Elizabeth Miki Brina is a teacher and author. Her debut book, Speak Okinawa, is out now

The Woman Warrior: Memoir of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

by Maxine Hong Kingston (1976)

Maxine Hong Kingston is magnificent as she captures the history and mythology of her ancestors from China, as well as the lives of her family of immigrants and Asian Americans.

Autobiography of My Mother

by Jamaica Kincaid (1996)

With exquisite and inimitable prose, Jamaica Kincaid portrays the complicated, defiant, lonely yet resilient life of a woman in Dominica.

Brother, I’m Dying

by Edwidge Danticat (2007)

This story revolves around two brothers: one who moved to the USA and one who stayed in Haiti. Edwidge Danticat portrays the bond between her father and uncle with utmost love and dignity while also recreating scenes of violent upheaval.

The Buddha in the Attic

by Julie Otsuka (2011)

Through a chorus of voices, Julie Otsuka tells the story of a group of young brides, married by mail, who travelled from Japan to San Francisco by boat. Their experiences of adjustment, isolation, estrangement, and eventual detainment at concentration camps during the Second World War is painful yet necessary to confront.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

by Ocean Vuong (2019)

This book brings the reader to so many places: Vietnam, Connecticut, the vast and perpetuating trauma of war, the intricate private wounds between a single mother and her only son, the raw turmoil of first sexual encounters.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

by Cheryl Strayed (2012)

Cheryl Strayed bravely processes the trauma of losing her mother to cancer and of losing her husband to her own infidelity and addiction to heroin as she hikes more than 1,000 miles along the Pacific Crest trail.

The Line Becomes a River

by Francisco Cantu (2018)

Even though his grandfather came from Mexico, Francisco Cantu decided to become a border patrol agent to see and understand for himself. He writes with keen insight and compassion.