These eight books by APIDA authors are perfect to read—or re-read—right now. Many are available in audio, which adds another dimension, letting the rhythm of each story carry you into an immersive, fully realized sense of time, space, and place. You might see yourself reflected in these pages, or simply walk away feeling more connected to the beautifully varied ways we all move through the world.

Horse Barbie by Geena Rocero (Memoir)

An empowering, heart-forward memoir that moves between Rocero’s childhood in the Philippines—where beauty pageants offered both escape and possibility—and her life in the U.S., where she built a career in modeling while privately navigating her identity. When she ultimately steps into full visibility, the story opens into something even bigger: a reflection on what it means to be seen, to claim joy, and to live without apology. It’s intimate, vivid, and deeply affirming.

About the author: Rocero is a Filipina-American trans advocate, model, and founder of Gender Proud, known for championing authenticity on a global stage.

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (Fiction)

Vuong’s novel unfolds with the quiet gravity of a long conversation—one that circles love, grief, and the fragile ways we hold each other up. At its center is a young Vietnamese American man on the margins, forming an unexpected, chosen family with people who are themselves navigating loneliness, displacement, and memory. There’s a tenderness in how these relationships take shape—through small gestures, shared spaces, and the unspoken understanding of what’s been lost and what can still be built. Vuong’s language is luminous but grounded and peppered with humor along with pathos, turning everyday moments into something almost sacred.

About the author: Vuong is a celebrated Vietnamese-American poet and novelist, a MacArthur Fellow whose work blends poetry and storytelling in unforgettable ways.

A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar (Fiction)

Sharp, gripping, and impossible to put down. Majumdar pulls you into a world where every choice matters—and nothing is as simple as it seems, as lives intersect in ways that test loyalty, justice, and survival.

About the author: Majumdar is a South Asian Indian-American writer whose debut novel made waves for its urgency and insight.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (Fiction)

A forever favorite. Tan’s interwoven stories of mothers and daughters move between past and present, China and America, revealing how love and misunderstanding can live side by side—and how, over time, they begin to untangle.

About the author: Tan’s debut novel became an instant classic, opening doors for generations of Asian American storytelling.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (Memoir)

Yes, you might cry—but you’ll also smile, remember, and maybe even feel hungry. Moving between grocery store aisles and childhood memories, Zauner traces her relationship with her mother through food, grief, and the slow rediscovery of cultural identity.

About the author: Zauner, also known as the musician behind Japanese Breakfast, brings a lyrical, deeply personal voice to the page.

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Fiction)

Smart, bold, and unexpectedly funny, this Pulitzer Prize–winning novel follows a conflicted double agent whose divided loyalties mirror the complexities of war, exile, and identity.

About the author: Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American writer and scholar whose work continues to shape conversations around war and diaspora.

All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir by Nicole Chung (Memoir)

A thoughtful, beautifully written exploration of identity, family, and what it really means to belong, as Chung searches for her birth family while honoring the one who raised her.

About the author: Chung is a Korean-born American writer and editor known for her honest, compassionate storytelling.

Making Comics by Lynda Barry (Graphic Novel)

Equal parts creative spark and permission slip, this book blends exercises, images, and personal stories to remind you that making art doesn’t have to be perfect to be meaningful—or fun.

About the author: A Filipina-American cartoonist whose work I’ve loved since laughing out loud when reading her comic strips in the Washington City Paper in the 1980s (and only recently learned of her mixed heritage), Barry continues to inspire generations of creatives.

Together, these books offer more than just great reading—they open doors. Into different cultures, yes, but also into shared emotions, familiar questions, and the small, shining moments that connect us all. Whether you dip into one or devour all eight, this is a beautiful place to begin—or begin again.

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As I write this, our region is being advised to bring your plants indoors by the local weather forecaster on TV—she is wearing a bright Easter-yellow dress. It is in fact, just days after a rollercoaster weekend weather-wise that began with continued summery temperatures from the work week prior, only to plummet sharply by the time parents prepared egg hunts for their kiddos. Accompanying rain and wind by the Sunday brunch hour brought a chill in the air, and egg hunts were, like today’s plants, relegated indoors.

Just a week ago, we flirted with summer—temperatures topping 85 degrees, windows flung open, thermostats nudged toward cool. Today, we brace for a low of 38, a windchill that bites closer to 33, and the quiet return of puffer coats we were so ready to retire to the back of the closet.

This is spring’s sleight of hand.

It mirrors, in many ways, the first quarter of this year—mercurial, unpredictable, shifting between warmth and chill without warning. One moment, clarity; the next, a kind of atmospheric hesitation. We move forward, then pause. Bloom, then brace.

And yet—despite the uncertainty—everything is growing.

The cherry blossoms, iconic and fleeting, arrived early this year, coaxed out by warmth that now feels almost imagined. On my morning drives, the once-bare dogwoods, saucer magnolias, and crabapple trees that lined winter streets now burst forward in unapologetic bloom. Tulips and daffodils have pushed through the soil with quiet determination, only to find themselves dusted with a late, passing snow.

“Grass grows tall in the sunlight—thick and lush, and in need of mowing—only to shiver under the frost warning of this evening.”

There is something deeply human in this confusion of seasons.

Grass grows tall in the sunlight—thick and lush, and in need of mowing—only to shiver under the frost warning of this evening. Branches heavy with blossoms sway in winds that feel more March than April. We, too, find ourselves toggling—between hope and hesitation, progress and pause—layering and unlayering, adjusting as we go.

Perhaps this is the lesson of spring: not consistency, but resilience.

Not a steady unfolding, but a series of brave, beautiful attempts to bloom anyway through whatever comes our way.

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A hinge between what was and what insists on becoming.

It is Women’s History Month, Multiracial Heritage Month, and that quiet but disorienting ritual of springing forward for Daylight Saving Time—losing an hour of sleep only to gain a longer stretch of light. This year, that light seemed to gather itself into a single, undeniable beam on the stage of the Academy Awards.

And in that beam stood Autumn Durald Arkapaw—making history.

For nearly a century—98 years—no woman had ever won the Oscar for Best Cinematography. Not one. Then, in a moment that felt both overdue and right on time, Arkapaw became the first woman—and the first woman of color—to take home the award, breaking a barrier that had stood since the very first Oscars. A ceiling shattered. A precedent set. A history rewritten in real time. (San Francisco Chronicle; Washington Post)

“We Belong Here.”

In her acceptance speech, Autumn Durald Arkapaw did something deceptively simple. She turned outward.

“I really want all the women in the room to stand up…”

And in that invitation, she widened the frame. This wasn’t just her win—it was communal. Earned across years of unseen labor, quiet resilience, and persistent vision.

She grounded the moment in something larger than herself:

“We belong here.” (Associated Press; Vogue)

Three words that landed like a collective exhale—and a call forward.

A Personal Lens

As the daughter of Filipino immigrants, and as a visual storyteller myself, this moment didn’t just register—it resonated.

Deeply.

Because for so long, many of us have been taught to stand just outside the frame. To observe. To support. To create—but not necessarily to claim authorship at the highest levels.

And yet here was Autumn Durald Arkapaw—the daughter of a Filipino mother and Afro-Creole father—holding the industry’s highest honor in her hands, her identity not a footnote but a force. (Academy Awards press coverage; biographical profiles)

Not asking for permission.

Not shrinking her light.

But standing fully in it.

There is something seismic about seeing yourself reflected not in the margins, but in the mastery.

Spring Forward, Indeed

Daylight Saving Time asks us to adjust—to lose an hour and trust that more light is coming.

March, in all its layered meanings, asks the same of us.

To move forward even when the ground feels uneven.

To trust that what we create in the dark will eventually meet the light.

To believe that history is not fixed—it is made.

Arkapaw didn’t just win an Oscar. She made history—and in doing so, expanded the aperture of possibility.

For women.

For multiracial creatives.

For those of us who have been waiting—sometimes patiently, sometimes not—for the industry to catch up to our vision.

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Roads went quiet. Airports stilled. School systems, businesses, and government offices across Maryland, where we live, closed for a full week as crews worked day and night, chipping and scraping their way through a winter that refused to budge.

The Iceman Cometh

Snow fell first — soft, promising, almost playful — then came the ice. Layer upon layer sealed the landscape like glass. What should have been a wintry wonderland hardened into something unyielding, cracked only with steel shovels and pickaxes. Sidewalks gleamed. Parking lots shimmered. Everything familiar looked preserved in place, as if winter itself had decided to archive January.

For seven straight days, temperatures in Maryland never climbed above freezing. Daytime highs stalled in the low 20s, while nights slipped into the teens or single digits. Wind chills carrying an Arctic edge that kept even snow-lovers indoors. News casts warned of hyperthermia. Stay indoors, they cautioned. Skiers waited. Sleds stayed propped by doors. The fluffy white beneath the ice remained just out of reach.

Skiers waited. Sleds stayed propped by doors. The fluffy white beneath the ice remained just out of reach.

The cold lingered as the last week in January drew to a close — a long breath held by the season. Then, slowly, the sun began to help. Not enough to conquer the ice outright, but enough to soften it, enough to invite us back outside after days of cabin fever and glowing windows.

January 2026 will be remembered not just for how cold it was, but for how still everything became — a rare moment when time, like the snow itself, seemed frozen in place.

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It was time.

We had started calling it a chirping—a mix of whining and barking that began earlier in the week after a 4 a.m. run to the nearby animal ER. Rusty was assessed for a possible stroke or vestibular disease and sent home with painkillers, sedatives, and a wait-and-see prognosis. We had been through this before with our collie girl Scout, who did bounce back and lived for a few years afterward, head tilted in that telltale way of “old dog” vestibular disease. Perhaps this would be Rusty’s story too, we thought.

But Rusty was never able to stand on his own after that visit. Our living room became our cocoon—blankets and bedding layered on the floor, time slowed, the outside world dimmed—as we waited for a sign, any sign, that he might improve. Save for several stretches of merciful hours of sleep, he would wake with that chirping bark, a sound that felt like both a plea and a farewell. There were glimmers of hope when his darting nystagmus eyes would steady, when he ate from our hands, drank from a syringe. We whispered encouragements, prayers, bargains we knew we could not keep.

Just shy of three days later, he was gone.

“It was like losing a child, and I wept till I could weep no more.”

— Truman Capote on the loss of his bulldog Bunky

Grieving the Loss of Our Beloved Companions

Rusty was fourteen years old—our best estimate based on what collie rescue told us when we adopted him at two. He lived a long, healthy, happy life, we keep telling ourselves. And yet knowing this does nothing to blunt the rupture. May Sarton described it perfectly after losing her own dog: “I was not at all prepared for the volcanic eruption of woe… I felt cracked in two.” That cracking—sudden, elemental, irreversible—is what grief felt like when we walked out of the vet’s office without Rusty.

The loss of a beloved pet is often minimized, treated as something we should “get over” quickly. But as Anne Patchett wrote of her dog Rose, “the death of my dog hit me harder than the deaths of many people I have known.” This is not because our animals replace human relationships, but because they occupy a different, quieter, constant space in our lives. They are present for our routines, our silences, our unguarded selves. Rusty knew us in ways few others ever will.

Now there is a silence where his presence once lived. A missing weight. A missing warmth. In time, I trust the sharpness will soften. Memories will arrive bearing smiles before tears. But for now, we grieve him fully—because loving him fully deserves nothing less.

Sidebar: When Writers Name the Unnameable

“I was not at all prepared for the volcanic eruption of woe… I felt cracked in two.”

— May Sarton

“She was loyal and brave and as smart as a treeful of owls… the death of my dog hit me harder than the deaths of many people I have known.”

— Anne Patchett

“I’d had him eight years, and loved him more than anything in the world. It was like losing a child, and I wept till I could weep no more.”

— Truman Capote

See also: The Book of Pet Love and Loss, Words of Comfort & Wisdom from Remarkable People by Sara Bader, a collection of personal quotes from literary icons and cultural figures on the grief and loss of their animal companions https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Book-of-Pet-Love-and-Loss/Sara-Bader/9781982134310

Further Reading & Support for Grieving Pet Parents

• Literary reflections on pet loss:https://asialenae.com/2024/07/24/literary-icons-on-the-harrowing-heartbreak-of-losing-a-pet/
• Association for Pet Loss and Bereavement:https://aplb.org
• ASPCA guidance on coping with pet loss:https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/general-pet-care/coping-loss-pet

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But 2026 arrives with a different gait.

According to the Chinese zodiac, this is the Year of the Fire Horse, sometimes referred to as the Crimson Horse—a symbol of freedom, momentum, courage, and unapologetic forward motion. This particular combination occurs only once every sixty years. A creative lifetime. A reminder that some years aren’t meant to be tiptoed into. They’re meant to be mounted.

What the Fire Horse Represents

In Chinese metaphysics, the Horse is associated with movement, independence, charisma, and raw life force. Add the Fire element—passion, visibility, intensity, transformation—and you get a year charged with high-yang (masculine) energy. This is outward-facing energy. Expressive. Catalytic. It favors action over analysis and momentum over perfection.

Fire Horse years are known for:

• Rapid progress and decisive change
• Increased visibility and public expression
• Innovation, risk-taking, and creative courage
• A refusal to remain small or stalled

This isn’t subtle energy. It’s kinetic. It doesn’t whisper—it nudges, prods, and sometimes pushes.

From Reflection to Motion

This energy builds directly upon what came before.

2025, the Year of the Wood Snake, was slower, more inward. A year of shedding skins, circling questions, and tending quietly to what was forming beneath the surface. Many of us did deep, necessary work—often unseen. We planted seeds without knowing exactly how, or when, they would break ground.

Now comes the fire.

For creatives and writers especially, 2026 isn’t asking for more contemplation. It’s asking for movement. For drafts to become declarations. For private practices to step into public space. For the work to leave the stable.

Less Intention. More Motion.

Whether or not you follow the Chinese zodiac, a new year always invites renewal. What separates the Year of the Fire Horse from others is its emphasis on proactive energy over polished intention. This is not the year of endless vision boards or endlessly revised resolutions.

This is the year of:

• Publishing before you feel ready
• Sharing the work instead of safeguarding it
• Saying yes, then figuring it out in motion
• Trusting momentum more than mastery

The Fire Horse doesn’t wait for certainty.

It doesn’t ask for permission.

It moves—and learns by moving.

Riding Forward

So what does this mean for your creativity?

It might mean releasing the piece you’ve been editing into submission.

Launching the project you keep refining instead of revealing.

Claiming space. Raising your hand. Letting yourself be seen—even if your voice trembles.

2026 isn’t asking you to be flawless.

It’s asking you to be brave, visible, and in motion.

The gate is open.

The ground is firm beneath you.

Saddle up—and let the work run.

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Dozens of cookies were baked, filling houses with the ginger and cinnamon smell of Christmas. Turkey and beef roast were ordered. Fireplaces were hung with familiar family stockings unearthed from their hibernation, along with ornaments, nutcrackers, and garland.

And then, quietly at first, the flu began to unravel those plans.

Unwelcome Holiday Guest: The Flu

One call turned into several. Half of our family went from “Can’t wait to see you” to “We think it’s better if we stay home.” Fevers, aches, that unmistakable heaviness in the voice that tells you the body has already decided. We pivoted, as families do now. Plates went uneaten. Chairs stayed empty. We waved through screens instead of doorways, grateful for faces even when they were pixelated.

Many wrapped presents sat unopened under trees with promises to gather once everyone was healthy.

We told ourselves we’d make it up in the new year. A fresh start, a fresh gathering—more of us together. And then flu and COVID swept through again, touching dear family and friends like an unwanted guest who doesn’t understand when it’s time to leave. There was disappointment, yes, but also a deeper, quieter emotion: recognition. We’ve been here before.

Familiar Story

I thought back to Christmas years ago, when both of my parents were still here. That December, pneumonia took hold of them both—each landing in a different hospital. The word “Christmas” felt fragile that year, as if it might shatter under the weight of worry. But the grandchildren, in their wisdom and innocence, found a way through. They wrote messages on large poster boards—block letters, red hearts, green trees, stick figure grandparents holding hands with them next to the fireplace. Merry Christmas, Lolo! Merry Christmas, Lola! We love you. Get Better Soon! We took pictures. My husband and I masked up, donned gowns, and delivered those poster board greetings room by room, hospital by hospital.

My siblings and their partners took turns with us, gowned and masked. It was one of the hardest holidays we ever lived through. And somehow, it was also one of the best.

Because love showed up anyway. It adapted. It wore masks and waited in hallways. It learned that presence isn’t always being physically close. Togetherness can look like effort, intention, and care. We didn’t cancel Christmas that year—we transformed it.

Together, Near or Far

That memory steadies me now. Illness may change the shape of our celebrations, but it doesn’t cancel them. The holidays are not defined by who makes it to the table, but by how we hold one another when we can’t. And so we wait—for recovery, for reunion, for the moment when more of us can gather again. Carrying forward the knowing that even in separation, we are still, unmistakably, a family.

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I first discovered Nam through the videos Sarah creates—loving, intimate chronicles of her family life as the daughter of working-class Korean immigrants. There’s something extraordinary about watching these thoughtfully crafted glimpses: a daughter documenting not just recipes, but the cadence, warmth, humor, and quiet authority of a mother whose kitchen shaped a family. What began as a tender archive evolved into a New York Times bestselling cookbook released earlier this year—a testament to how universal and deeply human these stories are.

So when I spotted the hardcover beckoning to me from a display at my cousin Donna’s independent bookstore, The Sparkle Bookstore, in Sparkill, NY, I didn’t hesitate. Into my arms it went. Sometimes a book chooses you first.

Thanksgiving has a way of tugging at old threads. Maybe that’s why UMMA hit differently.

My own mom hasn’t been physically at our Thanksgiving table since her passing in 2012, yet she’s everywhere—woven into the flavors, the rituals, the inside jokes, the stories we retell with that familiar “Wait, how did it really go?” energy. My siblings and I talk about her almost daily. Not with the sharpness of early grief, but with that warm, steady presence love leaves behind.

The Comfort of a Mother’s Kitchen—Even Someone Else’s

As I paged through UMMA, the richly photographed dishes didn’t just look beautiful—they felt like memory. There is a universal intimacy to a mother’s cooking: the dishes perfected without measuring, the flavors that say “I know what you need,” the meals made as an act of devotion more than craft.

Nam’s recipes—banchan that brighten a table, dumplings shaped by hand, soups that hold whole histories—carry that maternal tenderness. But there’s also Sarah’s devotion woven through every page: the careful translation of a lifetime of wisdom, the capturing of gestures and intuitions that are so easily lost when not written down.

It made me think about my own mom’s recipes—the ones we recreate through guesswork and laughter, saying, “Mom would be shaking her head at us right now.”

Why This Cookbook Feels Like Gratitude

This year, UMMA feels like part of my Thanksgiving table—not just for its recipes, but for what it reminds me:

that food is memory,

that cooking is storytelling,

and that mothers—ours, and the women we learn from along the way—shape us long after they’re gone.

My copy already has pages marked with intention. I’ll cook from it through the season, not to replicate someone else’s traditions, but to honor my own. And in an unexpected, tender way, it brings my mom a little closer.

If you’re craving a book that feeds both the heart and the home, UMMA is that gift. One worth giving to yourself. One worth savoring slowly.

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And if I’m being honest, I’ve always been that person who looks up at a clock only to find 11:11 glowing back at me. It happens more often than any reasonable pattern should allow. A little cosmic wink. A quiet, steady drumbeat that seems to say, you’re aligned, stay awake.

So when November 11 rolled around this year, it already carried that familiar shimmer. The day has always felt charged—almost like stepping into a corridor where meaning pools in unexpected corners.

A Day Rooted in Remembrance

In American culture, 11/11 is a day of collective reflection. Veterans Day. The armistice that quieted the guns of World War I at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. A numerical sequence wrapped around sacrifice, resilience, and the fragile hope of peace.

It’s a day when the entire country pauses—some with gratitude, some with grief, some in quiet contemplation—honoring the people who’ve carried the weight of service and the families who held steady beside them.

But the universe, with its impeccable talent for timing, decided to add something deeply personal to this already symbolic date.

A day and a half before 11/11—halfway across the world—my aunt slipped from this life at the age of 100. A full century of grit, humor, stories, and sharp-eyed wisdom. Losing her felt like the closing of a massive ancestral chapter. It was the kind of passing that makes the world feel momentarily tilted, like an essential beam in the house has been lifted away.

And then—because life loves its poetry and paradox—on the early morning of November 11 in Missouri, while the sky was still swallowing the last bits of night, a new heartbeat joined our family.

Nina.

Eight pounds, five ounces.

Born at 4:38 a.m. in that tender, hushed hour when the world has not yet decided what kind of day it will be.

A brand-new life arriving on a date already saturated with history, symmetry, and personal meaning.

What are the odds? A century ending, a birth beginning, both orbiting a date that has been whispering to me for years through digital clocks, stove displays, dashboard timers.

The Numerology of 11:11: A Portal, A Prompt, A Promise

Maybe that’s the mystery of 11:11.

Numerologists call it a master number—a symbol of intuition, alignment, awakening. A portal moment. A cosmic breadcrumb that says: Something is shifting. Pay attention.

Others say it’s simply a moment when the universe clears its throat and tries to get your attention.

For me, this year, 11/11 became a thin place. A place where endings and beginnings pressed up against each other. Where grief and joy moved in tandem. Where timing—cosmic or coincidental—felt like a kind of grace.

The Doorway Ahead

Here’s the promise I’m choosing to believe in:

11:11 is a doorway.

A gentle invitation.

A reminder that something new is always waiting to be born, even as we say our hardest goodbyes.

On her 11/11 birthday, baby Nina stepped through that portal for all of us—bright, new, and fiercely alive. And I’m choosing to follow her lead.

Eyes open.

Heart awake.

Ready for whatever this next beginning brings.

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It’s in this in-between season that I become acutely aware of all that October holds. Seven of my immediate family and close friends celebrate birthdays this month. There are wedding anniversaries to toast, Oktoberfest gatherings to attend, Halloween decorations to unbox. It’s also a month of cultural celebration—LGBTQ+ History Month, Filipino American History Month—all swirling together in a vibrant, joyful blur.

As a photographer, it’s probably my favorite time to be outside. The air is cool and comfortable, the light golden and forgiving. The sun lingers lower in the sky, wrapping everything in a warm amber glow during the golden hour, or softening into a gentle haze on misty mornings. It’s a time when I feel most alive behind the camera, capturing the quiet poetry of nature’s transformation.

And yet, amid all this beauty and bustle, I almost forgot something that has shaped my life and family in profound ways: October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

It was my eldest sister, Mercedes, who reminded me. We were chatting as she prepared candy for the trick-or-treaters, wearing a pink sweater. That small detail stopped me in my tracks. How could I have forgotten? The month was already drawing to a close.

Before the stroke of midnight on Halloween, my thoughts turned to those I love who have been touched by the disease. My sister Marissa—less than a year younger than Mercedes—was diagnosed at 52. There was no history of breast cancer in our family, and yet she learned that nearly 97 percent of patients don’t have hereditary links. She faced chemotherapy and surgery not with quiet grace, but with her trademark fire and energy—determined, defiant, and unwilling to be sidelined. Today, she is cancer-free.

Our brother Rom’s wife, Angie, was just 35 when she passed away. Many years later, lightning struck twice, as his second partner Resa lost her battle with breast cancer. Both Angie and Marissa were October babies. I never had the chance to meet Isabel, who would have been my mother-in-law—another life cut short by the same disease.

More than two decades ago, I walked 60 miles over three days in the Susan G. Komen Walk for the Cure, in honor of Angie and Isabel. My feet ached, but my heart was light. We walked for awareness, for progress, for hope.

Now, as I prepare to welcome our Tita Nerisa—a survivor herself—on her visit from California, I think about how time moves, how memory softens, how healing quietly happens in the background of our lives. So much has changed. Treatments have advanced. Survivorship has grown. But the ache of those we’ve lost still lingers, tucked somewhere between gratitude and grief.

I realize now that forgetting wasn’t indifference—it was the comfort of believing we’d come through. Still, October reminds me that remembrance is its own form of love. That the pink ribbons, the stories, the faces—they all matter.

And in that moment, as autumn settles in and the light turns to gold, I promise myself not to forget again.

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