A group of Vietnamese refugees in Galveston, Texas interact with a young doctor. They’re all struggling to understand American society.

This autobiographical novel chronicles the story of a singer and her composer husband, from the growth of their passionate relationship in the midst of war to its tragic dissolution in war's aftermath.

Although Mai Nguyen adjusts to her new life in Farmington Connecticut, after being airlifted from Saigon, her mother cannot recover from the losses of her Vietnamese past.

Having traveled thousands of miles, having lost one country and taken on a new one, Butler’s characters struggle to place folktales and festivals, wartime experiences and family traditions, personal relationships and the omnipresent background noise of their new land’s consumer culture in perspective.

Around restaurants and clubs, we meet Ito, a sushi chef who can is haunted by memories of what he left behind in Japan and Mariane, an alcoholic waitress who has her own problematic past.

 

Rei Shimura, a Japanese American antiques dealer living in Tokyo, gets mixed up in the secretive world of manga where people dress up as their favorite characters. One of the characters she encounters is murdered and someone else who may hold information is missing. Her multicultural background lets her get deep inside the Japanese culture though her observations are influenced by her Americanism.

Amateur sleuth Rei Shimura, a young Japanese-American antiques dealer, gets pulled into a murder investigation when her beloved aunt is suspected of killing an unpopular teacher at Tokyo’s School, renowned for its teaching of ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging.

The secret life of a Japanese-American pharmacist in a small town in New York. On the surface a model of propriety and serenity, he is torn by memories of his service in the Japanese army in World War II and the comfort woman he loved and could not save.

Written by a local author, this epic follows the Lal family through the turbulent events of 1941-1947 and takes three generations of characters to Occupied Burma, India, Ireland and England.

Because her mother is dying and her father old, Chiyo, nine, is sold to a wealthy geisha house in Gion where she learns her trade and works it in the 1930s and 1940s.

A struggling filmmaker is overjoyed at a steady job producing a Japanese television show, My American Wife. As she travels the Midwest, she gets an eye-opening look at the meat industry, and plots to launch a subversive attack through her show. Meanwhile, the wife of the Japanese rep learns much from the American families depicted on the show and contemplates her own marriage.

A Japanese couple sends their daughter to America to stay with a cousin who's a poli-sci professor. When she arrives, she falls in love with his white assistant, but World War II starts, and the family is interned with other Japanese Americans.

After returning from internment and trying to get his land back, Kabuo Miyomoto is arrested and tried for the murder of Carl Heine.

Etsuko, a widow living in Seattle’s Japantown, returns to her ancestral home to care for her orphaned nephew, chronicling emotional and humorous moments of her life from 1922-1939 in her diary.

Emi's decision to abandon her son and keep her daughter leads to a series of events that scar and divide the Okada family. Family relations are further stressed by issues of assimilation and culture clash as the second generation is torn between two cultures. Readers see Emi through the eyes of her family members.

Private investigator Lydia Chin and her cohort Bill Smith are hired to find four missing waiters who all worked at a popular dim sum restaurant owned by a Cantonese power broker. Along the way, they see conflict between older Cantonese and the new Fukienese immigrants and uncover illegal aliens, drug running, and suspicious U.S. government activity with Chinese dissidents. The story is told alternately by Lydia and Bill.

A powerful portrait of a woman with complex motivations and strong passions. Told from two perspectives: Madam Mao herself, and a dispassionate third-person narrator. Madam sees herself as a "peacock among hens" as she and her husband propel China toward the Cultural Revolution

Tan masterfully tells the story of three generations of women, beginning at the turn of the 20^th century in a small Chinese village where a bonesetter defies tradition and teaches his daughter everything he knows. The head-strong daughter refuses a marriage proposal, setting in motion a tragic series of events ending in modern San Francisco.

A Chinese American family in San Francisco’s Chinatown must face hostility as it aspires to improve its lot.

In the 1950s, Kai Ting and his family come to San Francisco, but his mother dies shortly thereafter, and his new stepmother wants to erase everything Chinese from his life.

Hope, an English tutor, meets Liang Poyu, a Chinese student, in Berkeley, and although Hope is engaged to someone else, she decides to marry Liang even though mixed marriage is illegal at the beginning of the 20^th century.

This novel captures the frustration of Franklin and Bell, immigrants toiling in a Queens, NY, laundry, the alienation of their rebellious son, and the emptiness and confusion of their daughters. The reader learns much about the characters through their sexual relationships.

The narrator is the youngest daughter of a mismatched couple. Her father (half-Chinese and half Panamanian) arrives in America just in time to be drafted into W. W. II where he impregnates Christa, a tough, German woman. They make a life together in post-war New York where the narrator studies ballet and eventually has her own cross-cultural relationship.

In 1949, four Chinese women flee warfare and settle in San Francisco where they instituted a weekly ritual: gathering—even in the midst of sorrow—to celebrate life, play mah-jongg, and tell stories. When one of the four members of the Joy Luck Club dies after 40 years of meetings, her American-born daughter takes her place, learning some astonishing truths about her mother’s life in China.

When Olivia Yee’s half-sister, Kwan, arrives from China, Olivia’s exasperated by Kwan’s constant questions, fractured English, and yin eyes (her ability to see ghosts).

Amy Tan explores the relationship between mothers and daughters through Winnie, who decides to reveal her past to her American-born daughter, Pearl. She tells of her abandonment by her mother, her war-torn youth, and her brutal first marriage, arranged by her indifferent family.

Growing up during China's Cultural Revolution, Lili endures the pain, oppression, and humiliation of the era when her parents are branded as intellectuals and experiences a growing disaffection and resentment

that come to fruition in 1989 in Tiananmen Square.

 

New York private eye Lydia Chin and her partner help Genna Jing, a rising fashion designer whose debut collection, "Mandarin Plaid," has been stolen. The book is full of interesting characters, including Lydia’s mother, who’s always looking for her future son-in-law.

 

Maggie Li, is an American-born Chinese and a member of the only Chinese family in a Midwestern town. During her youth, she struggles to fit in while other members of her family embrace the materialistic American society. As an adult, she finds she doesn’t quite fit into Chinese culture either.

A woman’s stroke throws her Chinese-American family into chaos. Her daughter, Jenny is married to a white man but feel tremendous loyalty toward (and responsibility for) her mother. Jenny’s opinions often put her at odds with her brother though they help her develop a closer relationship with her aging mother.

Stephen, 17, leaves Hong Kong for Japan to recuperate from tuberculosis just as the Chinese prepare to invade. In a small town, he develops strong relationships.

 

As a beautiful young woman of Malaya, Mei Kwei is charmed by many men who long to be with her, but Mei dreams only of her one true love, a priest who can never reciprocate the feelings she has for him

In these two novels, the Chang family comes to America in the 1960s, eventually making their way to the suburbs where there are better schools. They don’t know how to deal with Mona, who has fully assimilated to American suburbia. She even decides to convert to Judaism and marry a Jewish boy as she comes of age.

 

Christopher Banks, an English boy born in early-20th-century Shanghai, is orphaned at age nine when both his mother and father disappear under suspicious circumstances. He grows up to become a renowned detective, and more than 20 years later, returns to Shanghai to solve the mystery of the disappearances.

This collection of independent stories features realistic, quirky characters. The title story is a portrait of an older, Chinese-American woman dealing with her granddaughter’s biracial identity and her own feelings of warmth toward her daughter’s mother-in-law