Happy Asian Heritage Month! We’re heralding in this perfect reason to celebrate Asian-Canadian writing with a look at six fiction books: continue on to see the new and (perhaps) new-to-you reads we picked.
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ALU Editor
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Each week during Asian Heritage Month we’ll be serving up recommendations of Asian-Canadian writing from both rising and established literary stars – a great way to add talents new and old to your bookshelf.The book: The Sweetest One (Cormorant Books)The author: Melanie MahWhy you should read it: Melanie Mah’s debut novel The Sweetest One won the 2017 Trillium Book Award for its tender and humorous portrayal of a Chinese-Canadian family in a small Albertan town. The jury cited: “Mah’s work is exciting and exacting and precisely what was missing from CanLit.” (Plus, the ebook edition is an accessible ebook for Everyone!)The book: Where the Silver River Ends (Invisible Publishing)The author: Anna QuonWhy you should read it: Of mixed-race heritage herself, Anna Quon writes into life the character of Joan, a half-Chinese teacher in Slovakia, where she forms a found family of sorts with a Roma teenager and a woman grieving the loss of her mother. Booklist calls it “[A] thoughtful novel tackling the timeless question of whether fate is in our stars or ourselves.”The book: Chorus of Mushrooms (NeWest Press)The author: Hiromi GotoWhy you should read it: First published nearly 30 years ago, Hiromi Goto’s Chorus of Mushrooms remains a mainstay of feminist and modern-day immigrant literature in Canada. The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize-winning novel follows three generations of Japanese-Canadian women living in rural Alberta, each with their own complicated relationships to their cultures both innate and inherited. The book: Hands Like Trees (Ronsdale Press)The author: Sabyasachi NagWhy you should read it: Sabyasachi Nag’s “story cycle” Hands Like Trees finds the Sen family of Shulut at various points and places in their lives: from a perilous train ride through the Himalayas to frostbitten suburban Brampton to an early morning in Calcutta. Nag’s expert writing has been hailed by George Elliott Clarke as “Arundhati Roy as if written in the mode of Alice Munro.”The book: Face (Touchwood Editions)The author: Jaspreet SinghWhy you should read it: Jaspreet Singh is a talented poet and memoirist, and his fiction is no exception; Face features poetic turns of phrase as well as a firm grounding in climate science as it links two women who meet by chance in a Calgary writing workshop. For its release season of spring 2022, Face was named a Work of Canadian Fiction to Watch by CBC Books. The book: Denison Avenue (ECW Press)The author: Christina Wong, illustrated by Daniel InnesWhy you should read it: The just-released Denison Avenue – a collaboration between writer Christina Wong and artist Daniel Innes – is an elegiac story of loss and gentrification as the recently-widowed Wong Cho Sum begins to collect cans and bottles as a way to offset her grief. We see her learn to live alone in a neighbourhood that is increasingly hostile to its oldest residents. The New York Journal of Books says: “As Chinatowns all over the country become gentrified and disappear, Denison Avenue provides an important reminder of what is being lost.”
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What book are you most looking forward to picking up this Asian Heritage Month? Let us know in the comments or on social media @alllitupcanada.
