sam understands his responsibilities, but he chafes at the choice before him. When Hanalei and a nesting dragon come to Tamarind, he's excited both to be reunited with his long-lost best friend but also to have another chance to save his mother. Despite being a warrior and prince, Sam is a warm and compassionate person, and he knows his people well. It's clear he's a great leader, even if he'll never have the title 'king.'

The side characters in this book were definitely side characters, though I liked most of them. Rosalie (I think her name is Rosalie, I can't quite remember) was catty to begin with, but she grew on me. I thought she and Hanalei were going to have a jealousy problem, but it ended up being a different conflict and it chilled out pretty quickly. Rosalie ended up being one of Hanalei's close confidantes and co-trouble-maker! I also liked William and thought his eagerness to learn was charming. I was hoping to see more from him and Sam's cousin, but oh well.

There is a minor (major?) character death that I was kind of surprised stuck. It didn't really make sense in my opinion, I feel like there's a level of magic that should've been at work there. But my biggest problem with this death is that I.....didn't really feel anything. Like, obviously it's supposed to be sad, and the characters are sad, but the death didn't pack a punch the way I think it was supposed to. It didn't really raise the stakes.

One thing I particularly liked about this book is the sense of family and community, as well as an underlying thread of forgiveness. Hanalei is welcomed back by (almost) all with open arms. The royal family understands that it was her father who stole the egg meant for the princess and that while it went to Hanalei, that she had nothing to do with it. Likewise, over the course of the story it becomes clear how much community means to the characters, particularly those who grew up on Tamarind like Hanalei and Sam. Even characters who mess up in the story (and some of them in a very big way) are eventually met with forgiveness and a second chance.

Overall I enjoyed this book and found it to be interesting. I really liked getting to see Polynesian culture(s) in a fantasy setting. Dragonfruit is a pretty unique story. That being said, the characters felt younger than they actually were and I felt like the book lacked tension, even in moments where it's clear there should've been high stakes.

[alexislunacreations]

Six years ago, I embarked on my writing journey. As of today, I'm finally a published author! 🎉🎉🎉 (I can't believe it 😭)

My debut novel, a steamy psychic romance, is available now on all major eBook retailers. Here’s where you can get your copy:

Amazon || Kobo || Apple || Google Play || Barnes & Noble || Vivlio ||Tolino/Thalia || Smashwords

Universal Link (this includes links to all retailers listed above)

𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐁𝐋𝐔𝐑𝐁

Heidi Bauer would give anything to not be able to read people’s memories. Yet every time she sees blood, she loses consciousness and gets a glimpse into the private inner worlds of the wound’s owner, tracing through the events that caused the injury—with frightening precision.

She can’t tell anyone this, of course. It’s bad enough that she has severe PTSD and hemophobia, but unexplained magical powers as well? She’d rather spiral into jobless poverty than admit the truth and risk getting locked up in some kind of mental institution.

That is, until she meets the handsome and caring Dr. Bùi Đức Khiêm. Despite Heidi’s intentions of telling no one her secret, she finds herself opening up to the psychiatrist better than her own therapist—in more ways than one.

And yet, while Dr. Khiêm may not have any powers, he’s hiding secrets of his own. So when a mysterious figure starts to stalk Heidi in pursuit of her hidden gift, it isn’t just her safety that’s threatened, but Khiêm’s too. Together, Heidi and Khiêm learn that not all wounds are visible—and healing them may cost one of their lives.

Occult trauma: A traumatic injury that may not be apparent on initial presentation or physical examination

Steam level: Scorching 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️

At a glance: Instalove, contemporary setting, magic as a burden, healing from trauma, found family

Find out more at my author website: https://www.alexisluna.com

Please share this post to help spread the word! I'm a marginalized indie author and rely entirely on grassroots support for visibility and sales.