Kristin T. Lee | 李天慧 | Book Lover | Writer

Given the glorious depth of incredible Asian American literature we have access to these days, it puzzles me when I see readers perpetually reaching for selections that reinforce stereotypes, play into tired tropes, or rehash overdone narratives. (And then they complain about being bored!) There is nothing wrong with reaching for books with familiar themes, but every once in a while, you might be richly rewarded by breaking out of your comfort zone. To help you do that, here are 9 of my picks. Please share or repost if you’d like—these authors all deserve more readers. What would you add? P.S. You can expand your appreciation of Asian & diasporic Asian literature by joining the #ReadAsianAuthors2026 challenge, if you’d like, saved in my highlights – it’s a simple framework that will push you to seek books with intention.

✨ Pinching myself… 💫 When I set out to write my book, I wasn’t sure if it’d ever see the light of day. Once it started heading down the publication route, I committed to evaluating the book’s “success” solely on whether it helps one person feel less alienated from God. I never imagined that it would be taken seriously, reviewed positively, or given a starred review from @publisherswkly …and then included in the top 10 religion & spirituality titles for the season, alongside a posthumous collection of essays written by my hero Rachel Held Evans. (Honestly, if you read only one book on faith this year, read hers). Thank you to Jevon Bolden @emboldenmediagroup , Valerie Weaver-Zercher, Rachel Sammons, and the entire @broadleafbooks team for taking a chance on me and shepherding this book into the public eye. If that little star helps convince one person to read WE MEND WITH GOLD who then experiences healing or hope through it, what a gift. Thank you, Publishers Weekly! And thank you, Bookstagram community, for being the best cheering squad a debut author could hope for. If you think of any friends who might find this book to be a refreshing companion, please do spread the word! With a full heart, Kristin

NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 2025 What a dream! Sincerest gratitude to the @nationalbookfoundation for inviting me to the NBA ceremony and afterparty and for putting on an incredible event showcasing this nation’s literary talent. I had many surreal moments meeting several of my favorite authors, but the best part? Getting to hang out with kindred spirits—book friends whom I’ve developed deep affection for over the years, but have never met IRL, until now. Special shoutout to my fellow press crew: @bernie.lombardi who I already knew was thoughtful and erudite, but who is also extremely kind; @booknerdkat whose organization of the AAPI Bookstagram Tour for many years has fostered genuine connection; and @shelfbyshelf whose humor and vulnerability is even more charming in person. My goal is to get their works-in-progress into your hands by 2027. Literary agents, now is your opportunity! During the afterparty, I congratulated @oelakkad on his NBA nonfiction win for the must-read ONE DAY, EVERYONE WILL HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AGAINST THIS and gave hugs to @megha.maj whose A GUARDIAN AND A THIEF is a fan favorite. I got to thank @chanel_miller and @mychal3ts in person for making the world a better place with their presence, while @knguyen (author of the thought-provoking MY DOCUMENTS) flagged me down to chat, which made me so happy. We found @crystalhanak hanging out with @cathylinhche and @king_nk —such beautiful community and friendship among authors. I had no idea that George Saunders (author of an all-time fave, LINCOLN IN THE BARDO) would be so approachable and sweet. Sharing the dance floor with him and @king_nk (doing the Cupid Shuffle, no less) rank among my most unbelievable memories. Earlier in the day, the truly lovely @christophermetts and @matthewsciarappa hosted a group of bookstagrammers for a tour of @prhaudio @aaknopf @doubledaybooks @pantheonbooks @ireadvintage at Penguin Random House HQ. Thank you for your hospitality and generosity—I loved learning more about the behind-the-scenes work of publishing. So very grateful. Now off to read WE ARE GREEN AND TREMBLING and THE INTENTIONS OF THUNDER after the authors’ powerful speeches!

🏡 Weekend vibes… 🏠 The first phase of my little book tour is over, and I’ll be enjoying a weekend doing nothing (i.e. being on call, cleaning the house, and spending as much time with the kids as my t(w)eens will let me). I’m still in the middle of my two May group reads, ANOTHER COUNTRY for #Baldwin2026 and Leila Chudori’s HOME for #AsianClassicsReadAlong. Both are heavy in different ways but also compulsively readable, so my weekend reading plans are set! Here’s what I read this week: 📱 TRANSCRIPTION | Ben Lerner | ty @fsgbooks : This little novel shouldn’t have worked for me, but I loved it. I enjoyed how Lerner plays with memory and technology, but what really won me over was the last third about parenting travails in our world today. 🇲🇽 EATING ASHES | Brenda Navarro, tr. Megan McDowell | ty @liverightbooks : A super voicey (complimentary) novel about a working-class family of migrants from Mexico to Spain, told from the POV of the older sister after her younger brother dies of suicide. Fiery in all the honest ways. ✍️ ON WITNESS AND REPAIR | Jesmyn Ward | ty @scribnerbooks : Collected essays from Ward, including a few speeches, introductions she’s written to other authors’ books, and previously published essays. I’d read a couple of the essays before, but having Ward’s voice brought together in this volume worked well. She’s a treasure. 💻 EMPIRE OF AI: DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES IN SAM ALTMAN’S OPENAI | Karen Hao: This book included more convoluted details about OpenAI than I ever wanted to know and somehow also left me feeling like I still don’t understand the big picture? The highlight was Hao’s reporting on the environmental and human costs of data centers globally—so troubling. What are you reading or doing this weekend?

✨ Two books that grapple with history ✨ THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS by Rebecca Skloot (#gifted ty @crownpublishing ) is a bestselling phenomenon for good reason. The daughter of tobacco sharecroppers, Lacks was diagnosed at the age of 30 with an aggressive form of cervical cancer that took her life eight months later in 1951. Unbeknownst to Lacks, the cells removed during the biopsy process were cultured by researchers to create the first immortalized human cell line. Known as HeLa cells, they have become the bedrock for important medical research—but her family wasn’t informed of their existence until decades later. Skloot makes the scientific dimensions as well as the personal lives of Lacks and her family completely captivating. It’s a complex tale of research ethics, scientific history, racial injustice, legal battles, and medical breakthroughs, but ultimately, as Skloot tells it, it’s the story of the effect that Lacks’ death and the subsequent absence of transparency and compensation for the use of her cells had on her family. Skloot gets to know Lacks’s family members well over the course of years of interviews, and this book is as much about their lives and journeys as it is about the HeLa cells. Why is it that biotech companies are getting rich off of Henrietta’s cancer cells, while the family has yet to see a penny? How did Henrietta’s name become public when it should have been kept confidential? These are just two of the questions Skloot digs into in this accessible work of reporting; medical professionals and scientists will find the story especially thought-provoking. YONDER COME DAY: EXPLORING THE COLLECTIVE WITNESS OF THE FORMERLY ENSLAVED by Jasmine L. Holmes (#gifted ty @bakerbooks ) is a unique approach to historical retelling. Based on her research of the 3,000 interviews of formerly enslaved people conducted as part of a federal WPA project during the Great Depression, Holmes makes this trove digestible—and interprets it through her historian’s lens, listening for the ways white interviewers prodded interviewees to recall enslavement in a positive light, or how interviewees hedged their answers. (Continued in the comments)

As its subtitle suggests, James Baldwin’s NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME: MORE NOTES OF A NATIVE SON (#gifted ty @everymanslibrary ) picks up where his prior essay collection, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, leaves off. Published in 1961, six years after NOTES, NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME goes further into Baldwin’s reflections on American racism, the ghettoization of Black neighborhoods, segregation, the North versus the South, Europe, and his ongoing (contentious) engagement with other writers’ work, including William Faulkner, Richard Wright, and Norman Mailer. The specificity with which Baldwin observes and critiques the world around him makes the book seem like a time capsule, especially “Princes and Powers,” which is a 40-page play-by-play summary of the very global 1956 Conference of Negro African Writers and Artists (surprisingly, I ended up loving this peek into the leading intellectuals of Baldwin’s day as well as their squabbles and passions). Yet even though some of Baldwin’s considerations are very rooted in his moment in time (such as his reporting on the sole Black teenager at an all-white high school during the early days of integration in “A Fly in the Buttermilk”), his descriptions and prescriptions still ring true for so many of the situations we find ourselves in today. As I read the book, I wondered at how Baldwin found the courage to speak out with such vehemence and also against revered darlings of American literature. His stances and rhetoric decrying the deeply entrenched racism of both the North and the South must have generated significant backlash. I need to read Nicholas Boggs’ biography of Baldwin because I’m curious who his friends and community were who shored him up in psychologically trying times. I wanted to let Baldwin’s words speak for themselves, so I wrote out some of my favorite quotes in the carousel above. Which is your favorite? Thanks to the #Baldwin2026 crew for reading along and contributing insights! Lmk if you want to join us for ANOTHER COUNTRY this month!

Is it too early to call JOHN OF JOHN by Douglas Stuart (#gifted ty @groveatlantic ) the book of 2026? Probably, but I bet it will be sweeping readers off their feet for the rest of the year. I went into the book with high expectations, both because I loved Stuart’s SHUGGIE BAIN and also because of early praise from readers I trust. It’s all that and more! Stuart takes us into the world of Cal (John-Calum Macleod) as his father John calls him back to his island home of Harris in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Cal’s barely making ends meet after graduating from art school, so he doesn’t put up much resistance to leaving Edinburgh when he hears that his maternal grandmother, Ella, has taken ill and needs care. But the clashes with his father start almost immediately: over Cal’s hairstyle, his ripped jeans, and his lack of a woman or a job. The confines of their tight-knit, Calvinist community (they lock up playground equipment on Sundays so children can’t use it) chafe at Cal, who can’t imagine ever being honest with his dad about his queerness. But while his neighbors can be harshly judgmental, they also offer one another care and support. The tender layers and abundant secrets of this story unfold with perfect pacing as Stuart takes us through windswept seascapes, the communal nature of crofting, the Gaelic language, lambing, the meticulous eye for colors learned through decades of hand-weaving, and desire—for belonging, for love, for something beyond the small lives on the isles. I found myself falling in love with the characters, with the landscape, and with the prose. This is the kind of novel that reminds me of the simple pleasure of reading pre-bookstagram. So in that spirit, all I’ll say is that I never wanted to leave these pages, and I hope you find your way to them if you haven’t already! P.S. If you find yourself in a book hangover after JOHN OF JOHN, do yourself a favor and pick up CLEAR by Carys Davies!

ANGEL DOWN by Daniel Kraus won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction last Tuesday so of course I had to read it *immediately* 😂. There’s a lot about the novel that isn’t personally appealing: I wouldn’t normally reach for yet another WWI book; there’s a frenetic maximalist energy to the prose that is the opposite of what I usually love in literature; it’s extremely masculine and graphically violent; the conceit of a single sentence can bludgeon me to exhaustion (I’m looking at you, HERSCHT 07769 and DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT). But I went in with an open mind, because I love being surprised. Private Cyril Bagger has scammed his way through life and war, trying his best to get relegated to grave-digging duty to avoid the danger of the front lines, but one day, his number is up. Along with four other men, he’s chosen to “take care” of a wounded soldier shrieking his head off in No Man’s Land, but when they finally find the shrieker, it turns out to be an angel—who subsequently saves their lives. But having this angel in their midst brings out the worst, most conniving parts of these men. A power struggle ensues as each tries to fully possess the angel for his own selfish ends. I found this middle part pretty unpleasant; you could even call it a slog. The unrelenting carnage, depravity, and violence was a *lot*. I listened to the audiobook, and while that was a helpful format to get into the cadence of the single sentence, the narration contributed to my sense of anxious exhaustion (it was a lot of, um, dominant culture energy). If you like novels like Joseph Heller’s CATCH-22 or Samuel Shem’s HOUSE OF GOD, I think you can withstand this. If you can get through the middle, Kraus finesses the ending so skillfully, revealing how the structure and form are integral to the entire project of the novel. It’s an anti-war war novel, a novel that confronts the absolute brutality of life yet contends that life is still worthwhile. It’s a novel that will drag you to the depths of the hell humanity has made for itself but then remind you of the possibility of beauty, despite it all. I don’t know if I’m fully convinced, but I want to be.

🌷 Weekend vibes… 🌷 The big book news this week was the announcement of the Pulitzer Prizes, and the nonfiction category winners and finalists included many I’ve loved: Yiyun Li’s THINGS IN NATURE MERELY GROW, Brian Goldstone’s THERE IS NO PLACE FOR US, Kevin Sack’s MOTHER EMANUEL, Hala Alyan’s I’LL TELL YOU WHEN I’M HOME. I was intrigued by the trio of fiction picks—I’d read Katie Kitamura’s AUDITION (ambivalent) and Torrey Peter’s STAG DANCE (loved), but had heard little about the winner, Daniel Kraus’ ANGEL DOWN. So of course I had to pick it up! But first…I want to know what you thought of the Pulitzer picks! Satisfied? Surprised? Sad that they missed your favorite? Tell me! Here’s what I read this week: 🪽 ANGEL DOWN | Daniel Kraus: Thanks to a lucky skip-the-line @libby.app audiobook, I listened to this Pulitzer winner right after it was crowned. More to come, but for now I’ll say I get why it was picked. It’s set in the trenches of the Great War, following Private Cyril Bagger, a conman who tries as much as possible to shirk his duties. Kraus uses form (a single sentence) as well as plot to make us confront our unending bloodlust. It’s frenetic and gory and Kraus pulls off a surreal anti-war war novel. But I don’t think you need to drop everything else to read this. 🧡 JOHN OF JOHN | Douglas Stuart | ty @groveatlantic : In the last quarter of this book and I don’t want it to ever end. It’s magnificent. I had forgotten how Stuart’s prose is so deliciously immersive, transporting me to the Outer Hebrides and an isolated community contending with modernity, along with a son and a father contending with their own transgressiveness. LOVE 😍! 🇮🇩 HOME | Leila Chudori: Reading this tale of Indonesia and political exiles forced out of the country by Suharto’s regime after the 1965 massacre of presumed communist sympathizers with the #AsianClassicsReadAlong crew and my co-host, @obsessivelybookishjojo . I know so little about the fourth most populous country in the world! It’s a compulsively readable book, and I’m enjoying the sensory details. ⚠️ SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER: Review posted! What are you reading or doing this weekend?

Happy Pub Week to SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER by Vincent Yu (#gifted ty @flatiron_books @netgalley ), a novel with my favorite kind of structure—interconnected short stories that form a cohesive whole. One morning, the residents of a small town in western Massachusetts receive a phone alert warning them of an imminent ballistic missile attack. Everyone reacts differently, but their instincts are laid bare. Eighteen minutes later, though, they receive a second message clarifying that it was all a false alarm. Yu gives us snapshots of nine characters whose lives are knocked off-kilter during those eighteen minutes. Each story develops naturally and compellingly, deftly conveying the characters’ distinct personalities and foibles while taking them through crucible moments that result in emotional transformation. The characters have to confront an image of themselves—or of their loved ones—that they might rather not face. There’s parent-child recriminations, marriage trouble, heartbreak, addiction, and illness. There are moments of heroism and cowardice. The organic material of life, rendered with vivid realism, distilled to the piercing core. I love how the structure allows readers to revisit earlier characters through other POVs. Also, the ballistic missile alert occurs at different points in each story, sometimes at the very beginning and sometimes at the very end, thus lending different shapes and timelines to the narratives—the architecture is genius, and expertly deployed. There’s only a couple of times when Yu veers so hard into Asian American stereotypes that I raised an eyebrow, but all was absolved given the overall creativity and gratifying endings. I’d recommend this to readers of Ben Shattuck’s THE HISTORY OF SOUND and Alina Grabowski’s WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST, not just because those are also books of Massachusetts-based/adjacent interconnected short stories, but also due to the dynamic writing and tender humanity. The audiobook, narrated by Katharine Chin, was a wonderful listen. Have you heard of SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER yet? I hope more people pick it up!

Minnesota friends! I’m coming out your way this Sunday, May 10th, and I would love to see you all! I’m so thankful to @meetinghousechurch for hosting me; it is a special community that I can’t wait to meet in person. I’ll be in conversation with Pastor Meghan DeJong during the church service at 10 AM, followed by a book talk at 11:30 AM. RSVP ahead of time (link in bio) if you can since Meetinghouse is generously providing a light lunch. We will talk about ethnic identity and faith, wholeness and reintegration, fractures and solidarity, and anything else your questions bring up. Spread the word to your friends in the Twin Cities—I am very excited to be back in the Midwest, which has my heart!

Last night, I had the joy of attending M Lin’s book talk @brooklinebooksmith to talk about her recent debut, THE MEMORY MUSEUM (review posted). She was in conversation with @shubhasunder , and it was fascinating to hear how their journeys as immigrant writers from ‘big cities in Asia’ (Bangalore for Sunder, Beijing for Lin) has influenced their sense of identity, language, and home. Some favorite takeaways: ☆ Other art forms have played a big role in M’s life, from music to filmmaking (she went to film school!). The first story, “Scenes from Childhood,” directly borrows its subheadings from Schumann’s composition of the same name. Her musical training influences how she hears writing as well, in terms of tempo and rests, punctuation and flow. ☆ M shared a story of a visit to Boston’s MFA where she experienced an exhibit on the American potter David Drake, who was enslaved for most of his life but worked in a pottery-making business. He inscribed his stoneware jugs with lines of poetry at a time when reading and writing were illegal for enslaved people. This was where M encountered the concept of joy as resistance. Of the last story, she said, “If we can’t imagine it, we can’t build it.” ☆ “Writing in English is really liberating,” M said, because growing up in China, there were restrictions on what could be said aloud without consequences. They underwent patriotic education in school, and even now she finds it hard to allow herself to express certain things in Chinese. Yet unlike Yiyun Li, who once wrote, “It is hard to feel in an adopted language, yet it is impossible in my native language,” M said that she has never cried reading poetry in English, but she has cried reading poetry in Chinese. ☆ Memory is a central concept in the book because “a lot of individual and collective memories are being erased” in China ☆ M said that she writes “as a way to understand things that I don’t understand,” such as disagreeable viewpoints It was so lovely to meet M in person (and check out this cute tote she gifted me!). I’ve already bought THE MEMORY MUSEUM for a friend, which is another way to say I LOVED it and think everyone should read it!