In response to the recent anti-Asian hate speech and violent assaults across our country, Memorial Hall Library stands in solidarity with our Asian and Asian American neighbors. Our staff believes in equality for all people and celebrates the diversity of our town and our patrons.
If you'd like to read books exploring the depth of the Asian American experience, check out our booklists for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May:
- Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2017
- Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2018
- Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2019
- Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2020
We also have a page highlighting general resources about Antiracism and Social Justice from MHL and throughout the Merrimack Valley.
Additionally, we have a collection of Chinese language materials on Level 2 that patrons can browse or view in our catalog.
If you’ve experienced racism and discrimination at the library, we invite you to share if you’re comfortable at our Inclusivity page. Patrons can anonymously report racist incidents and read about our work toward embracing diversity, equality, and inclusion.
The activist collective Hollaback! has free bystander intervention trainings geared to stop harassment and xenophobia against Asians and Asian Americans, as well as trainings to prepare AAPI people to respond to harrassment. Sign up for a training on their website.
We’ve compiled a booklist about the history of racism against Asians and Asian Americans in the United States below:
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Minor feelings : an Asian American reckoning
by Cathy Park Hong An award-winning poet and essayist offers a ruthlessly honest, emotionally charged exploration of the psychological condition of being Asian American. |
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America for Americans : a history of xenophobia in the United States
by Erika Lee The award-winning historian and author of The Making of Asian America reframes the ongoing debate over immigration while documenting the history and devastating impact of xenophobia in the United States. |
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America is in the heart
by Carlos Bulosan Bulosan's semi-autobiographical novel America is in the Heart begins with the narrator's rural childhood in the Philippines and the struggles of land-poor peasant families affected by US imperialism after the Spanish American War of the late 1890s. Carlos's experiences with other Filipino migrant laborers, who endured intense racial abuse in the fields, orchards, towns, cities and canneries of California and the Pacific Northwest in the 1930s, reexamine the ideals of the American dream. |
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The making of Asian America : a history
by Erika Lee Describes the lasting impact and contributions Asian immigrants have had on America, beginning with sailors who crossed the Pacific in the 16th century, through the ordeal of internment during World War II and to their current status as “model minorities.” |
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All you can ever know : a memoir
by Nicole Chung A Korean adoptee who grew up with a white family in Oregon discusses her journey to find her identity as an Asian American woman and a writer after becoming curious about her true origins. |
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The souls of yellow folk : essays
by Wesley Yang In the National Magazine Award-winning write’s debut, he presents a collection of razor-sharp essays on race and gender, exploring ugly trends with radical honesty. |
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Yellow : race in America beyond Black and white
by Frank H. Wu Filled with intimate vignettes, social-science research, legal cases, history, and journalistic reporting, a provocative glimpse into how changing concepts of racial identity will impact race relations in the new century discusses such controversial topics as discrimination, immigration, diversity, globalization, and the mixed-race movement, shedding new light on current debates by introducing the example of Asian Americans. |
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The Eagles of Heart Mountain : a true story of football, incarceration, and resistance in World War II America
by Bradford Pearson A painstakingly researched account details the tragic and triumphant story of the Eagles, a high school football team from Cody, Wyoming's World War II Japanese-American incarceration camp. |
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Asian American dreams : the emergence of an American people
by Helen Zia A stirring account of the emergence of the "Asian-American" consciousness in America explores the often tragic history that led to disparate groups of Asians seeing themselves as a single, cohesive ethnic community with political and social power. Reprint. |
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Scintillations : letters to memory
by Karen Tei Yamashita Letters to Memory is an excursion through the Japanese internment using archival materials from the Yamashita family as well as a series of epistolary conversations with composite characters representing a range of academic specialties. Historians, anthropologists, classicists--their disciplines, and Yamashita's engagement with them, are a way for her to explore various aspects of the internment and to expand its meaning beyond her family, and our borders, to ideas of debt, forgiveness, civil rights, orientalism, and community. |
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From a whisper to a rallying cry : the killing of Vincent Chin and the trial that galvanized the Asian American movement
by Paula Yoo An account of the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin shares insights into how a miscarriage of justice in the wake of a hate crime rallied the Asian-American community throughout a groundbreaking civil rights trial. By the award-winning author of Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds. |
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Asian Americans in the twenty-first century : oral histories of first- to fourth-generation Americans from China, Japan, India, Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Laos
by Joann Faung Jean Lee A tribute to today's culturally diverse Asian-American population draws on interviews with individuals from all walks of life about their experiences and Asian-American identity, from a contributor to a landmark legal case affecting the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II to the complex relationship between African Americans and Koreans in Los Angeles. |
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Big little man : in search of my Asian self
by Alex Tizon A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist presents an intimate assessment of the mythology, experience and psyche of the Asian-American male that traces the author's experiences as an immigrant under the constraints of American cultural stereotypes. |
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My Chinese-America
by Allen Gee Eloquently written essays about aspects of Asian American life comprise this collection that looks at how Asian-Americans view themselves in light of America's insensitivities, stereotypes, and expectations. My Chinese-America speaks on masculinity, identity, and topics ranging from Jeremy Lin and immigration to profiling and Asian silences. This essays have an intimacy that transcends cultural boundaries, and casts light on a vital part of American culture that surrounds and influences all of us. |
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We too sing America : South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh immigrants shape our multiracial future
by Deepa Iyer Many of us can recall the targeting of South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh people in the wake of 9/11. We may be less aware, however, of the ongoing racism directed against these groups in the past decade and a half. In We Too Sing America, nationally renowned activist Deepa Iyer catalogs recent racial flashpoints, from the 2012 massacre at the Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, to the violent opposition to the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and to the Park 51 Community Center in Lower Manhattan. Iyer asks whether hate crimes should be considered domestic terrorism and explores the role of the state in perpetuating racism through detentions, national registration programs, police profiling, and constant surveillance. She looks at topics including Islamophobia in the Bible Belt; the "Bermuda Triangle" of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim hysteria; and the energy of new reform movements, including those of "undocumented and unafraid" youth and Black Lives Matter. In a book that reframes the discussion of race in America, a brilliant young activist provides ideas from the front lines of post-9/11 America. |
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They called us enemy
by George Takei The iconic actor and activist presents a graphic memoir detailing his experiences as a child prisoner in the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II, reflecting on the hard choices his family made in the face of legalized racism. |