As an idea, “Asian America” is always a bit of a moving target, with as many reasons for us to push towards it as away from it, at times. In my work with the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans we know there are over 60 different groups and ethnicities each charting their own course in the United States, while the Association for Asian American Studies, established in 1979, turns 47 this year, which isn’t that long in the history of the United States.
People from Asia began appearing in the histories of the US as early as 1587, but many of us see the 1850s as a key period where immigrants from China and elsewhere become an ongoing part of our social conversations. The history of Asian American literature, especially its poets is still a work in progress, but a major milestone was when the July/August 2017 issue of Poetry Magazine gave a spotlight to Asian American poets for the first time since its founding in 1912.
The idea of the spotlight was “to introduce new readers to Asian American poets and to help those who are interested in learning more about these poets and their poetry. It is an ongoing project to make visible the vastness and variety of U.S. literary culture and to expand our notions of human experience in our time.” It was most recently updated in 2021.
This was a somewhat contentious listing initially, and there are some who have various academic disputes about the idea of Asian America as a concept and what counts for inclusion. Do you include those who go on to live outside of America, or those who never become US citizens, even if they live most of their lives here? Adoptees, or people who write only in English or in their heritage languages? Does this include East Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Pacific Islands, or just few of those zones? Do you include those who expressly don’t want to be called Asian American for whatever rationale? There are a thousand questions that I won’t go into here. But there can be many interesting reasons to look for poets with roots in the continent of Asia and the Pacific Islands and diasporas connected to it.
What becomes challenging however, is coming up with a current guide or directory to Asian American poets at any given point in time.
Most extant directories are very vulnerable to getting out of date quickly, and we don’t seem to have counterparts to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. You’ll find information about individual poets at Academy of American Poets, for example, but next to nothing about Asian America. The Smithsonian Asian Pacific Center, Asian American Writers Workshop, Kearny Street Workshop also don’t have extensive guides that are presently poet specific. Kundiman has a list of fellows who’ve participated in their program and recently stopped differentiating between those who are strictly poets and those who are writing prose instead of or in addition to poetry and not all Asian American poets have participated in their program. The Wikipedia page on Asian American Writers is also very out of date, and we also have the emerging problem that it is very difficult to add in new poets or even to make simple updates since the process has become much more strict in recent years in addition to certain ongoing bias problems. But for now here's a list some of you may find helpful:
Aria Aber
Dilruba Ahmed
Zubair Ahmed
Ai
Meena Alexander
Agha Shahid Ali
Kazim Ali
Hala Alyan
Indran Amirthanayagam
Cynthia Arrieu-King
Fatimah Asghar
Ruth Awad
Rick Barot
Arlene Biala
Quan Barry
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Tamiko Beyer
Jaswinder Bolina
Jenny Boully
Luis Cabalquinto
Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello
Tina Cane
Nick Carbó
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Dorothy Chan
Michelle Chan Brown
Wo Chan
Jennifer Chang
Tina Chang
Victoria Chang
Cathy Linh Che
Chen Chen
Ching-In Chen
Ken Chen
Justin Chin
Marilyn Chin
Wendy Chin-Tanner
Su Cho
Eric Chock
Franny Choi
Teresa Mei Chuc
Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis
Brian Komei Dempster
Tsering Wangmo Dhompa
Linh Dinh
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
Tishani Doshi
Carolina Ebeid
Tarfia Faizullah
Farnoosh Fathi
Monica Ferrell
Megan Fernandes
Naoko Fujimoto
Shamala Gallagher
Eric Gamalinda
Sarah Gambito
Eugene Gloria
Vince Gotera
Jessica Hagedorn
Minal Hajratwala
Sadakichi Hartmann
Raza Ali Hasan
Sharon Hashimoto
Kimiko Hahn
Jennifer Hasegawa
Lee Herrick
Anna Maria Hong
Cathy Park Hong
Garrett Hongo
Tung-Hui Hu
Luisa A. Igloria
Lawson Fusao Inada
Hiromi Itō
Paolo Javier
Ha Jin
W. Todd Kaneko
Summi Kaipa
Bhanu Kapil
Vandana Khanna
Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley
Maxine Hong Kingston
Myung Mi Kim
Suji Kwock Kim
Juliet Kono
Amitava Kumar
David Lau
Dipika Mukherjee
Alan Chong Lau
Ae Hee Lee
Ed Bok Lee
Esther Lee
Karen An-hwei Lee
Li-Young Lee
Priscilla Lee
Sueyeun Juliette Lee
Joseph O. Legaspi
Mari L’Esperance
Genny Lim
Sandra Lim
Shirley Geok-Lin Lim
Tan Lin
Tao Lin
Yuxi Lin
Timothy Liu
Lo Kwa Mei-En
Trisha Low
Pamela Lu
Gerald Maa
Amit Majmudar
Mai Mang
Randall Mann
Sally Wen Mao
Wong May
Dunya Mikhail
Janice Mirikitani
Nadia Misir
James Masao Mitsui
Rajiv Mohabir
Mary Anne Mohanraj
Mong-Lan
Faisal Mohyuddin
David Mura
Kristin Naca
Sawako Nakayasu
Vivek Narayanan
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Rick Noguchi
Yone Noguchi
Hoa Nguyen
Diana Khoi Nguyen
William Oandasan
Matthew Olzmann
Shin Yu Pai
Hannah Sanghee Park
Ishle Yi Park
Oliver de la Paz
Craig Santos Perez
Sasenarine Persaud
Hai-Dang Phan
Bao Phi
Mali Phonpadith
Krysada Panusith Phounsiri
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Michelle Naka Pierce
Jon Pineda
Wang Ping
A. K. Ramanujan
Bino A. Realuyo
Srikanth Reddy
Paisley Rekdal
Barbara Jane Reyes
Atsuro Riley
Lee Ann Roripaugh
Patrick Rosal
Brynn Saito
Nicky Sa-eun Schildkraut
Sudeep Sen
Vijay Seshadri
Ravi Shankar
Solmaz Sharif
Prageeta Sharma
Brenda Shaughnessy
Brandon Shimoda
Sun Yung Shin
Anis Shivani
Beau Sia
Brandon Som
Cathy Song
Christopher Spaide
Brian Kim Stefans
Adrienne Su
Arthur Sze
Eileen R. Tabios
Jeff Tagami
Dujie Tahat
Alex Tarampi
Souvankham Thammavongsa
Bryan Thao Worra
Jeet Thayil
Barbara Tran
Paul Tran
Truong Tran
Pimone Triplett
Amy Uyematsu
Mai Der Vang
Pramila Venkateswaran
Catzie Vilayphonh
Ocean Vuong
Divya Victor
Sharon Wang
Ronaldo V. Wilson
Jane Wong
Janet Wong
Nellie Wong
David Woo
Koon Woon
Khaty Xiong
Lynn Xu
Wendy Xu
Mitsuye Yamada
Jeffrey Yang
John Yau
Emily Jungmin Yoon
Mia You
Monica Youn
C. Dale Young
Timothy Yu
Jenny Zhang
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