#AsianLitBingo – A 2018 May Reading Challenge + TBR

May is Asian American Heritage month and in honor of this month’s theme, the folks at LitCelebrAsian are currently running a May Reading Challenge!

I was bemoaning how white my favorite novels list was and when I was looking around Litsy (an awesome instagram for books) and discovered this wonderful challenge.

Similar to the Diversity Bingo challenge, the Asian Lit Bingo challenge takes the form of a bingo board, a 5 by 5 grid with 25 total prompts for books to read. The baseline goal is to read prompts for a single line, vertically, horizontally, or diagonally on the board, for a total of 5 books. Post your progress on Twitter with the hashtag #AsianLitBingo.

Eligible Books:

• Fiction books should have an Asian main character (can be one of several main characters) and be by an Asian author to qualify. It does not have to be #ownvoices, but reading #ownvoices books is strongly encouraged!
• Nonfiction books should be by an Asian author with a focus on Asian people, whether it’s a[n] [auto]biography, history book, essay collection, etc. A nonfiction book can count for prompts other than the nonfiction square provided that it that focuses on a person/group that corresponds to that prompt (e.g. an autobiography of a Asian trans woman could count for either the nonfiction category or the LGBTQIAP+ Asian MC category).
• The free space is for any book with an Asian main character by an Asian author.

You could read more about their themed blogs, the contests, and more here.
I’ll be reading the first column:

East Asian MC – Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang

LGBTQIAP+ Asian MC – Rolling the R’s: 20th Anniversary Edition by R. Zamora Linmark

SFF with Asian MC – How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (enhanced e-book) by Charles Yu

Graphic Novel with Asian MC – Monstress Volume 1 by Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda

South East Asian MC – Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory: Theorizing the Filipina/American Experience edited by Melinda L. de Jesus

I’ve held some of these for years. Rolling the R’s was recommended to me during a bibliotherapy session at The Center for Fiction two years ago. And it’s about time I use my kindle. It’s been dead for too long.

I have a lot more Asian American books, some of which isn’t pictured:

Hopefully I’ll get around to some of it though five is plenty. These books below are also in my TBR pile.

Shattered: The Asian American Comics Anthology by Jeff Yang, Parry Shen, Keith Chow, and Jerry Ma.

theMystery.doc by Matthew McIntosh

The Doorbells of Florence by Andrew Losowsky

Hyperart: Thomasson by Genpei Akasegawa and translated by Matt Fargo

On Romantic Love: Simple Truths About a Complex Emotion by Berit Brogaard

I bought Shattered (which I’ve wanted for years, it’s used) and On Romantic Love from Labyrinth Books in Princeton, NJ. Great store and such a lovely town, I need to go back. ORL is also changing how I think about myself and love. I now see that most of my fears are unfounded and irrational, I just need to work on them. I wonder what else I’ll discover. theMystery.doc is an immense experimental book whose MC can’t remember who he is and finds this exact document on the computer. So strange and exhilarating. The Doorbells of Florence involves the author who takes photos of intriguing doorbells and writes flash fiction for them. What a lovely concept. Hyperart: Thomasson is set in Japan, where contributors and the author track down thomassons: “a useless relic or structure that has been preserved as part of a building or the built environment, which has become a piece of art in itself. These objects, although having the appearance of pieces of conceptual art, were not created to be viewed as such. Akasegawa deemed them even more art-like than art itself, and named them ‘hyperart.’”

With Doorbells and Hyperart, I want to read them and leave them behind as #abandonedB2DBC guerilla art. I do a book column for Bored to Death Book Club where I leave behind books, small gifts, literary magazines, and my own written works in public for people to find. Here’s my first column. Still need to work on my second post which happened in August in Washington D.C. (yikes).

Anyway I found a thomasson in my neighborhood, the abe sada, which is the remains of a telephone pole cut down. Although they only cut the top haha. Still I’m so excited to discover it and I plan on leaving the package on a brick ledge close by. Hopefully someone will enjoy it.

Not sure what to write as a creative work. I’ll figure it out once I finish reading those books. Also need to figure out what small gift to leave behind. I hope inspiration strikes soon.

Happy reading!

eileen