A Starter Reading List About Asian America

Race in America isn't something I talk a lot about online, but it is something I think a lot about. Today I was giving my friend Seth a short reading list about being Asian American when I realized that 1) I have such a list and 2) other people might like to see it too.

Here are some essays I like:

• Wesley Yang's "Paper Tigers" in NY Mag about the "bamboo ceiling" and the culture clash between American and Asian-American values when it comes to achievement.
• David Byunghyun Lee's "Transformed Into White Gods: What Happens in American Without Love," a beautiful and moving essay about the frustration, hopelessness, and hope of his immigrant experience.
• Jenny Zhang's "Far Away From Me" in Rookie Mag about the stereotypes people project onto Asian women.
• Tracy Chou's "The uncomfortable state of being Asian in tech" on Medium about how we need to start talking about what it means to be Asian in tech.
• Alton Wang's "When I Grow Up I Can't Be President" on Medium, about the Chinese-American experience.
• Chenxing Han's "We're Not Who You Think We Are" on Lion's Roar about the marginalization of Asian-American Buddhists. (Chenxing also happens to be the first friend I made after moving to America.)

For a much longer read, I really liked Helen Zia's book, Asian American Dreams, about the formation of Asian American identity. (Tea that Burns is another good one about Chinese-American history. Fun fact: I wrote my high school junior history essay about the Chinatown that used to be in Pittsburgh. Yes, there was one until the city government put a highway through it.)

Apparently our friend Nate Hilger, an economics professor at Brown, is doing research on discrimination against Asian-Americans. He has a working paper, "Upward Mobility and Discriminations: the Case of Asian-Americans," here.

Of course, I've also been really enjoying the proliferation of TV shows featuring Asian-American immigrant family experiences: Fresh Off the Boat, Master of None, and The Mindy Project among them.

Would love to hear your suggested reading/watching.