Last night, over dinner in San Mateo with Professor Stephen H. Sohn of Stanford, who’s done some literary criticism of my first novel, Edinburgh, we talked about these books. And how everyone should read them.
- World Famous Love Acts, by Brian Leung
- A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, by Yiyun Li
- We Should Never Meet, by Aimee Phan
- When The Emperor Was Divine, by Julie Otsuka
- Free Food For Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee
- Skirt Full of Black, by Sun Yung Shin
- Dance Dance Revolution, by Catherine Park Hong
- Grass Roof, Tin Roof, by Dao Strom
- The Hell Screens, by Alvin Lu
- The Gangster We Are All Looking For, by Le Thi Diem Thuy
Koreanish 
So, I bought Free Food for Millionaires today! =)
As for the list above, I can only say it is more than incomplete. There is only so many works one can recommend in a space of two hours over a meal. Hehehe…
I remember reading a section of Brian Leung’s World Famous Love Acts (the final story of the collection itself) for a Valentines Day reading junior year of college, thinking it was the most beautifully radical story about modern love I’d read in ages.
Can you recommend a good book/source on Asian ghosts/spirit concepts? Being a euromutt, I’m trying to get as much cultural information for a character I’m working on, and I keep having flashbacks to bad YA novels from school book fairs.