Booksellers share AANHPI book picks from debut mystery to surreal short stories
AANHPI Heritage Month is in full swing, and to help readers dive into more Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander stories, two friends who started their own bookstore to spotlight the AANHPI community are sharing their top book picks.
Rachel Lau and Michelle Ming told ABC News they launched Yellow Peril Books in 2024 after they saw a need to build a space to connect AANHPI community members, small businesses, and readers, and to foster discussions about the AANHPI community.
They named their project after the racist "Yellow Peril" concept that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which perpetuated Western fears about Asians and depicted Asian Americans as unwelcome foreigners. Lau and Ming said the choice was purposeful and was meant to "directly reclaim space for Asian stories written by actual Asian people."
Through Yellow Peril Books, Lau and Ming operate both an online bookstore and provide opportunities for people to connect at local New York City events including book clubs, author events and reader mixers.
"It was really cool to see the demand that was out there for this kind of space for people to talk about Asian American stories," Ming told ABC News about the response to the project.
That demand aligns with 2024 U.S. Census data showing the AANHPI community is growing, with nearly 27 million people in the United States identifying as Asian and approximately 1.8 million identifying as Native Hawaiian and/or Pacific Islander.
While the number of children's books about Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders rose from 3% to 13% between 2014 and 2024, that number began to decrease in 2025, due in part to book bans targeting diverse children's books, according to the nonprofit group We Need Diverse Books, citing data collected by the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Below, see Lau's and Ming's top five book recommendations for AANHPI Heritage Month 2026.
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'Interior Chinatown' by Charles Yu
Ming: "['Interior Chinatown' by Charles Yu] is a satirical novel about a guy who is, in his life, just 'generic Asian man,' and he aspires to a bigger role. ... It's tackling something really serious, which is the lack of Asian visibility … and then also, it is an ode to Chinatowns and their historical significance in our broader American cultural landscape."
'The Midnight Taxi' by Yosha Gunasekera
Lau: "['The Midnight Taxi' by Yosha Gunasekera is] an incredibly thrilling debut novel, and it's really fast-paced, but it's ultimately, I think, a love letter to New York. Over the course of the story, they have to travel through all five boroughs to look for clues, and you really get to see the immigrants who build New York City and all the unseen labor that it takes to make the city run … and then it also really highlights the Sri Lankan American experience."
'Tell Me How to Be' by Neel Patel
Ming: "This is a really great depiction of a mother who is going through a lot of her own struggles with past love, with past heartbreak, with past regrets, and also a son who is going through parallel things, also with discovering his sexuality in the process of coming out, and a lot of internalized shame around that. … All that is done with a lot of grace to both people and to, in general, immigrants and children of immigrants."
'I Am The Ghost Here' by Kim Samek
Lau: "This is a collection of surreal short stories that are speculative fiction that explore 12 women navigating modern life. ... As you read them and strip them back, you start seeing these threads of modern and daily life and the horrors of contemporary existence and anxiety."
'Dirty Kitchen' by Jill Damatac
Ming: "This is a favorite of ours. … It is a memoir about a formerly undocumented Filipino immigrant, Jill, who moved here with her family to the U.S., and her experiences growing up as an undocumented child in the U.S., and every chapter is also framed by a Filipino recipe as well. It ties in food, it ties in culture and history."
