Celebrating Asian American, Pacific Islanders, and Asian Authors

Study Skill 14.6 Celebrating Asian American, Pacific Islanders, and Asian Authors

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At Mizzou Academy, we stand with our Asian American, Pacific Islander (AAPI), and Asian students, faculty, staff, partner educators, and families. As a global school, we condemn all acts of discrimination and strive to build an affirming and inclusive school system for students close to home and around the globe. At Mizzou Academy, celebrating and affirming our Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander students is personal to us. In addition to serving Asian American and Pacific Islander students in our global program, we currently work with students in the following Asian and Southeast Asian countries:

Cambodia
China*
India
Indonesia
Japan
Nepal
Philippines
Republic of Korea
Singapore
Vietnam*

*We have longstanding partnerships in both Vietnam and China.

We celebrate the multiplicity of stories, cultures, backgrounds, and identities that exist across the Asian, Southeast Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander communities. Through our ongoing learning, we hope to expand equity, diversity, and compassion for our Asian students, teachers, and families, to disrupt the model minority myth, and to combat racism directly. Story is an important place to uplift, highlight, and discover diverse lived experiences. In our continued commitment to further learning, we hope this list points you to new resources and stories to add to your classroom shelves. This is not a comprehensive list. It is a modest starting place of beloved stories and resources from our Mizzou Academy team.

Title	Author	Level	Notes
Early-Childhood and Early-Elementary
A is for Activist	Innosanta Nagara	Toddler/Preschool	An alphabet book that promotes social justice and equity for diverse people.
The Name Jar	Yansook Choi	Kinder-2	Being a new kid at a school is hard especially when your name sounds different than everyone else. A young Korean girl begins a quest to find a new name.
Eyes that Kiss in the Corners	Joanna Ho	Preschool to Grade 3	A book about discovering a pathway to self-love and empowerment.
Cora Cooks Pancit	Dorina K. Lazo Gilmore	Kinder-3	As Cora and her mom work together to cook pancit, a traditional Filipino dish, she learns about her family roots and traditions.
Role Models Who Look Like Me	Jasmine M Cho	Kindergarten and Up	The beautiful watercolor images and powerful stories of Asian American and Pacific Islander leaders combine to represent leaders we don’t often see in traditional history books...but should.
Middle Grades
Inside Out and Back Again	Thanhhà Lai	Middle Grade	This novel in verse tells the story of a young girl’s refugee journey from Vietnam to the U.S.
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon	Grace Lin	Late Elementary	Based on the folktales told by her father, a girl sets out on a journey to find the Old Man of the Moon. The first book of a three-book series.
Hello, Universe	Erin Estrada Kelly	Grades 5 and up	A story about family and unexpected friendships.
The Land I Lost	Quang Nhuong Huynh	Grade 5 and up	An autobiography that centers on the author’s childhood growing up in Vietnam. Side note: The author received his M.A. from MIzzou.
High School and Adult
Everything I Never Told You	Celeste Ng	Adult / Young Adult	As a review in The Guardian puts it, “It is a novel about race and class and privilege”.
The Namesake	Jhumpa Lahiri	High School/Adult	Spanning two generations, this novel tells the story of the Ganguli family’s immigration from India to the U.S. and then follows their son's story as he negotiates his American and Indian identities.
Little Fires Everywhere	Celeste Ng	High School/Adult	This gripping story is set in the 1990s in Ohio, where the author grew up. It tells the gut-wrenching, heartbreaking story of two families whose struggle to build connection is threatened by the racial divide between them and their vastly different perspectives and decisions in a custodial battle over the adoption of a Chinese baby. This novel examines mother-daughter relationships, societal power, race, and justice. (Also a Hulu movie.)
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before	Jenny Han	Young Adult	A light-hearted and thoughtful story of how one teen, who intends to keep her dreams locked away, experiences adventure and real connection when she is forced to live outside of her comfort zone. (Also a Netflix movie.)
The Sympathizer	Viet Thanh Nguyen	High School/Adult	This Pulitzer Prize winning book is an epic story of love, suspense, and betrayal. The protagonist comes to America after the Fall of Saigon. As he begins a new life in Los Angeles with other Vietnamese refugees he is also working as a spy. A true page-turner.
The Sun and Her Flowers And Milk and Honey	Rupi Kaur	Adult	Kaur’s New York Times bestselling books of poetry are beloved (and translated) around the world. Regarded as a leading feminist poet of our time, Kaur’s first-person poems are powerful and deeply personal. Although we know high school students who resonate with Kaur's work, we listed these books for adult audiences as they include some intense themes around violence, sexuality, and resilience.
Pachinko	Min Jin Lee	High School/Adult	Another acclaimed award-winning read. This story tells a multigenerational family saga that begins with a teenage girl in Korea. Beautifully written with powerful themes of love, sacrifice, ambition, and identity. Moving from Korea to Japan and across the generations, readers are sure to fall for this amazing story.
America is Not the Heart	Elaine Castillo	Adult/Teacher prep	A novel that chronicles three generations of a Filipino family as they build their new lives in the U.S.

As you continue your own personal and professional learning, we also want to point you to the PBS five-hour film series Asian Americans. This series streams for free and uses personal storytelling to share history and consider how we can move forward together. Lesson plans are also available on the PBS site.

Thank you to Lisa DeCastro, Stephanie Walter, Dr. Kathryn Fishman-Weaver, Dr. Sherry Denney, Megan Lilien, Greg Soden, and Paul Craigmile for putting together this resource.