By Ayad Akhtar

A young Pakistani boy, whose parents left the fundamentalists behind when they came to America, finds transformation and a path to happiness through a family friend, Mina, who shows him the beauty and power of the Quran.

By Julie Otsuka
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, August 28, 2012.  1 PM & 7:30 PM.

Presents the stories of six Japanese mail-order brides whose new lives in early twentieth-century San Francisco are marked by backbreaking migrant work, cultural struggles, children who reject their heritage, and the prospect of wartime internment.

By Kevin Kwan
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

Feeling incomplete because her unknown birth father cannot walk her down the aisle, Rachel Chu, on the brink of marrying one of Asia's richest bachelors, is brought into the elite circles of Shanghai by a shocking revelation.

By Kevin Kwan
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian, Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian, Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk

Envisioning a quality-time summer vacation in the humble Singapore home of a boy she hopes to marry, Chinese American Rachel Chu is unexpectedly introduced to a rich and scheming clan that viciously competes against other wealthy families and strongly opposes their son's relationship with an American girl.

By Celeste Ng
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian

Tueday, July 28, 2015. 1 PM.

A story of the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family explores the fallout of the drowning death of Lydia Lee, the favorite daughter of a Chinese-American family in 1970s Ohio.

By Akhil Sharma
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions
With Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, January 19, 2016. 1:30 PM.

Finally joining their father in America, Ajay and Birju enjoy their new, extraordinary life until tragedy strikes, leaving one brother incapacitated and the other practically orphaned.

By Rohinton Mistry
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions

“Mistry presents a magnetic tale of family obligations that comes as close to perfect as a novel can get. The setting is the ever-hectic city of Bombay during a 1990s wave of violent religious extremism, and the focus is on an extended Parsi family suffering the long-term consequences of a Juliet and Romeo-like tragedy (From the Publisher).”

By Catherine Chung
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services

Tuesday, November 27.  1:30 PM.

Learning on the night of her sister's birth that a daughter has been lost in every generation of her Korean family, Janie assumes a protective role over her sister while learning more cautionary stories from her optimistic father and mythology-minded mother until her sister's abrupt defection years later reveals painful family secrets.

By David Yoon

Torn between his love for his white girlfriend and his sense of duty to the matchmaking parents who made hard sacrifices to move to the United States, a Korean American teen looks for solutions along with a friend who has a similar problem.

By Jean Kwok
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian, Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk

A resolute yet naïve Chinese girl confronts poverty and culture shock with equal zeal when she and her mother immigrate to Brooklyn.

By Maureen Lindley

Forced to move with her widowed Japanese mother to an internment camp after her white father dies in the bombing of Pearl Harbor, 15-year-old Satomi endures brutal conditions and disease while forging dubious relationships and coming to terms with her Japanese-American identity.

By Kelli Estes

A college student investigates the sad story of a displaced Chinese American in 1886 before making a discovery in a scrap of silk that forces her to choose between her family's honor and the truth.

By Sanjena Sathian
Recommended By Donna Burger, Readers' Services Librarian

A satirical coming–of–age story follows the experiences of an Indian–American teen in the Bush–era Atlanta suburbs, who joins his crush’s plot to use an ancient alchemical potion to meet high parental expectations, triggering devastating consequences.

By Robert Olen Butler
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

“A collection of stories about Vietnamese immigrants living in Louisiana as they face love, loss, despair, and the challenges and conflicts of a new life (From the Publisher).”

By Angela S. Choi

Determined to thwart her parents' plans to marry her off into Asian suburbia, Fiona seeks her freedom at any price.

By Monica Pradhan

Three families of Indian-American women find themselves dealing with a whole new world that blends the traditions of the past with high-tech, fast-paced, modern American life, until the estranged daughter of one of the women returns to request that a marriage be arranged for her, forcing them all to deal with the experience of living between cultures.

By Alan Brennert
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

Chronicles the lives of Asian immigrants in and around Hawaii's early 20th-century glamor days.

By Thrity Umrigar
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian, Nathalie Levin, Children's Services Librarian, Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk

An Indian American journalist returns home to cover the story of a Hindi woman attacked by her own family for marrying a Muslim and deals with a society that places more weight on tradition than one’s heart.

By Jamie Ford
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

When artifacts from Japanese families sent to internment camps during World War II are uncovered during renovations at a Seattle hotel, Henry Lee embarks on a quest that leads to memories of growing up Chinese in a city rife with anti–Japanese sentiment.

By Margaret Dilloway
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

The story of Shoko, a Japanese woman who married an American GI, and her grown daughter, Sue, a divorced mother whose life as an American housewife hasn't been what she'd expected.

By Jhumpa Lahiri

Stories about Indians in India and America. The story, A Temporary Matter, is on mixed marriage, Mrs. Sen's is on the adaptation of an immigrant to the U.S., and in the title story an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors.

By Amy Tan
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

Encompassing two generations and a rich blend of Chinese and American history, the story of four struggling, strong women also reveals their daughter's memories and feelings.

By Emiko Jean
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

Getting to know Penny, the daughter she placed for adoption 16 years ago, 35-year-old Mika Suzuki finds unexpected love with Penny’s widowed father and finally has a chance to have the life and family she’s always wanted until her deceptions catch up with her.

By Jhumpa Lahiri
Recommended By Lakshmi Kasturi, Library Clerk

“A portrait of the immigrant experience follows the Ganguli family from their traditional life in India through their arrival in Massachusetts in the late 1960s and their difficult melding into an American way of life.”

Became the movie: The Namesake.

By Nell Freudenberger
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

The story of a Bengali woman who marries a man from Rochester, NY, after they meet online.

By Patricia Park
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian

Jane Re, a half-Korean, half-American orphan, escapes to Seoul where she reconnects with her family while struggling to learn the ways of modern-day Korea, and wonders if the man she loves is really the man for her as she tries to find balance between two cultures and accept who she really is.

By Gail Tsukiyama
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, January 26, 2010.  1 PM & 7:30 PM.

Set in Japan just before WWII, the novel tells of a young Chinese man's encounters with four locals while he recuperates from tuberculosis.

By Shilpi Somaya Gowda
Recommended By Kalpana Mehta, Reference Librarian

“Interweaving the stories of Kavita, Somer, and the child that binds both of their destinies, Secret Daughter poignantly explores the emotional terrain of motherhood, loss, identity, and love, as witnessed through the lives of two families one Indian, one American and the child that indelibly connects them (From the Publisher).”

By Lisa See
Series May and Pearl Novels

May and Pearl, two sisters living in Shanghai in the mid–1930s are beautiful, sophisticated and well–educated, but their family is on the verge of bankruptcy. Hoping to improve their social standing, May and Pearl’s parents arrange for their daughters to marry "Gold Mountain men" who have come from Los Angeles to find brides.

By Mira Jacob
Recommended By Jean Buchholtz, Library Clerk, Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk

Decades after an interrupted visit to his mother’s home in 1979 India triggers a haunting series of events, brain surgeon Thomas Eapen begins having conversations with his dead relatives, prompting his daughter to investigate a painful family history.

By David Guterson

In 1954, a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned at San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder.

By Chang-rae Lee

“Thirty years after vying for the attentions of a beautiful but damaged missionary wife at a Korean orphanage, Korean orphan June Han and former GI Hector Brennan are reunited by a plot that forces them to come to terms with mysterious secrets from their past (From the Publisher).”

By Lisa See
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk

Explores the lives of a Chinese mother and her daughter, who has been adopted by an American couple, tracing the very different cultural factors that compel them to consume a rare native tea that has shaped their family’s destiny for generations.

By Amy Tan
Recommended By Pam Strudler, Programming & Arts Librarian

“Violet Minturn, a half-Chinese/half-American courtesan who deals in seduction and illusion in Shanghai, struggles to find her place in the world, while her mother, Lucia, tries to make sense of the choices she has made and the men who have shaped her (From the Publisher).”

By Thrity Umrigar

In the years following the death of their seven-year-old son, the Benton’s witness the steady deterioration of their marriage. The couple seeks a fresh start in India.

By Julie Otsuka
Recommended By Amy B., Children's Librarian

A story told from five different points of view, chronicles the experiences of Japanese Americans caught up in the nightmare of the World War II internment camps.

By Susie Yang
Recommended By Donna Burger, Readers' Services Librarian

Years after she is sent away from Boston to China for shoplifting, a conflicted Chinese-American woman reconnects with her golden-boy childhood crush before a ghost from the past threatens her ambitions.