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May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! To celebrate, I’ve curated a list of fantastic books by AAPI authors that also check off tasks on the 2026 Read Harder Challenge. We have a nonbinary fantasy series, an anti-colonialist gothic novel, a Chinese American romantasy book, a Native Hawaiian picture book, and more to choose from.
Of course, that doesn’t even scratch the surface of all the AAPI books worth reading this month and every month. Scroll to the end of this list to find links to even more recommendations.
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Task #2: Read a book featured on a “best book covers” list
Blob by Maggie Su, Cover design by Robin Bilardello
You don’t have to like Vi to empathize with her experiences as a college dropout living in a Midwest town where she sees herself having no future. But you will certainly be unable to stop reading this book after she discovers a blob on the street and brings it home. This is no ordinary blob, though. It’s sentient, and over the course of the story, it begins to grow limbs and a whole personality. Vi realizes she has an opportunity here: make this blob her ideal partner and finally find true, meaningful love. Blob is a weird, funny, and moving read about identity, family, and, err, street blobs.
Casual Optimist named this one of the best book covers of 2025. —Kelly Jensen
Task #4: Read a novel with a main character who uses they/them pronouns
The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
A nonbinary monk storyteller tells a series of incredible stories in this cycle of novellas from author Nghi Vo. Chih is on the road in search of stories when they run into an elderly woman who was once a handmaiden in the court of an exiled Empress. Rabbit was there for the rise and fall of Empress In-yo, and she has a story to tell unlike any other Chih has heard.
That’s only the start of Chih’s adventures, too, which continue in the sequel, When The Tiger Came Down the Mountain. —Rachel Brittain
All Access members, read on for five more books by AAPI authors that check off 2026 Read Harder Challenge tasks.
Task #6: Read a gothic novel published in the last ten years
She is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran
This YA horror novel is so delightfully disturbing. When Jade reluctantly heads to Vietnam the summer before college to help her absentee dad turn a crumbling colonial manor into a trendy B&B, she has no idea that she’s walking straight into the clutches of a hungry haunted house. As her crush on Florence, her dad’s business partner’s spunky niece, grows into something more meaningful, the insatiable desires of the house become harder and harder to escape. With all the weight of both France’s and the United States’ colonial histories bearing down on her and her family, Jade has to do a lot more than some web design to secure her future in this life. —Anne Mai Yee Jansen
Task #8: Read a classic from the Zero to Well-Read Podcast
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Told in vignettes, this modern classic tells the story of four Chinese-immigrant mothers and their four American-born daughters. After meeting in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1949, the mothers form a mahjong club that carries their friendship through years of hardship and good times. Weaving together stories of past and present, each chapter of The Joy Luck Club features a thematic parable.—Courtney Rodgers
Task #9: Read a romantasy book with a queer and/or BIPOC main character
Dominion by Jean Kwok (July 14, 2026)
Rubi Morningtail has scant power, no homeland, and a bleak future as an Azure refugee ribbon dancer. Then she wounds a battle tyger, attracting the attention of the leader of the royal tyger warriors and supreme metal mage, Blake Axefire. For wounding the creature, Rubi is sentenced to the Bonding: a trial where tygers select their riders and the unselected die. Against all odds, she survives and becomes part of Blake’s team, resealing the demon realm. Now she has to discover the truth behind her magic and avoid her attraction to Blake before power or love destroys her life. I cannot wait to be enthralled by Kwok’s Chinese-inspired romantasy. —R. Nassor
Task #13: Read a nonfiction comic
Year of the Rabbit by Tian Veasna
This strikingly illustrated historical graphic memoir is Tian Veasna’s memoir of his and his family’s experiences during the Cambodian genocide enacted by the Khmer Rouge. It’s an unusual take on memoir, given that when it starts the author hasn’t been born yet, but that allows Veasna to set the stage and draw the reader in. We also get to meet his family and become invested in their journey. Throughout the book, readers are provided with all the details they need to understand this historical event regardless of how much prior knowledge they have. It’s a captivating story of one family’s experiences that’ll most likely have you gnawing on your nails as you turn the pages to find out what happens. —Anne Mai Yee Jansen
Task #16: Read a queer picture book
Kapaemahu by Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Joe Wilson, and Dean Hamer, Illustrated by Daniel Sousa
This stunningly illustrated picture book retells the Indigenous Hawaiian legend about four mythic figures who are mahu — contain both male and female spirits — bringing the healing arts to Hawaii. In appreciation, Native Hawaiians gift four boulders in their honor, and the Mahu imbue the boulders with magical healing properties. After Hawaii’s colonization by white foreigners, the meaning of the boulders is forgotten until the 1960s. Written in both English and Olelo Niihau, this picture book is based on an award-winning film of the same name. —Margaret Kingsbury
For even more great AAPI reads, check out these lists:
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