8 Memoirs About the Asian Diasporic Experience

Torn between two cultures, Elizabeth Miki Brina reckons with her identity as the daughter of a white American soldier and an Okinawan mother who left everything behind. Speak, Okinawa is a raw, deeply personal meditation on assimilation, inherited trauma, and the complicated love between mother and daughter.

Written in collaboration with her father, My Vietnam, Your Vietnam is a poignant exploration of home, memory, and the generational divide between Vietnamese parents and their diasporic children. Through intertwining narratives—her father’s reflections on war and exile and her own journey of self-discovery—Christina Vo unpacks the complexities of love, loss, and reconciliation with a homeland that is both familiar and foreign.

In this gripping coming-of-age memoir, Ly Tran navigates the tension between the life her refugee parents envisioned for her and the realities of growing up in America. House of Sticks is a powerful story about resilience, filial duty, and the cost of chasing the so-called American dream.

Kat Chow’s lyrical memoir explores grief, memory, and the unspoken histories that shape a family. After losing her mother at a young age, she sifts through the ghosts of her past, uncovering what it means to be tethered to a homeland she never knew. Seeing Ghosts is a stunning meditation on loss and the longing for connection across generations.

T Kira Madden’s coming-of-age memoir is a fierce, unflinching look at growing up queer, biracial, and searching for belonging in a world that often refuses to make space. With poetic prose and aching honesty, Madden explores family, girlhood, and the found communities that help us survive.

A hauntingly beautiful memoir about growing up undocumented, Beautiful Country follows Qian Julie Wang’s childhood in 1990s New York, where she learns to navigate a life filled with both possibility and fear. This poignant story of survival, identity, and resilience sheds light on the hidden struggles of immigrant families striving for a better future.

Part memoir, part culinary road trip, Chop Suey Nation unpacks the hidden histories behind small-town Chinese restaurants across Canada. As Ann Hui traces the immigrant journey of her own family, she uncovers a story of perseverance, adaptation, and the ways food becomes both survival and storytelling for the diasporic experience.

Born to Korean parents and adopted by a white family, Nicole Chung grew up yearning for a sense of belonging. All You Can Ever Know is a moving exploration of transracial adoption, identity, and the search for truth in the stories we tell ourselves about family.