Asian Heritage Month
Asian Heritage Month is an opportunity for us to learn more about the diverse culture and history of Asian communities in Canada, as well as to acknowledge the many achievements and contributions of people of Asian origin who, throughout our history, have done so much to make Canada the country we know and love.
Aftershock : a novel
Zhang, Ling, 1957- author
2024
In the summer of 1976, an earthquake swallows up the city of Tangshan, China. In a devastating split second, seven-year-old Xiaodeng is separated from her brother and the mother she loves and trusts. Thirty years later, Xiaodeng is an acclaimed writer living in Canada. However, her newfound fame and success do little to cover the deep wounds that disrupt her life, time and again, and edge her toward a breaking point. Xiaodeng realizes the only path toward healing is to return to Tangshan, find her mother, and get closure.
Atomweight : a novel
Sasagawa, Emi, author
2023
Good girl, good student, good daughter: Aki has always done what her loving but demanding multiracial family expects. Far from her Vancouver home, she adjusts to life in London - studies, friends and a relationship with a wealthy but closeted Asian woman. Life is demanding, but Aki is coping until a violent incident triggers an unexpected response in the young Japanese-Latina woman. She discovers that brutal bar-fighting relieves her stress and she begins a dangerous dual existence - obedient and accommodating by day and brawling by night.
The boat people
Bala, Sharon, author
2018
When a rusty cargo ship carrying Mahindan and five hundred fellow refugees from Sri Lanka's bloody civil war reaches Vancouver's shores, the young father thinks he and his six-year-old son can finally start a new life. Instead, the group is thrown into a detention processing center, with government officials and news headlines speculating that among the "boat people" are members of a separatist militant organization responsible for countless suicide attacks--and that these terrorists now pose a threat to Canada's national security. As the refugees become subject to heavy interrogation, Mahindan begins to fear that a desperate act taken in Sri Lanka to fund their escape may now jeopardize his and his son's chance for asylum. Told through the alternating perspectives of Mahindan; his lawyer, Priya, a second-generation Sri Lankan Canadian who reluctantly represents the refugees; and Grace, a third-generation Japanese Canadian adjudicator who must decide Mahindan's fate as evidence mounts against him.
Chop suey nation : the Legion Cafe and other stories from Canada's Chinese restaurants
Hui, Ann, 1983- author
2019
Coconut dreams
Mascarenhas, Derek, 1982- author
2019
"Coconut Dreams explores the lives of the Pinto family through seventeen linked short stories. Starting with a ghost story set in Goa, India in the 1950s, the collection shifts to the unique perspectives of two adolescents, Aiden and Ally Pinto. Both first generation Canadians, these siblings tackle their adventures in a predominantly white suburb with innocence, intelligence and a timid foot in two distinct cultures. Derek Mascarenhas takes a fresh look at the world of the new immigrant and the South Asian experience in Canada. In these stories, a daughter questions her father's love at an Ikea grand opening; an aunt remembers a safari-gone-wrong in Kenya; an uncle's unrequited love is confronted at a Goan Association picnic; a boy tests his faith amidst a school-yard brawl; and a childhood love letter is exchanged during the building of a backyard deck. Singularly and collectively, these stories will move the reader with their engaging narratives and authentic voices"-- Provided by publisher.
Dandelion
Liew, Jamie Chai Yun, author.
2022
When Lily was eleven years old, her mother, Swee Hua, walked away from the family, never to be seen or heard from again. Now, as a new mother herself, Lily becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to Swee Hua. She recalls the spring of 1987, growing up in a small British Columbia mining town where there were only a handful of Asian families; Lily's previously stateless father wanted them to blend seamlessly into Canadian life, while her mother, alienated and isolated, longed to return to Brunei. Years later, still affected by Swee Hua's disappearance, Lily's family is nonetheless stubbornly silent to her questioning. But eventually, an old family friend provides a clue that sends Lily to Southeast Asia to find out the truth.
Denison Avenue : a novel
Wong, Christina (Christina M.), author
2023
Bringing together ink artwork and fiction, Denison Avenue by Daniel Innes (illustrations) and Christina Wong (text) follows the elderly Wong Cho Sum, who, living in Toronto's gentrifying Chinatown--Kensington Market, begins to collect bottles and cans after the sudden loss of her husband as a way to fill her days and keep grief and loneliness at bay. In her long walks around the city, Cho Sum meets new friends, confronts classism and racism, and learns how to build a life as a widow in a neighborhood that is being destroyed and rebuilt, leaving elders like her behind. A poignant meditation on loss, aging, gentrification, and the barriers that Chinese Canadian seniors experience in big cities, Denison Avenue beautifully combines visual art, fiction, and the endangered Toisan dialect to create a book that is truly unforgettable.
Do not say we have nothing : a novel
Thien, Madeleine, 1974- author
2016
Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations—those who lived through Mao's Cultural Revolution in the mid-twentieth century; and the children of the survivors, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square in 1989, in one of the most important political moments of the past century. At the centre of this epic tale are enigmatic Sparrow, a genius composer who wishes desperately to create music yet can find truth only in silence; his mother and aunt, Big Mother Knife and Swirl, survivors with captivating singing voices and an unbreakable bond; Sparrow's ethereal cousin Zhuli, daughter of Swirl and storyteller Wen the Dreamer, who as a child witnesses the denunciation of her parents and as a young woman becomes the target of denunciations herself; and headstrong, talented Kai, best friend of Sparrow and Zhuli, and a determinedly successful musician who is a virtuoso at masking his true self until the day he can hide no longer.
Ghost forest : a novel
Fung, Pik-Shuen, author
2021
How do you grieve, if your family doesn't talk about feelings? This is the question the unnamed protagonist of Ghost Forest considers after her father dies. One of the many Hong Kong "astronaut" fathers, he stayed in Hong Kong to work, while the rest of the family immigrated to Vancouver before the 1997 Handover, when the British returned sovereignty over Hong Kong to China. As she revisits memories of her father throughout the years, she struggles with unresolved questions and misunderstandings. Turning to her mother and grandmother for answers, she discovers her own life refracted brightly in theirs.
Help! I'm alive : a novel
Basran, Gurjinder, author
2022
After video footage of Jay's death is shared on social media, a suburban Vancouver community is left to try to make sense of what happened to Jay and whether his death was an accident or a suicide. Help! I'm Alive explores the aftermath through the eyes of four people all suddenly confronted with who they have been and how they should be in the wake of such loss. Jay's former best friend, Ash, wonders what happened to their friendship and questions the relationships he has now; Winona, Jay's troubled girlfriend struggles with guilt and abandonment; Anik, Ash's older brother, is on a search for the meaning of life but hasn't left his basement apartment in months; and Pavan, Ash and Anik's mother, finds Jay's death lays bare all her personal and maternal anxieties.
A history of burning : a novel
Oza, Janika, author
2023
At the turn of the twentieth century, Pirbhai, a teenage boy looking for work, is taken from his village in India to labour on the East African Railway for the British. One day, he makes a desperate choice to ensure his survival that will shadow his family's future for decades to come. As Pirbhai's grandchildren find their way back to each other in exile in Toronto, news arrives that makes each generation question how far they are willing to go, and who they are willing to defy, in order to secure their own place in the world.
My mother, my translator : a memoir
Singh, Jaspreet, 1969- author
2021
In 2008, Jaspreet Singh made a pact with his mother. He would gladly give her the go-ahead to publish her significantly altered translation of a story from his collection, Seventeen Tomatoes, if she promised to write her memoirs. After she died in 2012, he decided to take up the memoir she had started. My Mother, My Translator is a deeply personal exploration of a complex relationship. It is a family history, a work of mourning, a meditation on storytelling and silences, and a reckoning with trauma—the inherited trauma of the 1947 Partition of India and the direct trauma of the November 1984 anti-Sikh violence Singh experienced as a teenager. Tracing the men and especially the women of his family from the 1918 pandemic through the calamitous events of Partition, My Mother, My Translator takes us through Singh’s childhood in Kashmir and with his grandparents in Indian Punjab to his arrival in Canada in 1990 to study the sciences, up to the closing moments of 2020, as he tries to locate new forms of stories for living in a present marked by COVID-19 and climate crisis.
Obasan
Kogawa, Joy
1983
Tells, through the eyes of a child, the moving story of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War.
The story of us
Hernandez, Catherine, 1977- author
2023
Like many overseas Filipino workers, Mary Grace Concepcion has lived a life of sacrifices. When she arrives in Toronto, she must navigate a series of bewildering and careless employers. Then Mary Grace begins caring for Liz, an elderly patient suffering from Alzheimer's disease. While Mary Grace's time with her charge challenges her conservative beliefs, she soon becomes Liz's biggest ally, and the friendship that grows between them will turn out to be just as legendary as Liz's past.
This red line goes straight to your heart : a memoir in halves
Anand, Madhur, 1971- author
2020
An experimental memoir about Partition, immigration, and generational storytelling, This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart weaves together the poetry of memory with the science of embodied trauma, using the imagined voices of the past and the vital authority of the present.
Vi
Thúy, Kim, author
2019
The daughter of an enterprising mother and a wealthy, spoiled father who never had to grow up, Vi was the youngest of their four children and the only girl. They gave her a name that meant "precious, tiny one," destined to be cosseted and protected, the family's little treasure. But the Vietnam War destroys life as they've known it. Vi, along with her mother and brothers, manages to escape--but her father stays behind, leaving a painful void as the rest of the family must make a new life for themselves in Canada. While her family puts down roots, life has different plans for Vi. Taken under the wing of Hà, a worldly family friend, and her diplomat lover, Vi tests personal boundaries and crosses international ones, letting the winds of life buffet her. From Saigon to Montreal, from Suzhou to Boston to the fall of the Berlin Wall, she is witness to the immensity of geography, the intricate fabric of humanity, the complexity of love, the infinite possibilities before her. Ever the quiet observer, somehow Vi must find a way to finally take her place in the world.
We were dreamers : an immigrant superhero origin story
Liu, Simu, 1989- author
2022
The star of Marvel's first Asian superhero film, in this candid, inspiring and relatable memoir, tells his own origin story and how he embarked on a journey that took him far outside of his comfort zone into the world of show business.
The woo-woo : how I survived ice hockey, drug raids, demons, and my crazy Chinese family
Wong, Lindsay, 1987- author
2018
In this jaw-dropping, darkly comedic memoir, a young woman comes of age in a dysfunctional Asian family whose members blamed their woes on ghosts and demons when in fact they should have been on anti-psychotic meds. On one hand a witty and touching memoir about the Asian immigrant experience, and on the other a harrowing and honest depiction of the vagaries of mental illness, The Woo-Woo is a gut-wrenching and beguiling manual for surviving family, and oneself.