Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. Seward Park Library’s Lower East Side Heritage Collection.The New York Public Library Community Oral History Project’s Chinatown Legacy Project.Please note that the materials in this collection are for reference only and must remain at the branch. Chatham Square Library’s Chinese Heritage Collection: a repository of Chinese and English language reference materials on Chinese history and literature, with emphasis on the Chinese experience in the United States.Growing Up Chinese-American: Books for Young Readers by Sue Yee.Chinese American Food: Stories of Odds and Ends by Raymond Pun.Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Recommendation: 'Asian Americans' Documentary on PBS by Arthur Ling>.For more reading recommendations, check out these blog posts: *Note: For the purposes of this blog post, we took an expansive view of the Chinese diaspora and defined it based on the shared ethnic ancestry of those outside mainland China, but we recognize that the full complexity of the diaspora is beyond the scope of this article. Similarly, identities are not tied to one place, but to many places at once.' ― Erika Lee, The Making of Asian Americaīelow is a small collection of contemporary titles and authors that encompasses a wide range of narratives and genres spanning the global Chinese diaspora experience.* The list begins in Chinatown but ends in many places, showing the “fluid, multidirectional” identities that continue to thrive and flourish. “Today's Asian immigrant journeys are fluid, multidirectional, and global.

Whatever the experience, Chinatown is an embedded and important part of the Chinese diasporic memory, but not the only topic worth considering. But to many people of the global Chinese diaspora, however, Chinatown is something more, its liminality defined by symbols of a nostalgic, imagined homeland and a fraught, racist history. For some New Yorkers, Chinatown is the place to get authentic “cheap” food and unfamiliar snacks-a place where they can gawk at busy sidewalk markets and experience a vibrant culture without really leaving the comforts of their city.

Pao by Kerry Young