Gold House, the non-profit collective of Asian and Pacific Islander cultural leaders behind movements like #GoldOpen, is launching its inaugural Book Club on October 1st to uncover and codify Asian identity through other artistic mediums. After a successful pilot event with The Joy Luck Club this summer – which featured author Amy Tan with every Joy Luck Club daughter from the feature film (Lauren Tom, Ming-Na Wen, Rosalind Chao, and Tamlyn Tomita) – Gold House is formalizing the Book Club as a series of curated book lists and virtual events to help Asian Americans better understand their identity and culture in today’s political and social climate.
The inaugural Book Club List features six books selected through a rigorous process with the help of an Advisory Council of leading Asian American writers, activists, and academics, including Amy Tan, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, and many of the nation’s leading Asian American Studies professors.
One book will be featured each month beginning in October with Jose Antonio Vargas’ Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen in honor of Filipino American Heritage Month. Each List will also feature a selection of Asian American children’s books to help families highlight diverse stories in the early stages of their children’s development. The live virtual events will expand on both to engage the community in identity-driven conversations, ranging from an interactive children’s story hour to panel discussions—featuring the selected authors as well as members of the Advisory Council.
“This has been a year of reckoning for race in America, and many APIs have re-examined what it means to be Asian American. We recognized this unique and galvanizing opportunity to create space for our community to explore the issues that inform our identity by leveraging the rich catalog of stories written by API authors. We’re excited to contribute these moments of discussion and introspection while highlighting our representation in the literary landscape,” Gold House Book Club Director Cindy Joung said.
Gold House’s Book Club aims to continue important conversations around identity by exploring critical themes raised in each of the books, including immigration, intersectional identities, and generational and bi-cultural differences.
FALL 2020/WINTER 2021 BOOK CLUB LIST
(October 2020) Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas
(November 2020) Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong
(December 2020) How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee
(January 2021) American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
(February 2021) Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
(March 2021) The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Beginner Books:
A Is for Awesome!: 23 Iconic Women Who Changed the World by Eva Chen
Round Is A Mooncake: A Book of Shapes by Roseanne Thong
Early Readers:
Hot Hot Roti for Dada-Ji by Farhana Zia
The Many Colors of Harpreet Singh by Supriya Kelkar
The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi
Too Many Mangos by Tammy Paikai
Middle Grade Readers:
The Great Wall of Lucy Wu by Wendy Wan-Long Shang
More to the Story by Hena Khan
The Mystery of the Masked Medalist by Maia Shibutani, Alex Shibutani
The Serpent’s Secret by Sayantani DasGupta
Gold House is the largest nonprofit collective of Asian cultural leaders dedicated to forging stronger bonds that deliver more authentic and successful lives. Our ventures include membership systems and benefits to fortify relationships among Asians and with other marginalized communities (All of Us Movement); championing authentic Asian representation through media to reshape public opinion (Gold Open and A100 List); and accelerating economic success and commercial representation through Asian founders (Gold Rush). To learn more, visit www.goldhouse.org or follow @GoldHouseCo on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Here’s a syllabus and photo gallery.