Spending all of Christmas Day reading and drinking hot chocolate for a book lover sounds like the best day ever.
After a long year of navigating the world and opening up to social activities again, a lovely retreat under a warm blanket with a good book sounds like a perfect gift for a friend, loved one, or yourself.
This holiday gift guide for AAPI books features some of the best Asian novels to read this holiday season. Make a Christmas lantern with your kids, escape into a Thai-inspired high-seas adventure, or learn about a family’s intergenerational story of survival. Discover books from different genres to age groups, there are recommendations for everybody in our holiday gift guide for AAPI books.
You can send this holiday gift guide for AAPI books to someone who needs gift-giving inspiration, too!
Maya and her Christmas Lantern by Maria Reynolds
This beautifully illustrated children’s book features Maya and her parol, a Filipino Christmas lantern. If your kids enjoyed Disney’s Christmas Advert, From Our Family to Yours (2020), which featured Filipino parols, they would love this book from Filipino-Canadian author Maria Reynolds.
A parol is usually created with bamboo and Japanese paper and commonly shaped like a star. Since crafting is a great family activity during the holidays, you could pair this book with lantern-making materials. Create a lantern with your little recipient along with a story time.
Buy: Maya and her Christmas Lantern
Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor by Xiran Jay Zhao
This middle-grade fantasy book is great for a gamer. The story follows a Chinese boy named Zachary, born and raised in the United States. He is destined to host the spirit of the First Emperor of China. Zachary’s quest is to seal the portal to the Chinese underworld. Unfortunately, the First Emperor’s attempt to possess Zack’s body goes wrong, and he binds to Zack’s AR gaming headset instead. Ultimately, this mishap which sets Zack’s epic journey into motion.
The book is through the lens of a character who sometimes isn’t “Chinese enough” in many situations. However, the protagonist crushes triumphs imposter syndrome and gains insightful perspective while learning about one’s heritage as he takes on the world.
Buy:Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor
The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories by Yu Chen, Regina Kanyu Wong
Non-binary and female authors wrote The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories, a translated anthology short stories collection that explores Chinese science fiction and fantasy. Notably, this book takes readers to many destinations. Readers can expect stories from a mountain village where people co-exist with stars, a story-filled nursing home, to a restaurant at the end of the universe, plus many others.
In each short story, you explore the finite of being human in the infinite. More excitingly, you’ll part with existential souvenirs from each destination. You also learn new mythologies, like the difference between a thunder god and a thunder ghost. In five brilliant essays, this book describe what gender and sex mean to a Chinese science fiction or fantasy writer today.
Buy: The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories
Sana by Maria Bolaños
The poems in Sana by Bolaños reach out to those with a complicated relationship with their cultural identity. In quiet strokes, Bolaños invites us to revisit our difficult personal histories through lived experience and loss, history and Filipinx mythology. In the face of loss and oppression, each poem is resilient, resistant, and comforting for many diasporic Filipino/a/x living through similar experiences.
If you have a poetry lover in your life, and want to support a Filipinx indie publisher, Sampaguita Press also has other poetry books available. Moreover, they are home to books such as Handspun Rosaries by Dina Klarisse and the upcoming collection, Pagong Cannot Climb Trees by Butch Schwarzkopf.
Related: 7 books about identity, race by Asian authors for children
Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan
This young adult fantasy novel reinterprets the legend of Chang’e, the Chinese moon goddess. The story follows a young woman, Xingyin’s quest to free her mother, where she must challenge the most powerful immortal in the realm.
Book lovers of the classic YA meet-cute trope will eagerly enjoy Daughter of the Moon Goddess. The relationship adds a fun, light-heartedness that makes the book a coy and effortless read. Xingyin’s celestial adventures and rise to power in the royal army weave Chinese mythology beautifully into this action-packed fantasy.
Buy: Daughter of the Moon Goddess
The Last Mapmaker by Christina Soontornvat
The Last Mapmaker is a middle-grade, high-seas adventure set in a Thai-inspired fantasy world. Sai wishes to break free from familial debt to carve her own path. She is a twelve-year-old girl who serves as an assistant to Mangkon’s most celebrated mapmaker. However, her father is a conman of low status. Sai must keep this a secret, so she can ascend the social ladder. She seeks to break out of the cycle of poverty by joining the mapmaker’s expedition to chart the southern seas.
This book is a small, but mighty story. The Last Mapmaker shares a tale about finding one’s talent and place in the world when faced with life’s uncertainties.
Buy: The Last Mapmaker
Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu
Peach Blossom Spring follows three generations of a Chinese family searching for a place to call home. Folk tales and stories offer solace to Meilin and her son, Renshu, who flee their homes because of war. Meilin tells Renshu stories from a hand-scroll full of ancient fables. After surviving this wartime, the story follows Renshu’s journey in America. Despite Renshu’s daughter’s desire to learn about her history, Renshu struggles to share their complicated family history with her.
This book is steeped in emotional, hard-hitting exchanges due to generational trauma passed down in families. Peach Blossom Spring holds back no punches in presenting how the past still manifests in the present for immigrant families.
Buy: Peach Blossom Spring
Related: 10 Books by Asian Canadian and Asian American women you need to add to your reading list
Antiman by Rajiv Mohabir
Antiman is a hybrid memoir that immerses readers in Rajiv Mohabir’s academic and queer life in the diaspora. The legacy of his ancestors’ Hindu history facinated him. More specifically, Mohabir’s grandmother, Aji, inspired him through her Caribbean Bhojpuri stories and songs. After generations of assimilation and cultural erasure, Rajiv wants to know his origins and where he belongs in the world. On this journey of self-discovery, Mohabir was outed as an “antiman”—a Caribbean slur for men who love men. Due to this, his father and aunts disown him.
An in-depth and often poetic memoir, Antiman examines existential questions when faced with familial rejection due to one’s sexuality.
Buy: Antiman
While these books cover heavy topics, they shed light on issues the AAPI community members face daily. Hopefully, our holiday gift guide for AAPI books can offer some restful contemplation to end the year and inspire meaningful conversations in the new year.
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