Books to read for Women’s History Month - Books for all ages written by Asian American women

Compiled by Mary Jeneverre Schultz

With March as Women’s History Month, we are sharing this list of Asian American women authors. Women’s History Month highlights the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society.

1The Dragon Warrior by Katie Zhao

A debut novel inspired by Chinese mythology, this middle-grade fantasy follows an outcast as she embarks on a quest to save the world from demons.

As a member of the Jade Society, 12-year-old Faryn Liu dreams of honoring her family and the gods by becoming a warrior. But the Society has shunned Faryn and her brother; Alex ever since their father disappeared years ago, forcing them to train in secret.

Faryn sets off on a daring quest across Chinatowns, but becoming the Heaven Breaker will require more sacrifices than she first realized. What will Faryn be willing to give up to claim her destiny?

2The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey Sujata Massey (Agatha and Macavity award-winning author) brings a delightful mystery set in 1920s India. Perveen Mistry, Bombay’s first female lawyer, is investigating a suspicious will on behalf of three Muslim widows living in full purdah when the case takes a turn. Explore 1920s Bombay alongside crime fiction’s most appealing new heroine, the plucky and determined Perveen Mistry.

She has a passion for the law and for helping people, but she also has a dark secret in her past that makes her uniquely suited to her career—an abusive marriage that ended in violent tragedy. As a member of India’s Zoroastrian minority, she can never divorce or remarry, but she can devote her life to helping other women in trouble.

3Talon by Julie Kagawa

Long ago, dragons were hunted to near extinction by the Order of St. George, a legendary society of dragonslayers. Hiding in human form and growing their numbers in secret, the dragons of Talon have become strong and cunning, and they’re positioned to take over the world with humans none the wiser.

Ember and Dante Hill are the only sister and brother known to dragonkind. Trained to infiltrate society, Ember wants to live the teen experience and enjoy a summer of freedom before taking her destined place in Talon. But destiny is a matter of perspective, and a rogue dragon will soon challenge everything Ember has been taught. As Ember struggles to accept her future, she and her brother are hunted by the Order of St. George.

4The Lost Vintage by Ann Mah Drops of Gold – les gouttes d’or: that’s the name of the wine Kate’s family has been making for generations. But Kate’s life in San Francisco is half a world away from the French vineyard her mother turned her back on a generation ago, and Kate has instead spent years building her career as a sommelier.

And so Kate returns to the vineyard, ostensibly to help her cousin Nico and his wife Heather with les vendanges --- the annual grape harvest --- and brush up on her knowledge. Her unspoken goals are to avoid as best as possible both the bittersweet memories of her childhood and JeanLuc, a neighboring winemaker and her first love.

As she learns more about her family, her long-lost aunt, and the reality of life in Vichy France, Kate also finds that the line between resistance and collaboration is razor thin. And she becomes consumed with a new goal for her time in Burgundy: discovering who, exactly her family aided during the difficult years of the war.

5The Sakura Obsession: The Incredible Story of the Plant Hunter Who Saved Japan’s Cherry Blossoms by Naoko Abe

This book written by journalist Naoko Abe tells the remarkable 1,200-year history of the Japanese cherry blossom tree and the fascinating story of how it was saved from extinction by English gardener Collingwood “Cherry” Ingram.

Ingram first fell in love with the sakura, or cherry tree, when he visited Japan on his honeymoon in 1907. He was so taken with the plant he brought back hundreds of cuttings with him

to England, where he created a garden of cherry varieties. In 1926, upon learning that the Great White Cherry had become extinct in Japan, he began a lifelong crusade to save the tree. In the years that followed, Ingram sent more than 100 varieties of cherry tree to new homes around the globe, from Auckland to Washington. Naoke Abe grew up in Japan, where the cherry blossom is a potent symbol of national identity and culture. But she knew nothing about Ingram, whose work is legendary among some Western horticulturalists, but virtually unknown to the Japanese and the wider world.

6Little Soldiers: An American Boy, A Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve by Lenora Chu had left an American school system fraught with problems; wanting to set their son on the right path forward. Lenora wondered whether Rainey might benefit from an education delivered the Chinese way. Almost immediately after her son started at Shanghai’s top kindergarden, her spirited toddler started to morph into a proper pupil, greeting his teacher faithfully with “Laoshi zao! Good morning, teacher!” and began to emulate the polite, patient behavior of Chinese students.

However, the deeper she dug, the more disconcerted she became about a classroom environment where young children are often bribed, shamed, and punished into submission, stripping them of independent expression.

Despite our frenzied efforts, American children continue to slide in global education rankings, while students in China and elsewhere in Asia soar towards the top. What are they doing that we’re not? Should we borrow a page from China’s education playbook?

In 2010, journalist Lenora Chu found herself at the heart of this global debate. She and her husband enrolled their American boy in the Chinese state-run school system celebrated for producing some of the planet’s top-ranking students. The young family

7A Big Mooncake for Little Star by Grace Lin When Little Star’s mother bakes a delicious-looking mooncake, she leaves it in the night sky to cool. But it looks so tasty that Little Star can’t wait, and every night she must take a little nibble of the perfectly round confection! As she takes bites out of the mooncake, the moon itself wanes, passing through each phase until it becomes a new moon, and Little Star’s mother makes a new mooncake.

The Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is an Asian holiday celebrated by eating mooncakes and telling stories about the moon. When Grace’s daughter kept asking for more stories about the moon and Grace ran out of ones to share, she knew she had to create a story of her own. This book is a love letter to Grace’s daughter.

8Tiger Writing by Gish Jen For author Gish Jen, the daughter of Chinese immigrant parents, books were once an outsiders’ guide to the universe. Drawing on a rich array of sources, from paintings to behavioral studies to her father’s striking account of his childhood in China, this accessible book not only illuminates Jen’s own development and celebrated work but also explores the aesthetic inality, authenticity and the truth of individual experience. By contrast, Eastern narrative emphasizes morality, cultural continuity, the everyday, the recurrent. Tiger Writing shifts the way we understand ourselves and our art-marking.

9The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo

and psychic roots of the independent and interdependent self --- each mode of selfhood yielding a distinct way of observing, remembering, and narrating the world.

The novel is fundamentally a Western form that values orig

Set in 1930s Colonial Malaysia, quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dance-hall girl to help pay off her mother’s mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin plunges into a dark adventure: a mirror world of secrets and superstitions.

Dazzling and propulsive, The Night Tiger is the coming-of-age of a child and a young woman, each searching for their place in society that would rather they stay invisible.