Reading List – February – 2026

Our monthly newsletter shares notices of new book publications that our members email us about. If you or someone whose permission you have has had a book published within the past 12 months, please share the title, subject or (inter)disciplinary area(s), and link in this form, and we will share it with members.

Supporting Asian American Students in Multicultural Contexts: Language, Culture, Identity and Power in the US | Chaehyun Lee
This book helps classroom teachers and educational leaders to support Asian American students in a variety of school settings, exploring their dual language use, literacy development and multifaceted identity (re)construction. Contributing to the fields of multi/plurilingual and multi/pluricultural education, it synthesizes key philosophical concepts, theories and perspectives that contemporary educators should be familiar with when working with racially, linguistically and culturally diverse student populations.

Speculative Orientalism: Asian Religions in New Wave Science Fiction | Sang-Keun Yoo
Examining the works of prominent New Wave science fiction authors from the 1950-1960s, Sang-Keun Yoo highlights the underexplored connection between American science fiction and Asian religions, such as Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The book considers how the major world wars of the 20th century-Second World War, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War- repositioned Asian culture in relation to the science fiction genre in the period.

Hair: A Lai Mỹ Memoir | by Jade Hidle
A mix of poems, essays, and letters, this memoir testifies to trauma recovery as reparenting our younger selves. It details how various mental illnesses are compounded by histories of racism, from the Vietnam War to the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, this book unveils the shame, guilt, and tragic archetypes shrouding mental health for Vietnamese Americans. With honesty and humor, Hair: A Lai Mỹ Memoir is a story of how breaking cycles is an ongoing process of becoming a daughter and mother. It is a story that tells us that healing is possible.

Mainstreaming Palestine: Cinematic Activism and Solidarity Politics in the United States | Umayyah Cable
For decades, Arab American activists and allies have used film, video, and multimedia to mobilize support for the Palestinian cause in the United States. In this detailed history of cinema’s role within the broader solidarity movement, Umayyah Cable analyzes the various strands of cinematic activism that have helped move Palestinian liberation politics from the periphery and into the mainstream. Cable charts the shifting discourse around Palestine as it has been shaped by grassroots film production and alternative media distribution networks as well as more conventional outlets

Intersections: A Journalistic History of Asian Pacific America | Editors: Amy Wang, Lori Matsukawa, Naomi Tacuyan Underwood, Arnold Pan, Yi-Shen Loo, Leszel Tanglao
The book chronicles pivotal events where AAPI journalists and AAJA members played crucial roles, often being the first to speak out in newsrooms and public forums. It is composed of 18 chapters and 16 profiles of prominent AAJA members. Chapters cover events including the murder of Vincent Chin in 1982, the 1992 Los Angeles Uprisings, September 11th attacks in 2001, up to the Maui wildfires of 2023. The book features mini profiles of legendary journalists including Connie Chung, Ann Curry, Corky Lee, and Helen Zia, highlighting their contributions in shaping AAPI narratives.

Collective Agency and Resistance during Japanese American Incarceration: The Amache Silk Screen Shop | Melissa Geisler Trafton
This book provides the first history of the Silk Screen Shop (1943-45) at the Granada War Relocation Center (“Amache”) in Colorado, a World War II incarceration site for Japanese Americans. The Shop printed training posters for the Bureau of Naval Personnel. In addition, in their free time, the Amache workers designed and printed material, such as dance invitations and Christmas cards, for community organizations and individuals. In the years after incarceration, the objects’ connection to the silkscreen shop was lost. This volume documents and studies the objects produced by the Shop, reconstructs workers’ experience and identity, traces the Shop as a site of community, and argues that young adult printmakers collectively developed subversive visual conventions of protest.