New YA Books By Asian American and Pacific Islander Authors

The first chapter of this book made me so uncomfortable in its observations of (some) privileged teenage girl talk that I almost stopped reading. I felt oddly ill at ease from the first pages. But the voice of the main character, Tara, a trans girl, made me keep going. I had to see how things would develop for her. How would Tara navigate these seemingly smooth but deeply chaotic social waters? Will she decide to keep trying to fit in? Will she be able to forge her own way forward? Will she decide to opt out entirely and find some other community besides the cisgender girls she hangs out with and her trans masculine (sort of/sort of not) friend Liam? I couldn’t leave her until I figured out how it would all turn out. I also really loved this cover design by Liam Woods and photography by Catherine Lee. Like many other readers, I am happy this book is here!

Always happy to read new graphic novels, I was particularly looking forward to this one. The love story part wasn’t the draw, and neither was the Lunar New Year connection, to be honest. I just wanted to see what Gene Luen Yang was doing next. Of course, I already knew and loved LeUyen Pham’s work, particularly in Princess in Black, Real Friends, and Outside, Inside. This book did not disappoint. It is impressive in its approach to several tough things at once: growing up, figuring out your identity and place in your community, and understanding how your family may have made choices you’d rather not face. Many readers should also pick this one up even if they, like me, don’t really care about romance. They will find a lot to appreciate here.

This drops you into a rich world and throws you into the action with the main character, Aryl, as she heads back into the research lab she has been avoiding while trying to maintain something of a life outside through dance and friends. Aryl gives you a short background of her life before a mysterious event kills her lab’s demanding head researcher, with whom she has clashed in the past. Suddenly, she and another assistant researcher, Ver, become the prime suspects and must clear their names. I loved the sci-fi murder mystery cross here. I also loved that Karen Bao included an author’s note about her background and drew attention to her experiences as a PhD student, a woman, and a Chinese American, and as someone who has lived with chronic pain and that some of those elements helped her write this book.

Hazeem is a 17-year-old grappling with grief over the death of his father when he is confronted with the loss of another loved one, his grandmother. Shocked by the second loss, he ends up wishing for her to be granted extra life and comes face-to-face with Time. He must make choices now to decide how to move forward in his life. I enjoyed this and liked the main character immensely, including his internal dialogue, which seemed to be regularly buffeted by the winds of anxiety in a very believable way.

Though this feels like a large sweeping fantasy novel, it is written as if addressed to the reader directly and feels very intimate, too. The way it handles a world that has utterly failed its children is deeply affecting. Children in this world are born to be warriors, not in any noble sense, but in the horribly disappointing way that child soldiers are used all over the world. In a way that is just so very, very deeply wrong and also very believable.

This revolves around a Korean American high school student who is not smashing academic records and earning all A+s in her classes as her parents would (according to her) normally expect. Instead, she is hiding her true passion in life: cooking. She loves working at her Korean grandparents’ diner and eventually gets pulled into the world of competitive TV cooking. This will work for some readers just because of the foodie element. However, I thought it was also interesting for its depiction of more than a few Korean American characters who are all working toward something a bit different than the stereotypical expectations of entrance into the top universities, and pursuit of whatever people believe are the best jobs and companies to join in the U.S.

One of the few historical choices on this list, June Hur delivers a kingdom set in the 1500s and a life of a 17-year-old Iseul who must set out on a dangerous mission to rescue her sister from a murderous king. I was gripped by this young woman setting off to free her older sister, and the adventure is obviously a treacherous one. I haven’t had a chance to finish this one yet, but I am looking forward to it soon.