As a professional book reviewer, I find that I gravitate towards certain themes. Recently, I’ve realized that I like books about unlikely friendships: people who do their best to be good to each other despite bad circumstances, but I also have an unexplainable appetite for watching it go wrong. People who clearly don’t like each other but for some inexplicable reason, keep finding reasons to be around each other. Drama! Maybe these things are two sides of the same coin.
Anyways, I’ve been traveling through the Bay Area, to Taiwan, to Japan and back. So those destinations have been on my mind. Here are 9 books I’ve loved by Taiwanese, Japanese and Taiwanese/Japanese diaspora writers which I’d recommend!
Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are ‘affiliate links’. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission with no extra cost to you. I’ve collected all the links onto this Benable list or if you’d rather shop a non-Barnes and Noble bookseller, you can check out my list on Bookshop.
Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa
Translated Japanese novel about redemption in which a failed writer learns to make life changing sweet bean paste from an elderly lady and unlikely friend. This friendship turns his life around. A feel good read.
Get your copy from Barnes and Noble or your local Bookshop.
Hooked by Asako Yuzuki
An office worker and avid reader meets her favorite blogger, but their friendship is not what either of them expected…or wanted.
An excerpt from my full review at Midbrow:
“The parasocial relationship between a relatable internet person and fan is strong. Eriko is ready for them to be best friends, so when Shoko stops posting on her blog for a few days, she shows up at her house to check on her, causing the relationship to sour.
This is the point when this character-driven novel starts becoming unhinged. Eriko, panicked by Shoko’s sudden rejection, rushes to try to mend the relationship, all the while dealing with office drama. Shoko is no angel either. She’s having an affair, lies about internet trolls for attention, but now she might actually have a stalker on her hands. At the heart of the novel are these two flawed yet relatable women and an exploration of how people pit women who make different choices against each other.
The main difference between East Asian societies and American society I’ve noticed while traveling is how much people care about what other people do, not just their lives but with their days — their interests, their behavior in public, everything. “Hooked” is a look at what happens when people strain against this kind of rigid social script.”
My full review at Midbrow.
Get your copy from Barnes and Noble or your local Bookshop.
Stay True by Hua Hsu
Coming of Age memoir about a Taiwanese American living in the Bay Area reflecting on his unlikely friendship with his friend, Ken and the grief after Ken is gone. I sped through this Pulitzer Prize winning memoir and would recommend it!
Get your copy from Barnes and Noble or your local Bookshop.
Homeseeking by Karissa Chen
A sweeping love story about two people who seem fated to be together, separated by war who find their way back to each other. One POV goes from past to present and the other goes from present to past. This was my book of the year in 2025.
Excerpt from my review:
“The novel is as emotionally gutting as Celine Song’s “Past Lives” but intertwined with a complicated history and politics of war, and the difficult decisions made in hard times. The lovers are told by a fortune teller when they are young people that they have yuanfen — “you’ll find yourselves pulled toward each other again and again.”
Yuanfen doesn’t mean that the couple can’t live without each other. It doesn’t even mean they’re necessarily destined to end up together, and that’s the beauty of it. Unlike romance novels which guarantee a happily ever after, “Homeseeking” tracks the couple as they make homes among strangers, cling tight to their families and memories, and navigate a tumultuous time in Chinese history. There’s something vulnerable and real about that.
Love is a tender thing. Yuanfen or not, we make choices that bring us closer or farther from the ones we love, but Haiwen and Suchi show us that even in challenging circumstances, it’s possible to love again, to move forward, to make a different choice today that will change your tomorrows. Chen masterfully weaves this story across 60 years, different cities and languages while beautifully capturing the longing for a home you can never really go back to.”
Get your copy from Barnes and Noble or your local Bookshop.
The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun Wang
Esme Weijun Wang wrote, “Yale won’t save you” for the Sewanee Review in 2019, and it’s lived rent free in my mind ever since. Her book, “The Collected Schizophrenias” is a collection of essays about her experience being diagnosed with and living with schizoaffective disorder. And yes, “Yale won’t save you” is in there.
Get your copy from Barnes and Noble or your local Bookshop.
Honeybees and Distant Thunder by Riku Onda
A book about the world of competitive classical piano playing in Japan that honestly made me feel so seen. It follows different characters in the competition. I’ve never read a book that just gets what it feels like to really want something but realize you might not have the raw talent to ever achieve it in this way. Onda also write about music beautifully. Some books are so good that you read them and think, “I want to write like that one day.” This book was so compelling that I thought, “I need to play piano again.”
Get your copy from Barnes and Noble or your local Bookshop.
Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi
A woman who hates her misogynistic coworkers fakes a pregnancy to get out of doing unpaid tasks like making coffee for the entire office. Love the premise, love the aesthetic of the tiny hardcover book.
Get your copy from Barnes and Noble or your local Bookshop.
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
This book follows the story of Japanese picture brides and their journey from Japan to San Francisco. Written completely in the first person plural, I came across this book in one of my writing classes at Yale, and it’s haunted me ever since.
Get your copy from Barnes and Noble or your local Bookshop.
Green Island by Shawna Yang Ryan
Read during my gap year in Taiwan, this book is a historical fiction about Taiwan’s political turmoil from 1947 through martial law. It was a great introduction to the more difficult parts of Taiwanese history for me and a jumping off point for much more research.
Get your copy from Barnes and Noble or your local Bookshop.
A Beast Slinks Toward Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang
Qianze hasn’t seen her father since he walked out on her 14th birthday, but when her father shows up in her life unexpectedly – drunk, disoriented and not super coherent. She finds herself taking him in. Between drunken stupors, he starts mumbling about having a prophecy he had to warn her about. That’s why he’s here. What is this prophecy? He doesn’t remember. This magical realist debut novel is a multi generational story about the Cultural Revolution in China, immigration and trauma. It’s the best book I’ve read in 2026 so far!
I know someone is going to come at me for it not being set in Japan or Taiwan, but a significant plot point and part of this book is about the Japanese occupation in China, so I’m adding it to this list but not counting it as part of the 9 books.
Excerpt from my full review in Rooted:
“What do parents owe to their kids and vice versa? How does one learn to carry on after trauma? The novel asks these questions and more, but there are no clear and easy answers. Even after the final reveals, there’s some ambiguity that keeps this reviewer up at night.
Qianze, in the tradition of 2nd generation Asian Americans, longs for roots and something to look back to before her and her nuclear family, but her parents both refuse to talk about it.
“That was another life. We are American now. We don’t need to hold on to old things,” her mother tells her.
But looking back is important to her. She yearns for it in a way her mother doesn’t understand, but any second-generation immigrant would.
It’s easy to think of events like the Cultural Revolution as history that happened a long time ago, but Yang brings both the events and their echoes into sharp clarity. The actions Weihong’s mother took to survive have consequences for him, and the same is true for his own daughter. It’s all tied together, and the past isn’t really passed.
“A Beast Slinks Toward Beijing” is a beautiful and heartbreaking reminder that our parents have histories and complex lives of their own, and therefore we do have roots, even if we don’t know about them yet, and it joins a growing collection of novels like “River East, River West,” and “Homeseeking” which explore those roots and stories unflinchingly. Alice Evelyn Yang is a gifted storyteller and one to watch.”
Get your copy from Barnes and Noble or your local Bookshop.
No Comments