Monday MorningReads

469 words, 2 minutes read time.

May is AAPI Heritage month but, you know that, right? I’m always up for a reason to celebrate, so I cooked up a little bookish fun for us: a reading challenge inspired by Gomoku! It’s a playful way to explore more voices, stories, and perspectives from Asia and its diaspora. Ready to get your read on?

Gomoku is a traditional 2 player Japanese board game that may seem similar to tic tac toe. In Gomoku, players take turns placing black and white pieces on the gameboard while trying to create a line of 5 pieces in any direction. A traditional board has a 15×15 grid of lines.

I’ve created a Literary Gomoku for the AAPI Book Challenge by adapting a traditional game board. Choose a number, then find the description with the same number of what you’re to read on the corresponding sheet. Your goal is to read five books in a row – horizontally, vertically, or diagonally or you could choose to complete the five corners.

I tried to be as diverse as possible in choosing aspects of the Asian and Pacific Island diasporas. There’s plenty of room for flexibility here. While the directions are often for Asians and Pacific Islanders in the Americas, books written by those who emigrated to the West will work fine. There’s plenty of opportunity to read books across age groups or to include countries that I didn’t highlight. And it’s fine if your reading extends a bit into June. Actually, any month is a good month to read AAPI books and authors! The one ‘must’ is that the book must be written or edited by someone from the AAPI diaspora.

It looks like I’ve been able to upload a pdf to the bottom of this post. If you have any problems with it, you can also find the document in Google Drive.

Hold yourself accountable by adding your name in the comments. You can come back as you finish each book, or after you’ve read all five. Tell us what you’ve read and enjoyed, or what you’re looking forward to reading. Share the challenge with your friends and colleagues.

Some books are going to be harder to find than others. Consider why. Know that in addition to some of these books being banned, universities across the country are getting rid of AAPI programs and courses. Students from all over Asia are losing access to there education programs here in the US.

I enjoyed coming up with all these different types of books and I know I’m going to stretch myself a lot this month, regardless the direction I choose to read, but it will be fun, too!

Let’s go!

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