Asian Heritage Month

Tod Inlet

Although Tod Inlet is now known as a beautiful hiking spot next to the Butchart Gardens, it also has historical significance for Asian immigrants in B.C. The Vancouver Portland Cement Company was founded at Tod Inlet in 1904, and during its existence, the company employed over 200 Chinese immigrants alongside White and First Nations workers. At least 40 Sikh immigrants also arrived to work for the cement plant in 1906.

The new workers quickly realized that the wages and work conditions at the plant were terrible. They were so bad that 15 workers went on strike and walked twenty kilometers to Victoria to protest. Unfortunately, the situation did not improve, and men continued to die from the work conditions. As the South Asian workers performed their own religious rituals, some of the earliest traditional Sikh cremation ceremonies in B.C. occurred at Tod inlet. After five years, most of the South Asian workers left and relocated to work in sawmills instead. Many of the worker’s descendants still live on Vancouver Island, and artifacts from the cement plant continue to be found at Tod Inlet to this day.

To read more about Tod Inlet’s history, check out Deep and Sheltered Waters from the library.

Paldi

Hide Hyodo Shimizu

A tenacious educator and activist, Hide Hyodo Shimizu was the first Japanese Canadian to teach in B.C.’s education system and a prominent advocator for the right for Japanese Canadians to vote in Canada. She even went to the House of Commons to speak about voting rights in 1936! Although unsuccessful in changing the law, her delegation’s visit helped to raise awareness of the discrimination Asian citizens experienced in Canada.

Shimizu taught for 16 years in Vancouver during a period rife with anti-Asian sentiment, before she was forced into an internment camp during the Second World War. In the camps, Shimizu helped develop a school system for the detained children and trained others to become teachers until the camps closed in 1945. In honour of all her efforts, Shimizu was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1982.

To learn more about Hide Hyodo Shimizu, check out the Hide Hyodo Shimizu Collection on the Nikkei Museum website.

Margaret Gee was a woman who accomplished many firsts for BC and Canada! In 1953, Margaret was the first Canadian woman of Chinese heritage to graduate from UBC Law School and the first Chinese Canadian woman to be called to the bar in BC. She was only 26 at the time! If that wasn’t impressive enough, she was also the first Chinese Canadian female Pilot Office in the Royal Canadian Air Force Reserves.

Margaret was born in Vancouver in 1927 during the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act. She grew up in Vancouver’s Chinatown where her parents operated a bookstore. Three years after the Law Society of BC lifted restrictions barring Chinese Canadians from legal professions, she attended and graduated from law school at UBC. One year later, Gee also became the first Chinese Canadian woman to practise law in British Columbia. She passed away in 1995.

For more information on Margaret Gee, check out this web resource from Toronto Metropolitan University.

Download a PDF version of this booklist here

Behind You By Catherine Hernandez

In the past, Alma watches an entire city become consumed with a manhunt for a serial killer, and in the present she must confront her son’s dangerous behaviour towards his girlfriend. Weaving back and forth in time, Behind You is the story of one girl’s resilience into adulthood and the insidiousness of rape culture.

This Country Is No Longer Yours By Avik Jain Chatlani

The story of people living through the terrorist campaign of the Maoist Shining Path, while struggling to survive amid economic crisis and state collapse. Avik Jain Chatlani explores the ideologies that brutalize the people they claim to represent, and warns of the dangers of zealotry and acts of violence justified in the name of a cause.

The Riveter By Jack Wang

Vancouver, 1942. Josiah Chang wants to serve his country in World War II, but Chinese Canadians are barred from joining the army. So, he settles as a riveter and eventually falls in love with Poppy, a young singer. A gorgeous historical novel about an enthralling cross-cultural love story.

To Place A Rabbit By Madhur Anand

A scientist offers to translate a novella into English for a novelist, but as she embarks on this task, she is haunted by memories of an affair with a French lover. As the scientist tries to complete her task before losing control of her well-organized life, the long-ago lover pops up in the present, further complicating both life and art.

I Never Said That I Was Brave By Tasneem Jamal

An unnamed narrator recounts the shifting dynamics of her lifelong friendship with a girl named Miriam. As childhood immigrants to Canada, the girls are able to assimilate, but in adulthood, they chafe against the traditions and expectations of their South Asian community and their own internalized beliefs about women.

Sisters Of The Spruce By Leslie Shimotakahara

A coming-of-age story on the Queen Charlotte archipelago amidst the spruce forests, full of trees strong enough for loggers to cut to build fighter planes for WWI. Inspired by her ancestors’ experiences, Shimotakahara weaves a tale of female adventure, friendship, and survival.

The River Has Roots By Amar El-Mohtar

In Thistleford, close sisters Esther and Ysabel Hawthorn honour the willow trees, singing to them in thanks for their magic. When Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favour of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond, but also their lives, are put at risk.

The Hypebeast By Adnan Khan

When small-time crook Hamid Shaikh’s girlfriend disappears, he is pulled into the orbit of social media imam Abdul Mohammad. At first, Abdul’s organization seems virtuous, but as Hamid dives deeper, he realizes that things are not as they appear, and he must decide just how far into darkness he is willing to go to find his girlfriend.

Silver Repetition By Lily Wang

Having left China for Canada with her parents as a child, Yuè Yuè yearns to discover who she is as she completes her degree and starts a new relationship. In endless loops of memory and dream, loss and return, Silver Repetition illuminates the fullness of identity despite fractures in language, culture, and relationships.

However Far Away By Rajinderpal S. Pal

A stunning debut novel that follows Devinder Gill, a man who must navigate the emotional minefield of both his wife and his ex-girlfriend, with whom he’s been having an affair, while attending his nephew’s wedding. A sweeping family saga about love, loss, and acceptance―set against the backdrop of a Sikh wedding.

Batshit Seven By Sheung-King

Inventive and irresistible, Sheung-King’s novel encapsulates the anxieties and apathies of the millennial experience. Batshit Seven is a bold take on Asian male identity, an ode to a beloved city, an indictment of imperialism, and a reminder of the beautiful things left under the hype of commodified living.

The Invisible Hotel By Yeji Y. Ham

A work of literary horror in the gothic tradition, The Invisible Hotel is a startling, speculative tale of intergenerational trauma, and ideological adolescence in the long afterlife of the Korean War.

The Tiger And The Cosmonaut By Eddy Boudel Tan

Combining the intrigue of a cracking good suspense novel with the depth of a rich character study, The Tiger and the Cosmonaut tells the story of a Chinese-Canadian family whose members have long made themselves quiet and obedient — and what happens when the cycle is finally broken.

The Wedding By Gurjinder Basran

Centered around the impending marriage of Devi and Baby, The Wedding illustrates the union of two people, two families and all the ways in which an entire community bears witness, ensnares and uplifts itself.

Download a PDF version of this booklist here

Everything And Nothing At All By Jenny Heijun Wills

Devastating and beautifully crafted, these essays breathe life into the ambiguities and excesses of Jenny’s life, where she lingers at the intersections within the intersections of identity. This collection weaves together literary criticism, cultural context, and personal history into a staggering tapestry of knowledge.

In Exile By Sadiya Ansari

Journalist Sadiya Ansari takes us across three continents and back a century as she seeks the truth behind a family secret: why did her grandmother abandon her children? Through her inquiry, Sadiya confronts difficult truths and finds an unexpected sense of belonging in a culture that, at first blush, shuns women for wanting lives of their own.

Restaurant Kid By Rachel Phan

A warm and poignant narrative about finding one’s self amidst the grind of restaurant life, the cross-generational immigrant experience, and a daughter’s attempts to connect with parents who have always been just out of reach.

Transplant By Arvind Koshal

Dr. Arvind Koshal guides readers through operating room doors in the 1980s, as he helps leverage the latest technology for cardiac surgery in Canada. The narrative transports us to an extraordinary era in heart surgery, as well as along Koshal’s own journey from India in 1975, a time when open-heart surgery was in its infancy.

Dear Da-Lê By Anh Duong

In an intense memoir written for his daughter, Anh Duong speaks about the traumas of his childhood in war-torn Vietnam and his years as a refugee in Iran. This book is sure to resonate with anyone seeking to understand the lasting, hidden torments of violent conflict and the healing that can take place in the act of telling.

Crooked Teeth By Danny Ramadan

Danny Ramadan’s memoir refutes the oversimplified refugee narrative and transports readers on an epic and often fraught journey from Damascus to Cairo, Beirut and Vancouver.

Magdaragat By Teodoro Alcuitas

Since first arriving in Canada, the Filipino community has contributed invaluably to the fabric of Canadian society. In this anthology, Magdaragat explores the diverse intricacies of these growing yet underrepresented peoples, continuing the vital work of recognizing and celebrating their cultural contributions.

Dispersals By Jessica J. Lee

In fourteen essays, Dispersals explores the entanglements of the plant and human worlds. Combining memoir, history, and scientific research in poetic prose, Jessica J. Lee meditates on how plants and people come to belong, why both cross borders, and how our futures are more entwined than we imagine.

May It Have A Happy Ending By Minelle Mahtani

A moving memoir by former a Canadian radio host and journalist about growing up in Iranian and Indian in Canada. She dives deep into her parents divorce, motherhood challenges, the complicated relationship she had with her mother and her grief when her mother dies from tongue cancer.

Free The Land By Audrea Lim

An eye-opening examination of how treating land as a source of profit has a massive impact on racial inequality and environmental crises. By approaching these socioeconomic issues holistically, we can imagine just alternatives to fossil-fueled capitalism and a more sustainable, equitable world.

Here After By Amy Lin

A love story and a meditation on the ways in which her husband’s death shatters any set ideas Amy ever held about grief, strength, and memory. Its power will last with you long after the final page.

The Migrant Rain Falls In Reverse By Vinh Nguyen

An inventive memoir about one family’s escape from Vietnam and the father’s mysterious disappearance along the way. Decades later, Nguyen goes looking for answers, and he discovers a sea of questions drifting above sunken truths. An exploration of the psyche of a grieving son, as he chases certainty and seeks elusive resolution.

All The Parts We Exile By Roza Nozari

Roza Nozari braids a tender narrative of her mother’s life together with her own ongoing story of self, as she arrives at, then rejects, her queer identity. Eventually she finds belonging in queer spaces and within queer Iranian histories, and learns the truth about her family’s move to Canada.

Under The White Gaze By Christopher Cheung

Under the White Gaze shows, in the Canadian context, why reporting on race is necessary, how the language is evolving, and why intersectionality increasingly matters in Canadian media. This book is a candid investigation into the state of race in media today that challenges the way we think about the news we read, watch, and listen to.

Download a PDF version of this booklist here

The Lost And Found Department By Joy Kogawa

Kogowa’s profound work of spare, trenchant, and haunting poems lets us stay with the quietest qualities of beauty and the sublime. A career-spanning volume that brings together new and selected works by an iconic voice in Canadian literature.

Vanishing Into The Blue By Kamal Parmar

Kamal Parmar, the Poet Laureate of the City of Nanaimo, BC, paints images on the canvas of our mind and her vivid expressionism opens the doors of imagination to microcosmic and macrocosmic universes. This wonderful, soothing collection of poems is salve for the mind and sooth for the soul.

We Follow The River By Onjana Yawnghwe

The story of one family’s escape from military violence in Myanmar, their exiled existence in Thailand, and their immigration to Canada with only a pile of beat up suitcases on a luggage cart. Intimate and honest, these poems tell of the quiet moments, the rough distillation of self, both hated and loved.

Shima By Shō Yamagushiku

Speaking through a cultural amnesia collected between a sunken past and a sensed, ghostly-dreamed future, Shima anchors the poet’s interrogation of the relationship between father and son in the fragile connective tissue of memory where the poet’s homeland is an impossible destination.

From The Shoreline By Steffi Tad-y

Poet Steffi Tad-y was raised in Manila and is now based in Vancouver; both these places infuse her poetry which reflects on kinship, diaspora, mental illness, and work. Despite some heavy topics, the poems show tenderness and revel in the beauty of mundane life details and acts of love.

A Year Of Last Things By Michael Ondaatjes

In his long-awaited return to poetry, Michael Ondaatje casts a brilliant eye to merge memory with the present. Sometimes witty, sometimes moving, and always wise, he examines how the distant shores of art and lost friends continue to influence everything that surrounds him.

You Still Look The Same By Farzana Doctor

Doctor is a novelist, activist, and psychotherapist who has written her first poetry collection about navigating mid-life as a queer woman of Indian descent. She writes with both humour and honesty about topics like breakups, sex, and love.

Beast At Every Threshold By Natalie Wee

Memories become malleable, pop culture provides a backdrop to queer love, and folklore becomes a radical tool of survival in Wee’s wonderful collection. Beguiling and deeply imagined, Wee’s poems explore thresholds of marginality, queerness, immigration, nationhood, and self-reinvention through myth.

Slows: Twice By T. Liem

This is a book of slow hours, days, and years, and how they can collapse into one another. From within this collapse, the speaker seeks connection everywhere. These poems are tied to themes of work and labour, consumption and waste, family and home, as shapers of identity and relationships.

Exit Wounds By Tariq Malik

Indian Canadian poet Tariq Malik investigates the idea of home in this debut poetry
collection. He writes about his family’s experiences of immigration, war, and
belonging. He uses Punjabi myth, allusions to current news, and Indigenous symbolism from his adopted home.

Are You Listening? By Zaynab Mohammed

Through the painful knocks of colonization, Zaynab Mohammed finds freedom by listening to herself, to others and to the earth. This book is a woven tapestry of transforming pain into beauty, into magic, and into possibility. What her words uncover are a quenching truth that gives the author access to what she lost as a child — her innocence.

Wet By Leanne Dunic

A transient Chinese American model working in Singapore thirsts: for fair labour rights, the extinguishing of forest fires, breathable air, healthy animal habitats, human connection. With empathy and desire, Wet unravels complexities of social stratification, sexual privation, and environmental catastrophe

From The Shoreline By Steffi Tad-y

Poet Steffi Tad-y was raised in Manila and is now based in Vancouver; both these places infuse her poetry which reflects on kinship, diaspora, mental illness, and work. Despite some heavy topics, the poems show tenderness and revel in the beauty of mundane life details and acts of love.

Falling Back In Love With Being Human By Kai Cheng Thom

After a crisis in faith, Kai Chen Thom wrote these poems for the outcasts she calls her kin, for people with good intentions who harm their own, and for racists and transphobes seemingly beyond saving. A transformative collection of love letters that offer a path toward compassion, forgiveness, and self-acceptance.

My Grief, The Sun By Sanna Wani

From concrete to confessional poem, exegesis to erasure, the Missinnihe River in Canada to the Zabarwan Mountains in Kashmir, Wani undoes and complicates genre and gathers the world between the poet’s hands.

Download a PDF version of this booklist here

Takaoka’s Travels By Tatsuhiko Shibusawa

Set in the ninth century, this fantasy follows a Japanese prince-turned-monk on a pilgrimage to India. At every turn, Prince Takaoka is drawn to the beauty around him, but such beauty proves to be extremely dangerous. This novel is seductive and mysterious, offering high adventure while still remaining deeply human.

The River Knows My Name By Mortada Kazar

The fifteen-year-old daughter of a missionary is bored of her everyday life in Iraq, so she runs away. While searching for her, the girl’s father also disappears. With the help of Sister Baghdadli and a guide to the lost named Shathra, Charlotte embarks on a mysterious quest steeped in local lore, to find her father who went looking for her.

One Hundred Shadows By Hwang Jungeun

In a Seoul slum marked for demolition, residents’ shadows have begun to rise, and if your shadow wanders away, you must not follow it. As their neighbourhood is destroyed, Eungyo and Mujae find solace in each other, but against an uncaring ruling class and rising shadows, their connection may not be enough.

Pyre By Perumal Murugan

Saroja and Kumaresan are young and in love, but they are harboring a terrible secret: Saroja is from a different caste than Kumaresan, and if the other villagers find out, they will both be in grave danger. Will their love keep them safe in a world filled with thorns?

Counterattacks At Thirty By Son Won-Pyong

Jihye is an administrative worker, tolerating office politics and Korean bureaucracy, until a new intern, Gyuok Lee, arrives. Gyuok begins carrying out minor revenge and protests against those in powerful positions and Jihye gets swept into the schemes, resulting in a witty, humane, and transformative story.

Silken Gazelles By Jokha Alharthi

The story of two Omani women whose unbreakable connection is forged as nursing sisters, by the first Arabic-language winner of the Man Booker International Prize. When the two girls are separated, Ghazaala is haunted by the disappearance of Asiya and the bond they shared. An unforgettable story of friendship, love, and the impact of childhood.

The Lantern And The Night Moths By Yilin Wang

Five poems from China’s most innovative modern and contemporary poets, selected by Chinese Canadian translator Yilin Wang. Wang’s translations are featured alongside the original Chinese texts, and accompanied by Wang’s personal essays reflecting on the art, craft, and labour of poetry translation.

Our City That Year By Gītāñjali Śrī

A kaleidoscopic novel about a fractured society, loosely based on the gathering violence that eventuated in the demolition of the Babri Mosque by religious extremists in 1992. Our City that Year follows three intellectuals in a time of rising uncertainty and dread, when nothing will go back to being as it was before.

The Blanket Cats By Kiyoshi Shigematsu

Is three days with a cat long enough to change your life? The anxious people of Tokyo are desperate to find out. They all have problems, and they all want to believe that a cat from a unique pet shop can help them find a solution. Three days may not be enough to change your life, but maybe it can be enough to change how you see it.

The Book Censor’s Library By Bothayna Al-Essa

A perilous and fantastical satire of banned books, secret libraries, and the looming eye of an all-powerful government. The Book Censor’s Library is a warning call and a love letter to stories and the delicious act of losing oneself in them.

The City And Its Uncertain Walls By Haruki Murakami

A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for these strange post-pandemic times. The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature’s most important writers.

Brothers And Ghosts By Khuê Phạm

Kim knows little about her Vietnamese family’s history until her estranged uncle informs her that her grandmother is dying. Her father and uncle haven’t spoken since the Vietnam War, as one brother supported the Vietcong, while the other sided with the Americans. At the funeral, questions relating to her family’s past resurface and demand to be addressed.

We Do Not Part By Han Kang

Blurring the lines between dream and reality, We Do Not Part illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history—bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both an ode to friendship and an argument for remembering, this story is a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.

Invisible Kitties By Yoyo Yu

Equal parts magical and humorous, Invisible Kitties tells the story of a young couple that one day accidentally comes into possession of a delightful, playful kitten. This book is a celebration of ordinary life and the felines we love, deftly playing with the invisible boundaries between reality and imagination.

Download a PDF version of this booklist here

Hard is the Journey By Lily Chow

The difficult history of Chinese Canadians in the Kootenay. Chow bravely exposes dark parts of BC’s history while shedding light on the struggles and untold accomplishments of the Chinese immigrants who risked everything and often lost their lives in building the Canada we know today.

Indomitable Canadian Filipinos By Eleanor R. Laquian

This book outlines how a million Filipino immigrants turned hardships into opportunities and a better life in Canada for their children. An ongoing narrative by academicians, researchers, journalists, and essayists of the 70-year history of Filipino immigration to Canada.

Spirit of the Nikkei Fleet By Masako Fukawa

Even in the face of prejudice and inhumanity, the spirit of the Nikkei fishermen has left a memorable legacy. An intimate collection of stories of Japanese Canadians on thewater, from the first Japanese immigrant’s arrival in 1877 to the present day.

Witness to Loss By Jordan Stanger-Ross

Kishizo Kimura’s  previously unknown memoir, translated and published for the first time. More complex than just hero or villain, oppressor or victim, Kimura raises important questions about the meaning of resistance and collaboration and the constraints faced by an entire generation.

An Uncommon Road  By Gian Singh Sandhu

A riveting, incisive account of some of the most complex modern Canadian politics, from the founder of the World Sikh Organization of Canada. This book provides a moving roadmap for how individuals and a community can fight for their own social justice and, in doing so, gain justice for all.

Saltwater City By Paul Yee

A text resonant with often painful first-person recollections combined with 200 photographs, most reproduced for the first time, to form achronological portrait of the Chinese Canadian community in Vancouver from its earliest beginnings to the present.

Being Chinese in Canada By William Ging Wee Dere

This comprehensive work looks at Chinese workers’ huge role in building the CPR and the following Chinese head tax. Dere gives voice to generations of Chinese Canadians, including his family, and discusses the head tax redress movement.

Chiru Sakura By Grace Eiko Thomson

As an advocate for reconciliation, Thomson openly shares her story and her mother’s story with the next generations. A vital memoir by two Japanese Canadian women reflecting on their family history, cultural heritage, generational trauma, and the meaning of home.

Great Fortune Dream By Chuen-yan Lai

The struggles and triumphs of Chinese settlers in Canada during the gold rushes. What began as a population of displaced Chinese migrants working to save their fortune for a better life back in China evolved into a community of Chinese Canadians, one withroots firmly planted in the history and culture of Canada.

White Riot By Henry Tsang

These essays and photographs discuss the 1907 anti-Asian riots in Vancouver. They consisted of a demonstration and mob attack on Chinese and Japanese Canadian communities. The book explores the events through the lens of current anti-Asian hate.

A Journey with the Endless Eye  By Ajmer Rode

This book narrates the Komagata Maru tragedy, in which 376 Indian passengers were imprisoned on a steam ship, and then turned away from entering the country by Canadian Immigration. With paintings and short narratives, Rode blends the history, drama and emotional impact of the incident into one.

The Diary of Dukesang Wong By Dukesang Wong, Wendy Joy Hoe (Translation)

This remarkable book contains the only known first-person account of a Chinese worker on 19th century railways. Translated by Wong’s granddaughter, the diary chronicles Wong’s experiences on Gold Mountain, including exploitation, comradery, sickness, starvation, work, and racism.

Paper Shadows By Wayson Choy

From his experiences with ghosts, through his youthful encounters with cowboys and bachelor uncles, to his discovery of family secrets from mainland China to Gold Mountain in the form of paper shadows, this is a beautifully wrought memoir from one of Canada’s most gifted storytellers.

The Nail That Sticks Out By Suzanne Elki Yoko Hartmann

This memoir and fourth-generation narrative of the Japanese Canadian experience bridges the individual and collective to celebrate family, places, and traditions. Steeped in history and cultural arts, it shows us how a community triumphed over adversity to rebuild and become stronger.

Asian Canadian History and Archives: Created by the University of British Columbia, this archive compiles over 60 collections featuring the records of Asian Canadians. From personal journals to administrative records of early Asian Canadian businesses, from drafts of novels to photo albums and travel documents, the materials included in this guide are representative of a vital group of voices that deserve recognition for all of their contributions to Canadian history. Be sure to check out the archive’s incredible StoryMap as well!

South Asian Canadian Heritage Website: This website highlights the many historical projects, research, and databases which have been created and organized by the South Asian Studies Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley and its partnerships. With over 90 community stories collected on the website as well, it’s also a great resource for learning and appreciating more recent South Asian Canadian history too!

The British Columbia Encyclopedia: This database is the definitive reference database on historical and contemporary British Columbia. Have a look at the entries for South Asians, Japanese, and Chinese in particular.

The Canadian Encyclopedia’s Asia Canada Timeline: A chronological record of over 200 years of history since the first Chinese settlers helped build a trading post in Nootka Sound. It touches on the settlement history of various Asian groups, the discrimination that many suffered in our early history, accomplishments, firsts, biographies, and the gradual changes through which Canadian society came to accept the rights and equality of its Asian immigrants.

Heritage BC’s Cultural Maps: Explore Heritage B.C.’s wonderful cultural heritage maps for Chinese Canadian, Japanese Canadian, and South Asian Canadian historic places. These maps are a community-sourced project, created to highlight the diverse stories, heritage, and history of British Columbia.

The Knowledge Network: The content of this publicly funded TV network serving B.C. is available online. Check out the Asia Pacific content!

Check out these FREE streaming movies available through Kanopy, a database available with your library card, and the National Film Board of Canada. Some are full feature length and some are shorts. All are great and librarian-recommended! In parentheses after each film name there is an indication of which Asian identities, cultures, and/or countries are represented.

Legend for symbols:

Canadian  

Woman-Directed

LGBTQ+ Content

Documentaries

1. One Big Hapa Family: The Japanese Canadian Identity  (Japan)
2. Shalom Bollywood (India)
3. Genghis Khan and the Rise of the Mongols  (China)
4. Sleeping Tigers: The Asahi Baseball Team (Japan)  
5. Cricket and Parc-Ex: A Love Story: Immigrants and Sports in a Vibrant Canadian Neighbourhood (Bangladesh, Pakistan)
6. Mallamall (India)  
7. Painted Nails  (Vietnam)
8. Slaying the Dragon  (Multiple Asian Identities)
9. Namrata (India)
10. Western Eyes  (Philippines, Korea)  
11. The Bassinet (China)    
12. Becoming Labrador  (Philippines)  
13. Earth to Mouth (China)
14. Gayasians  (Multiple Asian Identities)  
15. Sentenced Home: The Deportation of Cambodian Americans  (Cambodia)
16. The Split Horn: The Life of A Hmong Shaman in America  (Hmong)
17. The Slanted Screen: Hollywood’s Representation of Asian Men in Film & Television  (Multiple Asian Identities)
18. First Person Plural  (Korea)
19. A Thousand Mothers  (Myanmar)
20. The Donut King  (Cambodia)

Narrative / Fictional Film

1. Old Stone (China)
2. Funeral Parade with Roses (Japan)
3. Bollywood Beats (India)  
4. Sweet Bean  (Japan)
5. Shanghai Triad  (China)
6. The Tag Along  (Taiwan)
7. What Will People Say  (Pakistan)
8. Remittance  (Philippines)
9. The Handmaiden  (Korea)
10. Pop Aye  (Thailand) 
11. Ploy  (Thailand)
12. The Third Wife (Vietnam)
13. Daughter of the Nile  (Taiwan)
14. Dukhtar (Pakistan)
15. By the Time It Gets Dark (Thailand)
16. Becoming Who I Was (Tibet)
17. 1000 Rupee Note (India)
18. Cemetery of Splendor (Thailand)
19. The Rocket (Laos)
20. In Her Place (Korea)

Animated Films

1. Minoru: Memory of Exile (Japan)
2. A Letter to Momo (Japan)
3. Seoul Station (Korea)
4. The Girl Who Hated Books (India)
5. Sister (China)
6. Flowing Home (coming soon) (Vietnam)
7. Roses Sing on New Snow (China)
8. Lights for Gita  (India)

Want more Asian movies? You can find browse all the movies marked Asian Studies on Kanopy. On Kanopy, also check out the pages for Chinese Cinema, Japanese Cinema, Indian Cinema, Filipino Cinema and Korean Cinema. On the National Film Board’s website, you can browse all content marked Asian Origin (note that while most NFB films are free to watch, a few are not).

Mango Languages is a sophisticated, high quality, go-at-your-own-pace language learning tool that is FREE with your library card. You can start as a beginner or take a placement test to assess where you should start in the program. Asian Languages you can learn include:

• Bengali
• Cantonese
• Hindi
• Indonesian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Malay
• Mandarin
• Punjabi
• Shanghainese
• Tagalog
• Tamil
• Thai
• Vietnamese

AND MORE! Get your library card number handy and an email address, and sign up today!