Watching people celebrate and more Asian authors recently has been such a heart warming experience! As an Asian, aspiring author myself, it’s so nice to see lesser known authors and cultures being promoted during the Asian Readathon. 🥰🥰🥰
For those of you who may not know, the Asian Readathon was set up by BookTuber Read With Cindy to challenge people to read only Asian authors in the month of May. 🎌
Although I naturally gravitate more towards Asian authors anyways, I know not everyone does. And towards the end of a long Readathon, it can be easy to get deflated if you don’t know where to look. Recently, I’ve found more satisfaction recently in powering through shorter reads by Asian authors than wadding through longer ones like Pachinko or anything by Kazuo Ishiguro (although they’re both on my TBR).
So, here are 3 quick reads you can get through easily to help round off your Asian readathon.
1) Convenience Store Woman by Sakaya Murata
Although this book has been recommended by everybody and their mothers for the Asian Readathon, I cannot commend it enough. I just finished the audiobook version yesterday and OMG IT IS AMAZING! The writing style, the characterisation, the narration – beautiful. And it’s even narrated by an Asian narrator (Nancy Wu), so double Asian support. The audiobook was fairly quick, clocking in at 3 hours 21 mins total, so definitely a speedy read.
2) Aftereffects by Jiye Lee
Now, in contrast, this is a book that you may not have heard about. I definitely think it deserves some love during the Asian Readathon though! Aftereffects is a chapbook (mini poetry book) by Jiye Lee that explores her experience with grief following the tragic death of her father in Cairo. And I’d say next to Ben Okri’s A Fire In My Head, this has been one of the most inspiring poetry books I’ve read this year. If you want a more in depth look at the book, plus my favourite quotes, you can check out my review below:
3) That Which Can Be Heard by Shruthi Chauhan
The reason I chose this book is because I feel like it exemplifies exactly what the Asian Readathon is about. Being British-Indian isn’t an experience people hear about a lot outside of the UK, and Shruti beautifully captures it in her chapbook. It’s full of narrative poems exploring her identity as Guajarati, which is an Indian ethnic group/culture/identity originating from Gujrat. And even though I’m British-Indian myself, I found while reading that my experience of certain cultural events like a Mehndi (henna) Party were still different to Shruti’s accounts.
And I think that’s what the Asian Readathon is all about – proving that we can all learn from and about other peoples’ experiences and cultural identities, regardless of how ‘educated’ or ‘well-read’ we think we are.
Also if you’d like a chance to win a copy of this book, I’m doing a giveaway until this Sunday!
So I hope you enjoy these reads and let me know if you’re going to add any to your TBR or if you’ve read them in the comments below! Until the next post, keep supporting and reading Asian authors, and have a wonderful rest of your day! ❤️
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