by Senior Circulation Librarian Thomas Rutigliano
This May, the Lynnfield Public Library is honoring Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month with two thoughtful and engaging displays that spotlight the stories, voices, and creativity of Asian American and Pacific Islander authors, filmmakers, and artists.
Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, observed every May, celebrates the history, achievements, and cultural contributions of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders across the United States.
The library’s displays invite patrons to explore a wide range of experiences through books and films that highlight identity, family, resilience, creativity, and representation.
Lights, Camera, Action!
One display features a collection of acclaimed films created by or centered around Asian American voices. Selections include award-winning and culturally impactful titles such as
Minari directed by Lee Issac Chung
In the 1980s, Korean immigrant Jacob Yi (Steven Yuen) sought his piece of the American dream when he packed up his family from California for an Arkansas parcel where he’d farm his homeland’s produce. The strains of their new existence, and the fitful bonding of sickly son David (Alan Kim) with the grandmother (Oscar-winner Youn Yuh-jung) come to help care for him, are lyrically explored in writer-director’s Lee Isaac Chung’s acclaimed, semi-autobiographical opus. Yeri Han, Noel Kate Cho co-star. 105 min. Widescreen; Soundtrack: English.
Joy Ride directed by Adele Lim
Lawyer Audrey (Ashley Park) shouldn’t have lied about being fluent in Mandarin, because her firm ordered her to China to close a deal-and she had to bring artist and lifelong bestie Lolo (Sherry Cola) to translate. Joined by Lolo’s asocial cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), and meeting up with Audrey’s soap star/college roomie Kat (Stephanie Hsu), the quartet are set for a series of raunchy and revelatory escapades. Adele Lim’s outrageous farce co-stars Ronny Chieng, Annie Mumolo, David Denman. 95 min. Widescreen; Soundtrack: English.
Your Name directed by Makoto Shinkai
The day the stars fell, two lives changed forever. High schoolers Mitsuha and Taki are complete strangers living separate lives. But one night, they suddenly switch places. Mitsuha wakes up in Taki’s body, and he in hers. This bizarre occurrence continues to happen randomly, and the two must adjust their lives around each other. Yet, somehow, it works. They build a connection and communicate by leaving notes, messages, and more importantly, an imprint. When a dazzling comet lights up the night’s sky, something shifts, and they seek each other out wanting something more-a chance to finally meet. But try as they might, something more daunting than distance prevents them. Is the string of fate between Mitsuha and Taki strong enough to bring them together, or will forces outside their control leave them forever separated?
Killing Eve Season 1 directed by Harry Bradbear
DVD
Eve is a bored, whip-smart, pay-grade MI5 security officer whose deskbound job doesn’t fulfill her fantasies of being a spy. Villanelle is a mercurial, talented killer who clings to the luxuries her violent job affords her. Follow these two women, equally obsessed with each other, as they go head to head in an epic game of cat and mouse.
Kill Bill Vol 1 directed by Quinten Tarintino
Four years after taking a bullet in the head at her own wedding, the bride emerges from a coma and decides it’s time for payback … with a vengeance. Having been gunned down by her former boss and his deadly squad of international assassins, it’s a kill-or-be-killed fight. She didn’t start this deadly series of events, but she is determined to finish the business.
and Godzilla vs. Biollante directed by Kazuki Omori
Godzilla rises up from his volcanic grave and must fight a mutated rosebush to save Earth.
Kanopy
If streaming is your thing we have plenty of films to choose from on Kanopy. If you have any questions on how to use Kanopy don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
Infernal Affairs directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak
Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau Tak-wah face off in the thriller that revitalized the city-state’s twenty-first-century film industry. Two undercover moles—a police officer (Leung) assigned posing as a gangster, and a gangster (Lau) posing as a police officer—find themselves locked in a game of cat and mouse. As the shifting loyalties, murky moral compromises, and deadly betrayals mount, INFERNAL AFFAIRS raises haunting questions about what it means to live a double life.
Mu Mu, a joyful 7-year-old, grows up in a loving deaf community with her father, Xiao Ma. Their peaceful life is disrupted when her estranged mother, Xiao Jing, returns, pushing Mu Mu into the hearing world. As Mu Mu struggles to connect, she discovers that love and communication go beyond words.
Mother directed by Bong Joon Ho
In this haunting mystery thriller from director Bong Joon Ho (Parasite), a devoted mother (Kim Hye-ja) embarks on a desperate quest to prove her intellectually disabled son’s innocence after he’s arrested for the brutal murder of a young girl. As she plunges into the seedy underbelly of their small town, her investigation uncovers buried secrets and moral ambiguity.
Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival.
Hot Spring Shark Attack directed by Morihito Inoue
In a small hot spring town in Japan, a ferocious ancient shark reawakens and begins terrorizing the local hot spring facilities. As the threat escalates, the townspeople band together to protect their beloved town from the menacing predator, leading to a fierce and thrilling battle.
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi
Adapting sci-fi author Yasutaka Tsutsui’s famous 1967 novel, THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME cast Tomoyo Harada in her feature film debut, launching the Kadokawa pop idol into superstardom. After suffering a fainting spell in her school’s laboratory, 16-year-old Kazuko Yoshiyama (Harada) begins to experience a strange phenomenon throughout her daily life—temporal leaps backward and forward in time—disorienting her as she relives moments time and time again, as days past return to present. Lost in a sea of time, Kazuko’s desperate plead to exist in the present are answered, amidst the swell of FX wizardry, musical overtures and, most of all, the anchor of young love. Lyrical, romantic and longing, Obayashi’s film is a genuine expression of the filmmaker’s reflections on the poetic transcendence of love—cast across the stars for a young girl who lives in tomorrow.
Road to Boston directed by Kang je-gyu
In the 1936 Berlin Olympics, marathon gold medalist Son Ki-jeong set a world record. On the award podium, where the national anthem played, he covered his chest with a flowerpot to hide the Rising Sun flag. Overnight, he became a national hero, but he could no longer run due to Japanese oppression. After liberation in 1947 in Seoul, Son Ki-jeong appears before Seo Yun-bok, who is expected to become the next Son Ki-jeong, and proposes endless participation in the Boston Marathon. It’s all to regain the glory of the Berlin Olympics, which was under Japanese control, and to run with the Korean flag on their chests for the first time!
Books That Celebrate Diverse Voices
A second display near the circulation desk showcases books by Asian American and Pacific Islander authors and public figures. Featured titles include memoirs, fiction, history, and cultural studies, such as:
- Making a Scene by Constance Wu
“Growing up in the friendly suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, Constance Wu was often scolded for having big feelings or strong reactions. ‘Good girls don’t make scenes,’ people warned her. And while she spent most of her childhood suppressing her bold, emotional nature, she found an early outlet in local community theater—it was the one place where big feelings were okay—were good, even. Acting became her refuge, her touchstone, and eventually her vocation. At eighteen she moved to New York, where she’d spend the next ten years of her life auditioning, waiting tables, and struggling to make rent before her two big breaks: the TV sitcom Fresh Off the Boat and the hit film Crazy Rich Asians. Through raw and relatable essays, Constance shares private memories of childhood, young love and heartbreak, sexual assault and harassment, and how she ‘made it’ in Hollywood. Her stories offer a behind-the-scenes look at being Asian American in the entertainment industry and the continuing evolution of her identity and influence in the public eye. Making a Scene is an intimate portrait of pressures and pleasures existing in today’s world.”
- Connie by Connie Chung
Book Large Print eBook Eaudiobook
- You Know What You Did by K.T. Nguyen
Annie “Anh Le” Shaw grew up poor, but seems to have it all now: a dream career, a stunning home, and a devoted husband and daughter. When Annie’s mother, a Vietnam War refugee, dies suddenly one night, Annie’s carefully curated life begins to unravel. Her obsessive-compulsive disorder, which she thought she’d vanquished years ago, comes roaring back—but this time, the disturbing fixations swirling around in Annie’s brain might actually be coming true.A prominent art patron disappears, and the investigation zeroes in on Annie. Spiraling with self-doubt, she distances herself from her family and friends, only to wake up in a hotel room—naked, next to a lifeless body. The police have more questions, but with her mind increasingly fractured, Annie doesn’t have answers. All she knows is this: She will do anything to protect her daughter—even if it means losing herself.With dizzying twists, You Know What You Did is both a harrowing thriller and a heartfelt exploration of the refugee experience, the legacies we leave for our children, and the unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters.
- Love in the Library by Maggie Tokuda-Hall
Book Playaway Wonderbook eAudiobook
To fall in love is already a gift. But to fall in love in a place like Minidoka, a place built to make people feel like they weren’t human—that was miraculous. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Tama is sent to live in a War Relocation Center in the desert. All Japanese Americans from the West Coast—elderly people, children, babies—now live in prison camps like Minidoka. To be who she is has become a crime, it seems, and Tama doesn’t know when or if she will ever leave. Trying not to think of the life she once had, she works in the camp’s tiny library, taking solace in pages bursting with color and light, love and fairness. And she isn’t the only one. George waits each morning by the door, his arms piled with books checked out the day before. As their friendship grows, Tama wonders: Can anyone possibly read so much? Is she the reason George comes to the library every day? Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s beautifully illustrated, elegant love story features a photo of the real Tama and George—the author’s grandparents—along with an afterword and other back matter for readers to learn more about a time in our history that continues to resonate.
- The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See
Book Large Print Audiobook CD ebook
A new novel from Lisa See, the New York Times bestselling author of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, about female friendship and family secrets on a small Korean island. Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends that come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger. Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook’s differences are impossible to ignore. The Island of Sea Women is an epoch set over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War and its aftermath, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires.
- Sea People: puzzle of polynesia by Christina Thompson
For more than a millennium, Polynesians have occupied the remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean, a vast triangle stretching from Hawaii to New Zealand to Easter Island. Until the arrival of European explorers they were the only people to have ever lived there. Both the most closely related and the most widely dispersed people in the world before the era of mass migration, Polynesians can trace their roots to a group of epic voyagers who ventured out into the unknown in one of the greatest adventures in human history.
How did the earliest Polynesians find and colonize these far-flung islands? How did a people without writing or metal tools conquer the largest ocean in the world? This conundrum, which came to be known as the Problem of Polynesian Origins, emerged in the eighteenth century as one of the great geographical mysteries of mankind.
- Viewfinder memoir of seen and being seen by Jon M. Chu
Long before he directed Wicked, In The Heights, or the groundbreaking film Crazy Rich Asians, Jon M. Chu was a movie-obsessed first-generation Chinese American, helping at his parents’ Chinese restaurant in Silicon Valley and forever facing the cultural identity crisis endemic to children of immigrants. Growing up on the cutting edge of twenty-first-century technology gave Chu the tools he needed to make his mark at USC film school, and to be discovered by Steven Spielberg, but he soon found himself struggling to understand who he was. In this book, for the first time, Chu turns the lens on his own life and work, telling the universal story of questioning what it means when your dreams collide with your circumstances, and showing how it’s possible to succeed even when the world changes beyond all recognition. With striking candor and unrivaled insights, Chu offers a firsthand account of the collision of Silicon Valley and Hollywood—what it’s been like to watch his old world shatter and reshape his new one. Ultimately, Viewfinder is about reckoning with your own story, becoming your most creative self, and finding a path all your own.
- Year of the Tiger by Alice Wong
In Chinese culture, the tiger is deeply revered for its confidence, passion, ambition, and ferocity. That same fighting spirit resides in Alice Wong. Drawing on a collection of original essays, previously published work, conversations, graphics, photos, commissioned art by disabled and Asian American artists, and more, Alice uses her unique talent to share an impressionistic scrapbook of her life as an Asian American disabled activist, community organizer, media maker, and dreamer. From her love of food and pop culture to her unwavering commitment to dismantling systemic ableism, Alice shares her thoughts on creativity, access, power, care, the pandemic, mortality, and the future. As a self-described disabled oracle, Alice traces her origins, tells her story, and creates a space for disabled people to be in conversation with one another and the world. Filled with incisive wit, joy, and rage, Wong’s Year of the Tiger will galvanize readers with big cat energy.
Stop by the Lynnfield Library this month to explore the collection and celebrate AAPI Heritage Month through stories that inform, entertain, and inspire.