AAAS 2026 Book Award Winners

We are pleased to announce that the AAAS Book Awards Committee and its panel of jurors has officially completed adjudicating the nominations for the 2026 book awards cycle. We are very grateful  to the AAAS staff for facilitating the nomination process and publicity.

We extend our deep appreciation  to our exemplary judges who reviewed dozens of submissions within a 6-month period. The AAAS Book Awards are only possible through the active participation and volunteerism of members, as well as presses and authors. 

The AAAS Book Awards is an opportunity for the author’s work  to be publicly honored as exceptional and deserving of special recognition. It’s also a process that allows our association to deeply appreciate the years of research, writing, analyzing, and theorizing infused in the projects represented. The books nominated prove the vibrancy of Asian American studies scholarship and writing, and the field’s indispensable contribution to understandings of everyday survival, world-historic change, planetary struggle, axes of solidarity, and much more. 

To all those nominated: Thank you for the work and giving the process such depth. To the awardees: Congratulations and we look forward to honoring you and celebrating your accomplishments in Hawai’i!

Chair:
Shalini Shankar (Northwestern University)

Members:
James Zarsadiaz (University of San Francisco)
Eric  (Asian American Music)

2026 AAAS BOOK AWARDS WINNERS

Creative Writing: Poetry

• OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION: Ward Toward by Cindy Juyoung Ok
• HONORABLE MENTION: Asterism by Ae Hee Lee

Creative Writing: Prose

• OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION: The Spoiled Heart by Sunjeev Sahota
• HONORABLE MENTION: The Tree Doctor by Marie Mutsuki Mockett

History

• OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION: The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History by Diego Luis
• OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION: Settler Millitarism: World War II in Hawai’i and the Making of US Empire by Nebolon
• HONORABLE MENTION: The First Amerasians: Mixed Race Koreans from Camptowns to America by Yuri Doolan

Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary Work

• OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION: All of Us or None by Monisha Das Gupta
• OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION: dear elia: Letters from the Asian American Abyss by Mimi Khuc
• HONORABLE MENTION: The Promise of Beauty by Mimi Nguyen

Literary Studies

• OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION: Worlds At The End: Los Angeles, Infrastructure, and the Apocalyptic Imagination by Pacharee Sudhinaraset
• HONORABLE MENTION: Flexible India: Yoga’s Cultural and Political Tensions by Shameem Black
• HONORABLE MENTION: Asian American Fiction after 1965 by Christopher T. Fan

Media, Performance, and Visual Studies

• OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION: The Movies of Racial Childhoods by Celine Parreñas Shimizu
• HONORABLE MENTION: To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong’s Cross-Media World by Yiman Wang

Social Sciences

• OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION: Insurgent Communities: How Protests Create a Filipino Diaspora by Sharon Quinsaat
• OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION:  Indians on Indian Lands: Intersections of Race, Caste, and Indigeneity by Nishant Upadhyay
• HONORABLE MENTION: Caring for Caregivers: Filipina Migrant Workers and Community Building During Crisis by Valerie Francisco-Menchavez

Read full citations for award winners and honorable mentions.