Association for Asian American Studies Book Award

For information about the Association for Asian American Studies, sponsor of this award, click here.

2016
Humanities & Cultural Studies (Literary Studies): Cold War ruins : transpacific critique of American justice and Japanese war crimes by Lisa Yoneyama
Humanities & Cultural Studies (Interdisciplinary/Media Studies): Resounding Afro Asia : interracial music and the politics of collaboration by Tamara Roberts
Social Sciences: Elusive refuge : Chinese migrants and the Cold War by Laura Madokoro
History: Rightlessness : testimony and redress in U.S. prison camps since World War II by Naomi Paik
Creative Writing (Prose): Green Island by Shawna Yang Ryan
Creative Writing (Poetry): Look by Solomaz Sharif

2015
Humanities & Cultural Studies (Literary Studies): A shadow over Palestine : the imperial life of race in America by Keith Feldman
Humanities & Cultural Studies (Multidisciplinary Approaches): Death beyond disavowal : the impossible politics of difference by Grace Kyungwon Hong
Social Sciences: The Asian American achievement paradox by Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou
History: The good immigrants : how the yellow peril became the model minority by Madeline Y. Hsu
Creative Writing (Prose): The sympathizer : a novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Creative Writing (Poetry): Marilyn by Amanda Ngoho Reavey

2014
Cultural Studies: The exquisite corpse of Asian America : biopolitics, biosociality, and posthuman ecologies by Rachel Lee
Creative Writing: Poetry: Split by Cathy Linh Che
Creative Writing: Prose: Fox Drum Bebop by Gene Oishi
Social Science: Insufficient funds : the culture of money in low-wage transnational families by Hung Cam Thai; Honorable Mention: Islam is a foreign country : American Muslims and the global crisis of authority by Zareena Grewal
History: The color of success : Asian Americans and the origins of the model minority by Ellen Wu
Literary Criticism: Thinking its presence : form, race, and subjectivity in contemporary Asian American poetry by Dorothy J. Wang

2013
Cultural Studies: Securing paradise : tourism and militarism in Hawai'i and the Philippines /  by Vernadette Gonzalez
Creative Writing: Poetry: The Nanjing Massacre : poems by Wing Tek Lum
Creative Writing: Prose: A tale for the time being by Ruth Ozeki
Social Science: Academic profiling : Latinos, Asian Americans, and the achievement gap by Gilda Ochoa
History: Bengali Harlem and the lost histories of South Asian America by Vivek Bald
Literary Criticism: The children of 1965 : on writing, and not writing, as an Asian American by Min Hyoung Song

2012
Cultural Studies: Puro arte : Filipinos on the stages of empire by Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns; The gift of freedom : war, debt and other refugee passages by Mimi Nguyen
Poetry/Prose: Lament in the night by Nagahara Shoson ; translated by Andrew Leong
Social Sciences: Laotian daughters : working toward community, belonging, and environmental justice by Bindi V. Shah; Life beyond the lobby : Indian American motel owners and the American dream by Pawan Dhingra
History: Pacific connections : the making of the U.S.-Canadian borderlands by Kornel Chang
Literary Studies: The semblance of identity : aesthetic mediation in Asian American literature by Christopher Lee; Honorable Mention: Transpacific femininities : the making of the modern Filipina by Denise Cruz

2011
Cultural Studies: Freedom with violence : race, sexuality, and the US state by Chandan Reddy; Beautiful generation : Asian Americans and the cultural economy of fashion by Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu
Poetry/Prose: Significant moments in da life of Oriental faddah and son : one Hawai'i Okinawan journal by Lee A. Tonouchi
Social Sciences: Terrifying Muslims : race and labor in the South Asian diaspora by Junaid Rana; Honorable Mention: Muslims in motion : Islam and national identity in the Bangladeshi diaspora by Nazli Kibria
History: Subverting exclusion : transpacific encounters with race, caste, and borders, 1885-1928 by Andrea Geiger; Honorable Mention: The quest for statehood : Korean immigrant nationalism and U.S. sovereignty, 1905-1945 by Richard S. Kim
Literary Studies: Ingratitude: The Debt-Bound Daughter in Asian American Literature by Erin Khuê Ninh; Honorable Mentions: Relative histories : mediating history in Asian American family memoirs by Rocio G. Davis; Interracial encounters : reciprocal representations in African American and Asian American literatures, 1896-1937 by Julia Lee

2010
Cultural Studies: Dream factories of a former colony : American fantasies, Philippine cinema by J. B. Capino; Honorable Mention: Partly colored : Asian Americans and racial anomaly in the segregated South by Leslie Bow
Poetry/Prose: Seven controlled vocabularies and obituary 2004. The joy of cooking : [AIRPORT NOVEL MUSICAL POEM PAINTING FILM PHOTO HALLUCINATION LANDSCAPE] by Tan Lin; I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita; Honorable Mention: You have given me a country by Neela Vaswani
Social Sciences: Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean adoptees and the politics of belonging by Eleana Kim; Honorable Mention: Migrants for export : how the Philippine state brokers labor to the world by Robyn M. Rodriguez
History: Brokering belonging : Chinese in Canada's exclusion era, 1885-1945 by Lisa Rose Mar; Honorable Mentions: Chinese American transnationalism : the flow of people, resources, and ideas between China and America during the exclusion era by Him Mark Lai; Angel Island : immigrant gateway to America by Erika Lee and Judy Yung
Literary Studies: Foreign accents : Chinese American verse from exclusion to postethnicity by Steven Yao

2009
Cultural Studies: Unsettled visions : contemporary Asian American artists and the social imaginary by Margo Machida; Honorable Mention: Missing : youth, citizenship, and empire after 9/11 by Sunaina Maira
Poetry/Prose: Blue boy by Rakesh Satyal
Social Sciences: Ethnoburb : the new ethnic community in urban America by Wei Li
History: A tragedy of democracy : Japanese confinement in North America by Greg Robinson
Literary Studies: Race and the avant-garde : experimental and Asian American poetry since 1965 by Timothy Yu

2008
Cultural Studies: Digitizing race : visual cultures of the Internet by Lisa Nakamura
Poetry/Prose: Evening is the whole day by Preeta Samarasan; Honorable Mention: Happy family by Wendy Lee; Unending Nora by Julie Shikeguni
Social Sciences: Mothers without citizenship : Asian immigrant families and the consequences of welfare reform by Lynn Fujiwara; American Muslim women : negotiating race, class, and gender within the ummah by Jamillah Ashira Karim
History: The shifting grounds of race : black and Japanese Americans in the making of multiethnic Los Angeles by Scott Kurashige; Honorable Mention: Asian American art : a history, 1850-1970, edited by Gordon H. Chang, with Mark Dean Johnsonm, Paul J. Karlstrom, and Sharon Spain
Literary Studies: Apparitions of Asia : modernist form and Asian American poetics by Josephine Nock-Hee Park; Honorable Mention: Asian Canadian writing beyond autoethnography by Eleanor Ty and Christl Verduyn

2007
Cultural Studies: The hypersexuality of race : performing Asian/American women on screen and scene by Celine Parreñas Shimizu; Terrorist assemblages : homonationalism in queer times by Jasbir K. Puar
Poetry/Prose: Mouth by Lisa Chen; The last communist virgin : stories by Wang Ping
Social Sciences: Asian diasporas : new formations, new conceptions, edited by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas and Lok C. D. Siu; Honorable Mentions: Managing multicultural lives : Asian American professionals and the challenge of multiple identities by Pawan Dhingra; Legacies of struggle : conflict and cooperation in Korean American politics by Angie Y. Chung
History: Sessue Hayakawa : silent cinema and transnational stardom by Daisuke Miyao
Literary Studies: Interventions into modernist cultures : poetry from beyond the empty screen by Amie Elizabeth Parry; Honorable Mention: Begin here : reading Asian North American autobiographies of childhood by Rocio Davis

2006
Cultural Studies: American tropics : articulating Filipino America by Allan Punzalan Isaac; Honorable Mention: The ruptures of American capital : women of color feminism and the culture of immigrant labor by Grace Kyungwon Hong
Poetry/Prose: My American Kundiman : poems by Patrick Rosal; Buffalo Boy and Geronimo : a novel by James Janko
Social Sciences: Unruly immigrants : rights, activism, and transnational South Asian politics in the United States by Monisha Das Gupta
History: Coolies and cane : race, labor, and sugar in the age of emancipation by Moon-Ho Jung; Creating masculinity in Los Angeles's Little Manila : working-class Filipinos and popular culture, 1920s-1950s by Linda Espana-Maram; Honorable Mention: Before internment : essays in prewar Japanese American history by Yuji Ichioka (edited Gordon Chang and Eiichiro Azuma)

2005
Cultural Studies: America's Asia : racial form and American literature, 1893-1945 by Colleen Lye
Poetry/Prose: Circle : poems by Victoria Chang; A long stay in a distant land : a novel by Chieh Chieng; Honorable Mention: Bodies in motion : stories by Mary Anne Mohanraj
Social Sciences: Memories of a future home : diasporic citizenship of Chinese in Panama by Lok Siu
History: Between two empires : race, history, and transnationalism in Japanese America by Eiichiro Azuma; The Chinatown trunk mystery : murder, miscegenation, and other dangerous encounters in turn-of-the-century New York City by Mary Ting Li Lui; Honorable Mention: Americans first : Chinese Americans and the Second World War by Kevin Scott Wong

2004
Cultural Studies: The world next door : South Asian American literature and the idea of America by Rajini Srikanth
Poetry/Prose: Year of the snake by Lee Ann Roripaugh; We shall never meet by Aimee Phan; Honorable mentions: The temperature of this water by Ishle Yi Park; Children
of a fireland by Gary Pak; Special Citation: Restless wave : my life in two worlds by Ayako Tanaka Ishigaki
Social Sciences: Chineseness across borders : renegotiating Chinese identities in China and the United States by Andrea Louie; Honorable Mentions: Mobilizing an Asian American community by Linda Trinh Võ; Ethnic routes to becoming American : Indian immigrants and the cultures of citizenship by Sharmila Rudrappa
History: Impossible subjects : illegal aliens and the making of modern America by Mae Ngai; Survivors : Cambodian refugees in the United States by Sucheng Chan; Honorable Mention: The star-entangled banner : one hundred years of America in the Philippines by Sharon Delmendo

2003
Social Sciences: Home bound : Filipino American lives across cultures, communities, and countries by Yen Le Espiritu
Poetry/Prose: All around what empties out by Linh Dinh; The book of salt by Monique T. D. Truong
History: Empire of care : nursing and migration in Filipino American history by Catherine Ceniza Choy; At America's gates : Chinese immigration during the exclusion era, 1882-1943 by Erika Lee
Cultural Studies: Fresh talk, daring gazes : conversations on Asian American art, edited by Elaine Kim, Margo Machida, and Sharon Mizota; Honorable Mention: Global divas : Filipino gay men in the diaspora by Martin Manalansan

2002
History: Japanese American celebration and conflict : a history of ethnic identity and festival, 1934-1990 by Lon Kurashige; Remaking Chinese America : immigration, family, and community, 1940-1965 by Xiaojian Zhao
Cultural Studies: Compositional subjects : enfiguring Asian/American women by Laura Hyun Yi Kang
Social Sciences: Brokered homeland : Japanese Brazilian migrants in Japan by Joshua H. Roth

2001
Social Sciences: Callaloo or tossed salad? : East Indians and the cultural politics of identity in Trinidad by Viranjini P. Munasinghe
Cultural Studies: Picturing Chinatown : art and orientalism in San Francisco by Anthony Lee
History: Contagious divides : epidemics and race in San Francisco's Chinatown by Nayan Shah
Prose/Prose: American son : a novel by Brian Ascalon Roley; Special Award for Most Outstanding Reference Tool on Asian American History: The Columbia guide to Asian American history by Gary Y. Okihiro

2000
Cultural Studies: Cultural compass : ethnographic explorations of Asian America by Martin Manalansan
History: Dreaming of gold, dreaming of home : transnationalism and migration between the United States and South China, 1882-1943 by Madeline Yuan-yin Hsu
Poetry/Prose: Wishbone by Priscilla Lee; The barbarians are coming : a novel by David Wong Louie

1999
History/Social Sciences: Claiming America : constructing Chinese American identities during the exclusion era, edited by K. Scott Wong and Sucheng Chan; New York before Chinatown : Orientalism and the shaping of American culture, 1776-1882 by John Kuo Wei Tchen
Poetry/Prose: Bulletproof Buddhists and other essays by Frank Chin
Cultural Studies: Flexible citizenship : the cultural logic of transnationality by Aihwa Ong; Q & A : queer and Asian American, edited by David Eng and Alice Hom

2000
No awards given

1999
No awards given

1997-1998
History/Social Sciences: The Korean American dream : immigrants and small business in New York City by Kyeyoung Park
Cultural Studies/Literary: About face : performing race in fashion and theater by Dorinne K. Kondo
Poetry: Pacific windows : collected poems of Roy K. Kiyooka by Roy K. Kiyooka

1996
Immigrant acts : on Asian American cultural politics by Lisa Lowe
Caught in the middle : Korean merchants in America's multiethnic cities by Pyong Gap Min

1995
History: Unbound feet : a social history of Chinese women in San Francisco by Judy Yung; Special Award: Dear Miye : letters home from Japan, 1939-1946 by Mary Kimoto Tomita
Cultural Studies: Sui Sin Far/Edith Maude Eaton : a literary biography by Annette White-Parks
Literature: A feather on the breath of God by Sigrid Nunez

1994
Romance and the "yellow peril" : race, sex, and discursive strategies in Hollywood fiction by Gina Marchetti
Organizing Asian American labor : the Pacific Coast canned-salmon industry, 1870-1942 by Cris Friday
Songs my mother taught me : stories, plays, and memoir by Wakako Yamauchi
The first suburban Chinatown : the remaking of Monterey Park, California by Timothy Fong

1993
Saturday night at the Pahala Theatre by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
Japanese immigrant clothing in Hawaii, 1885-1941 by Barbara Kawakami
Bone : a novel by Faye Myenne Ng
Asian American panethnicity : bridging institutions and identities by Yen Le Espiritu

1992
Earshot by Kimiko Hahn
The retreat from race : Asian-American admissions and racial politics by Dana Takagi
To save China, to save ourselves : the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance of New York by Renqiu Yu
Racial formations/critical transformations : articulations of power in ethnic and racial studies in the United States by Epifanio San Juan Jr.
The watcher of Waipuna and other stories by Gary Pak

1991
Cane fires : the anti-Japanese movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945 by Gary Y. Okihiro
Pass on, no pass back! by Darrell H. Lum
Japanese American ethnicity : the persistence of community by Stephen S. Fugita and David J. O’Brien
And the view from the shore : literary traditions of Hawai'i by Stephen H. Sumida

1990
Dogeaters by Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn
Quiet odyssey : a pioneer Korean woman in America by Mary Paik Lee

1989
Making waves : an anthology of writings by and about Asian American women, edited by Asian Women United of California
Strangers from a different shore : a history of Asian Americans by Ronald Takaki
Hearts of sorrow : Vietnamese-American lives by James M. Freeman

1988
The Issei : the world of the first generation Japanese immigrants, 1885-1924 by Yuji Ichioka
Seventeen syllables and other stories by Yamamoto Hisaye

1987
This bittersweet soil : the Chinese in California agriculture, 1860-1910 by Sucheng Chan

1986
Expounding the doubtful points by Wing Tek Lum
Working in Hawaii : a labor history by Edward D. Beechert
Japanese legacy : farming and community life in California's Santa Clara Valley by Timothy J. Lukes and Gary Y. Okihiro
Chinese gold : the Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region by Sandy Lydon