AANHPI Month Contemporary Sampler

 

My Thoughts:

As an English teacher who teachers other teacher candidates to become English teachers, the running question for them has been around the "canon"less classroom and how to diversify your bookshelf to create more "mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors" (Rudine Sims Bishop). Then I Zoomed into a Nebraska Writing Project advanced summer institute with teachers who were all from Nebraska. The majority of their population are white students. The teachers are white. Their canonical reads are: Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger; To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee; The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald. Diversity in the book choices becomes a job risk for these teachers and so I'm not sure how much they are reading if they cannot bring in new materials. 

I am sad about that, but I am also doubling down on my quest to read YA that is mostly made up of diverse authors writing about experiences that showcase mirrors of themselves. In fact, this has made me more committed to ONLY reading BIPOC and Indigenous authors who are writing not about their own ethnicity/culture, but writing THROUGH their own ethnicity/culture. The difference is this. The inner city black, police brutality, violent, gang banger, single mom story, is not the only story. Off the top of my head, my favorite black female character in a science fiction book is not American, nor is shie from the inner city -- Binti  and the following two novellas by Nnedi Okorafor. 

Finding the right kind of readings for my commitment to diverse authors means that I need to read more of these types of books. This one is from the Penguin Young Readers Group, one of my favorite YA publishers. They know how to bring in the authors that make a difference. Unfortunately for me, I have to wait for the one month a year when the AAPI books are in the forefront. For the rest of the time, I just have to follow authors and keep up with their IG accounts. 

It helps that this book starts with Adib Khorram's The Breakup Lists. As the author of Darius the Great is Not Okay, we know we are going to get lots of voice. Mr. Khorram's characters are immediately likeable. This is immediately going on my TBR list because I want so badly for Jackson Ghasnavi to get the boy. 

From the Publisher:

This sampler includes the following titles:

The Breakup Lists by Adib Khorram
Love is more complicated than “boy meets boy” in bestselling author Adib Khorram’s sharply funny new romantic comedy, set in the sordid world of high school theater.

Just Another Epic Love Poem by Parisa Akhbari
Best friendship blossoms into something more in this gorgeously written queer literary romance.

Not Your Average Jo by Grace K. Shim
From the author of The Noh Family, a second standalone YA novel that follows a Korean American teen as she navigates the treacherous world of nepo babies and cultural appropriation that is the Los Angeles music scene.

Rules for Rule Breaking by Talia Tucker
Booksmart meets Never Have I Ever in this debut YA rom-com about two Korean American teens forced into a shared college visit road trip where they discover that the reasons they’ve been rivals their entire lives might actually be signs they’re a perfect pair.

Wish You Weren't Here by Erin Baldwin
A sapphic summer romance filled with plenty of enemies-to-lovers sparks and swoony moments.