2026 AANHPI Heritage Month Book Display

May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month! 

Celebrate Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month with the Asian American Studies Program by checking out our book display in the basement of Wilson Library near the entrance to the Tutoring and Academic Success Center (TASC) space and additional text recommendations below. 

What does AANHPI mean?

AANHPI stands for “Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander”, a broad umbrella term for communities descended from the continent of Asia and the Pacific Islands regions of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. While there are some shared histories and racializations, this term and similar terms may not fully capture the diverse identities and experiences of the people included. 

How did AANHPI Heritage Month get started?

• 1970s: Jeannie Jew, a staffer on Capitol Hill and descendant of Chinese-American railroad workers, proposed a month-long commemoration for Asian and Pacific Americans and their contributions to U.S. Jew worked with community organizations and legislators to build support for the bill.  
• 1977: Representatives Frank Horton (NY) and Norman Mineta (CA) introduced House Joint Resolution 540 to proclaim the first 10 days of May to commemorate Asian Americans.
• 1977: Senators Daniel Inouye (HI) and Spark Matsunaga (HI) introduced Senate Joint Resolution 72 to similarly commemorate Asian American and Pacific Islanders in the U.S.
• 1978: After the first two resolutions failed to pass, Representative Frank Horton introduced House Joint Resolution 1007, which passed and was signed by President Jimmy Carter on October 5, 1978 (Public Law 95-419). 
• 1990: Congress passed Public Law 101-283 extending the week-long commemoration to a month. 
• 1992: Congress passed Public Law 102-450 to officially name May as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month.

“The month of May was chosen to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese to the United States on May 7, 1843, and to mark the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869. The majority of the workers who laid the tracks were Chinese immigrants.” -Asian/Pacific Heritage Month Website

Selected books to celebrate AANHPI Heritage Month: 

Selected historical and scholarly texts: 

Book Cover	Book Title	Author(s)
	Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People	Helen Zia
	Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics	Lisa Lowe
	We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future	Deepa Iyer
	War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work	Cathy J. Schlund-Vials
	Unsettled: Cambodian Americas in the NYC Hyperghetto	Eric Tang
	Pedagogies of Woundedness: Illness, Memoir, and the Ends of the Model Minority	James Kyung-Jin Lee
	Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans	Ronald Takaki
	Dismembering Lāhui: A History of the Hawaiian Nation to 1887	Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwoʻole Osorio
	Asian American Histories of the United States	Catherine Ceniza Choy:

Selected creative texts: 

Book Cover	Book Title	Author(s)
	No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies	Julian Aguon
	Everything I Never Told You	Celeste Ng
	A Thread of Sky	Deanna Fei
	Whidbey: A Novel	T Kira Māhealani Madden
	On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous	Ocean Vuong
	Ask the Brindled	No'u Revilla
	Dictee	Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha
	More Than Organs	Kay Ulanday Barrett
	If They Come For Us: Poems	Fatimah Asghar
	from unincorporated territory [lukao]	Craig Santos Perez
	O.B.B. aka The Original Brown Boy	Paolo Javier
	Afterland	Mai Der Vang
	Monstress: Stories	Lysley A. Tenorio
	Every Drop is a Man's Nightmare	Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
	Spellbound: A Graphic Memoir	Bishakh Som
	Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home	Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
	Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning	Cathy Park Hong

Selected texts by writers and artists local to the Twin Cities: 

Book Cover	Book Title	Author(s)
	The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir	Kao Kalia Yang
	Skirt Full of Black: Poems	Sun Yung Shin
	Frogtown: Photographs and Conversations in an Urban Neighborhood	Wing Young Huie
	Real Karaoke People: Poems and Prose	Ed Bok Lee
	Sông I Sing: Poems	Bao Phi
	Before We Remember We Dream	Bryan Thao Worra

Selected texts by Asian American Studies faculty and alumni:

Book Cover	Book Title	Author(s)
	Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage	Josephine Lee
	Q & A: Voices from Queer Asian North America (2021)	Edited by Martin F. Manalansan, Alice Y. Hom, and Kale B. Fajardo
	Asian American Plays for a New Generation	Edited by Josephine Lee, Don Eitel, and Rick Shiomi
	Brotherless Night	V. V. Ganeshananthan
	The Making of Asian America: A History	Erika Lee
	Transpacific Antiracism: Afro-Asian Solidarity in 20th-Century Black America, Japan, and Okinawa	Yuichiro Onishi
	Filipino Crosscurrents: Oceanographies of Seafaring, Masculinities, and Globalization	Kale B. Fajardo
	Dreams of the Hmong Kingdom: The Quest for Legitimation in French Indochina, 1850-1960	Mai Na M. Lee
	Queering the Hmong Diaspora: Racial Subjectivity and the Myth of Hyperheterosexuality	Kong Pheng Pha
	Listeners Like Who? Exclusion & Resistance in the Public Radio Industry	Laura Garbes

Selected children's and young adults texts:

Book Cover	Book Title	Author(s) & Illustrator(s)
	13 Months in Malesso'	Dolores Barcinas Santos, Jessica Perez-Jackson (illustrator)
	A Different Pond	Bao Phi, Thi Bui (illustrator)
	Kahoʻolawe: The True Story of an Island and Her People	Kamalani Hurley, Harinani Orme (illustrator)
	Punky Aloha	Shar Tuiasoa
	I am Golden	Eva Chen, Sophie Diao (illustrator)
	Amina's Song	Hena Khan
	Displacement	Kiku Hughes
	Just Happy to Be Here	Naomi Kanakia
	Rani Patel in Full Effect	Sonia Patel