Asian Heritage Month Highlight: Fiction Part Two May 29, 2019 – Posted in: Highlights – Tags: Asian Heritage Month, Fiction
Today, we’ve got our final highlight for Asian Heritage Month: fiction! Check out these great reads, and don’t forget to click on the titles below to learn more about your next favourite book!
The Chinese Knot and Other Stories by Lien Chao: Award-winning author Lien Chao weaves together these emotionally charged short stories focusing on Chinese immigrants in Toronto’s multiracial neighbourhoods. In Chinatown and mixed neighbourhoods, in condos and tenements, in public parks and in college, the protagonists of these stories find love, face loneliness, confront generational crises, and overcome racial stereotypes.
Fauji Banta Singh and Other Stories by Sadhu Binning: Set among people who emigrated to Canada in the late twentieth century, facing racial animosity and economic insecurity, and moving forward as their lives became more settled, this short story collection gives us rare glimpses into the private lives of Vancouver’s Sikh community.
Ghost Boys by Shenaaz Nanji: SYRCA Snow Willow Award Finalist 2018 & Best Books for Kids & Teens, Spring 2018! Fifteen-year-old Munna is lured into a dream job in the Middle East, only to be sold. He must work at the Sheikh’s camel farm in the desert and train young boys as jockeys in camel races, starving them so that they remain light on the camels’ backs in order to win the Gold Sword race for the Sheikh.
Paper Lions by Sohan S Koonar: Told from three distinct points of view, Paper Lions is an epic multi-generational novel about India, set in the years from the advent of the Second World War to the beginning of modern times in the 1960s.
Picture Bride by C Fong Hsiung: Twenty-year-old Jillian Wu leaves Calcutta to marry a man she has never met–Peter Chou, also a Hakka–with much anticipation, only to discover that he is gay. Forced by her husband to keep up the charade of a “normal” marriage, and pressured by her in-laws to have a child, she flees back to Calcutta, only to be disowned by her conservative family.
The Fourth Canvas by Rana Bose: Embedded in a dead philosopher’s paintings are tell-tale historical clues, mysteriously coded, that predict imperial entropy in the future–from economic collapse and cultural decadence to a coup d’etat against civil society. Kidnappings, killings, undercover conspiracy and a trek into ancestral roots lend to this novel its quality of intellectual mystery and gripping suspense.
The Palm Leaf Fan and Other Stories by Kwai-Yun Li: From crumbling shops in Chinatown to decaying tanneries in Tangra, Kwai-yun Li’s collection of linked short stories expose us to the life of a marginalized community in postcolonial Calcutta.
Things She Could Never Have by Tehmina Khan: Accomplished, sensitive, and often disturbing, these stories take us into the lives of modern Pakistanis–privileged and poor, gay, trans, and straight, men and women, in Karachi and Toronto.
Her Mother’s Ashes 3 edited by Nurjehan Aziz: This collection brings together more first-rate stories by South Asian women that–whether set in their home countries or those of their adoption–explore with profound and sensitive insight the inner tenor of women’s lives caught between places, cultures, and generations.