Asian-American-focused short stories for middle schoolers?

June 14, 2018 7:10 PM

As part of a culturally-responsive teaching program, I've been tasked with assembling a list of recent short stories (5-20 pages) to share with an Asian-American population of adolescents. I would very much like if the characters reflected, even in broad strokes, the readers' backgrounds. Any and all suggestions welcome.

I've been very successful in creating similar short-story lists for my Latinx, African-American, and recent-immigrant readers, but I'm really struggling to find good, short, Asian-American fiction.

Recently, I've tried (and failed) to sell the students on stories by Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston and Jhumpa Lahiri, because ... they're just a little subtle / mature / old-fashioned/ internal for the age group. I'm working with 12-14 year-olds, who prefer realistic and adventure fiction. Advice/resources welcome.

posted by mr. remy to Education (16 answers total)

Check out Ted Chiang and Ken Liu’s short stories. They’re very much literary (science) fiction, and might be a little over their heads, but it’s very dynamic/engaging/interesting.

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
Stories of Your Life and Others

The Paper Menagerie is heartbreakingly sad. It’s published openly online. Here’s a PDF.

Also, some of the fiction from the Asian American Writer’s Workshop might be perfect also.
posted by suedehead at 8:10 PM on June 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

Vanessa Fogg is Thai-Chinese-American, and I think her very recent science fiction story "The Things That We Will Never Say" might be suitable. You have to go pretty far into it to find them, but it does have relevant cultural references.
posted by Wobbuffet at 8:16 PM on June 14, 2018

I haven’t read him recently enough to name specific stories but Charles Yu seems like a good choice: science fiction-y but based in reality. Lots of contemporary cultural references.
posted by Ideal Impulse at 8:20 PM on June 14, 2018

Would comic excerpts work? Chapters from some of Gene Luen Yang's stuff would definitely work as excerpts. I'm seconding The Paper Menagerie.
posted by storytam at 8:37 PM on June 14, 2018

Could you try something from Ha Jin's collection, Ocean of Words? He's the only author who writes books that reflect my parents' cohort (highly educated 90s immigrants from northern China), i.e. acknowledges the vague stories of communism that we all heard as kids when our parents thought we weren't listening.
posted by batter_my_heart at 8:49 PM on June 14, 2018

We Need Diverse Books has two YA short story anthologies.
posted by mogget at 8:51 PM on June 14, 2018

2nd-ing Ted Chiang. I think “Liking What You See: A Documentary” would be perfect for that age. It’s about what the world might be like, if we could choose to wear a device that made pretty people and ugly people look the same.

There’s also Jenny Zhang’s “Sour Heart”, which is a coming of age story, published by Lena Dunham’s imprint.
posted by tinymegalo at 9:01 PM on June 14, 2018

Seconding Gene Yang. Of his work, American Born Chinese seems like it would be a great fit, although you might have to convince an older school administrator that "comic books" can be serious. You won't have to convince the kids, though. ABC has been around more than ten years, so there are lots of resources for educators on how to include it in a curriculum, like this one. Here is a good introductory blog post about it by Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing. I mean maybe ABC isn't right for your group, but it is kind of the gold-standard for this sort of thing, and for good reason. It's the "Hamlet" of middle-school Asian American comic book biographical/metaphysical fables, and would be my first choice if I was in your position. It is a lot longer than 20 pages, but I've hardly ever seen a kid start it who didn't immediately want to finish it, even on his or her own time. I have watched ABC turn several non-readers into kids who love to read. Highly recommended.
posted by seasparrow at 10:31 PM on June 14, 2018 [3 favorites]

I would second the Paper Menagerie after hearing LeVar Burton read it on his podcast - it deals with complexity of being second generation Asian-American.
posted by metahawk at 10:54 PM on June 14, 2018

Yoon-Ha Lee's Conservation of Shadows is a collection of fantastic high concept SF stories which take very much from the author's Korean-American sensibilities (there's one that skirts the Japanese occupation of Korea in a way that was particularly striking). A lot more of his stories are also available on his site - my favourite of those is "Foxfire, foxfire", my introduction to his work.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 2:56 AM on June 15, 2018

Doesn't Paper Menagerie and Other Stories contain that one horrifying story with the human experimentation and Japanese atrocities during WWII? Not that middle schoolers are incapable, but that seems like something to be aware of, at the very least.

I love Ted Chiang and I literally have a copy of Stories of Your Life and Others next to me right now, but none of the stories in that collection feature Asian-American characters. It's possible that one of his other, separately published pieces of short fiction does, but he tends not to specify.

Zen Cho's Spirits Abroad features characters in the SEA diaspora and is my other Top Tier Short Story Collection... but her focus is on the UK, not the US.
posted by inconstant at 6:49 AM on June 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

LAFFF is a science fiction story in which the main characters are Chinese-American.
posted by chaiminda at 8:35 AM on June 15, 2018

It's been a long time since I read them, so I may be not remembering inappropriate material, but Banana Yoshimoto's stories are a lot of fun.
posted by Mchelly at 8:41 AM on June 15, 2018

"The Paper Menagerie" link is malformed. It should be here instead.
posted by blob at 8:44 AM on June 15, 2018

Diversity in YA, which was started by authors Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo, has posts featuring Asian-American authors of young adult works; some of the authors featured publish short stories, though the novels tend to be the focus on the blog.
10 Asian Pacific American YA Authors to Know
Spotlight on Asian American YA

Malinda Lo has published some short stories as well as novels.
Cindy Pon has one short story, "Blue Skies," in the Diverse Energies anthology.
posted by carrioncomfort at 10:10 AM on June 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

Here's an SF piece about an adolescent girl hilariously misbehaving at a boarding school in space. Clearly Chinese ("piss me off to death" is a recurring phrase) although I'm not sure if it ever says that outright. 14 pages.

Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters by Henry Lien
posted by aperturescientist at 2:16 AM on June 16, 2018