inventory: an autumn reading list (decolonised)

white people's classics? nah-uh.

Note: This post will be cut off in emails because of its length. It is best read in the app or on the Substack website. Apologies for the inconvenience.

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I made some “bad” decisions this year: like reading all the cosy books on my TBR in the middle of summer. How could anyone enjoy reading about fireplaces, baking, and kitchen stoves when it’s 45 degrees outside? Well, there is no perfect or set time for a book. Yes, it’s fun to integrate seasonal routines, but if you’ve had reading blocks, you know the only rule about reading is letting yourself enjoy the moment. Even if that moment is about hopping through thirty different books until you land on a sappy middle-grade novel about wizards and bakeries. That’s okay. You don’t have to be a literary connoisseur all the time, nobody cares! It’s fine to turn off some of your critical filters and just have fun.

That sounds like plausible advice until you reach the border between escapism and discrimination.

When I was looking for cosy books to read, I could not help but notice that the majority of the recommendations were made up of white authors, which is interesting because East Asian fiction has a plethora of comforting and cosy books. And look, I am not dismissing white people’s writings. I have a literature degree; I’ve read (and enjoyed) a lot of their classics, and continue to do so.

But it still angers me.

It angers me that it’s always “books like Legends and Lattes” and not “Welcome to Hyunam-dong Bookshop”. These two books were published in the same year (2022). The first is a genre-definer, everyone’s cosy fantasy awakening. The latter is a favourite only among existing East Asian literature fans.

It angers me that it’s always “books like The Bell Jar” and not “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”.

It angers me that “gothic fiction” lists are made of the same names over and over again: Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Emily Bronte, Oscar Wilde, Shirley Jackson, and Edgar Allen Poe. Is that really it? They were not the first writers of gothic fiction, they were the only ones titled so.

It angers me that people wait for apologies and explanations from Colleen Hoover and the cast of It Ends With Us for its depiction of domestic violence instead of putting that energy into promoting books like In the Dream House. They refuse to read outside of their bubble and would rather boil in it.

Why do we have to look up non-white people’s ethnicities to find their books? Why must we search “poetry books by Persian authors” because no general poetry list features them? (other than subpar and whitewashed translations of Rumi).

The book industry largely caters to a white audience that believes black, brown, and Asian are sufficient identity markers for people of colour; the kind of people who don’t wonder why “must-read” lists are always brimming with British and American classics, who don’t wonder why the books they read only nod to Latin, Greek, French, Russian and German languages, or why the Arab character in Albert Camus’ The Stranger is unnamed, the kind of people who follow booksta girlies that don’t have any opinions or values—only aesthetics. The kind of people who will rave about how pretty the coloured women of Bridgerton are, but will never seek them out in a non-white, non-English setting.

So after channelling all of that anger, I present to you my spoiler-free autumn reading list. I hope you enjoy the recommendations and forgive me for stomping over your favorite English classics. The quotes are mostly opening lines or something from the first fifty pages.

• Everything Cosy

• Gothic Fiction

• Poetry

• Non-fiction

Everything Cosy

My definition of cosy is something that tiptoes around explicit horror, violence, and gore, but is still grounded in everyday issues such as racism, sexism, fatphobia, and grief. Cosy books are atmospheric, with warm-yellow lights and a compassionate cast of characters. More often than not, they also feature delicious descriptions of food. Think studio ghibli films, beaches, libraries, restaurants, and bookshops. They are reality on lite mode, but real nonetheless.

Goodreads has only one tag for this selection of books: cosy-mystery, whereas Japanese works have 癒し系 (iyashikei) or “healing”, although my definition covers slice-of-life as well.

作りたい女と食べたい女 (Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna), Sakaomi Yuzaki

English: She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat, Caleb Cook (Translator)

Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna is an ongoing manga series that follows the story of Yuki Nomoto, a woman who enjoys cooking but struggles with her small appetite, and Totoko Kasuga, her neighbour who loves to eat. The two connect on their love for food as they navigate life, stereotypes, and friendship. Each volume ends with a glossary of all the food mentioned. It is perfect for anyone who’s a fan of bonding over a shared meal.

As someone who has struggled with manga and anime for years because of their portrayal of women, I can confidently say Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna singlehandedly restored my love for them.

The Nameless Restuarant, Tao Wong

There is a restaurant in Toronto. It’s on a side street in the depths of Kensington Market, on the borders between old Chinatown and the market itself. Far from the towering skyscrapers of downtown and away from the cheap and easy eats frequented by the students of the University of Toronto.

Its entrance is announced only by a simple, unadorned wooden door, varnished to a beautiful shine but without paint, hidden beside dumpsters and a fire escape. There is no sign, no indication of what lies behind the door.

You know those obscure local restuarants that fantasy characters step into for a quick meal? Yeah, that’s exactly what The Nameless Restaurant is about. It’s a simple checkpoint where humans and supernaturals alike sit down for a warm lunch or dinner. Each book in the series is dedicated to one form of cuisine or another. The first centres on Malaysian food, with mouthwatering descriptions that will linger in your mind long after the book’s over. For fans of epic fantasies: this is the interlude you’re looking for.

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, Sangu Mandanna

The Very Secret Society of Witches met on the third Thursday of every third month, but that was just about the only thing that never changed. They never met in the same place twice; the last meeting, for instance, had been in Belinda Nkala’s front room and had involved freshly baked scones, and the one before that had been in the glorious sunshine of Agatha Jones’s garden. This meeting, on a cold, wet October afternoon, happened to be taking place on a tiny, abandoned pier in the Outer Hebrides.

A pier. In the Outer Hebrides. In October.

Mika Moon has an estranged relationship with the senior-most witch in Britain who believes witches should never live under the same roof or even in the same neighbourhood to avoid problems. But when Mika receives an invitation to tutor three young girls from a secluded place conveniently named Nowhere House, she has to decide whether those rules are out of date. The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches is an enchanting story about a found family of witches, a grumpy librarian, retired actors, and the importance of not letting childhood grudges taint adult relationships.

魔女の宅急便 (Majo no Takkyūbin), Eiko Kadono

English: Kiki’s Delivery Service, Emily Balistrieri (Translator)

It was love at first flight. So of course she decided to become a witch.

“It’s in your blood,” Kokiri said with delight, but Kiki told herself, No, it’s not just that. I decided for myself.

A heart-warming tale that inspired Hayao Miyazaki to make a Studio Ghibli adaptation, Kiki’s Delivery Service is about a young witch who has only one superpower: flying. At the age of thirteen, Kiki must live somewhere far from home independently as part of her training. Set in a seaside town and punctuated by a witty black cat named Jiji, this children’s fantasy novel has all the whimsical fantasy and delight of your favourite childhood books.

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, Jesse Q. Sutanto

Vera Wong Zhuzhu, age sixty, is a pig, but she really should have been born a rooster. We are, of course, referring to Chinese horoscopes. Vera Wong is a human woman, thank you very much, but roosters have nothing on her. Every morning, at exactly four thirty, Vera’s eyelids snap open like roller shades shooting up. Then the upper half of her body levitates from the mattress—no lazy rolling out of bed for Vera, though admittedly sitting up in bed now comes with about half a dozen clicks and clacks of her joints. She swings her fuzzy-socked feet out with gusto and immediately finds the slippers she placed next to her bed with military precision the night before. She takes a quick moment to send a text to her son, reminding him that he’s sleeping his life away and should have been up and at it before her. He is, after all, a young man with a whole world to conquer. Late mornings, Vera believes, are only for toddlers and Europeans.

We’ve all read about dead bodies in bakeries. But, how about a tea house? No ordinary teahouse, mind you, Vera Wang’s World Famous Teahouse is a homage to the Chinese art of tea making. The 60-year-old is a staunch, indomitable lover of authentic tea, so when she discovers a dead man lying in her shop one morning, she sets out to find all the details. As she navigates through her list of suspects (with a warm homecooked meal), Vera finds something else too: friendship and family. My favourite parts of the novel were her interactions with a first-time mother trying to climb out of the ditch of insecurity left by her toxic (but now dead) husband.

お探し物は図書室まで (Osagashimono wa Toshoshitsu Made), Michiko Aoyama

English: What You Are Looking for is in the Library, Alison Watts (Translator)

‘What are you looking for?’

Her voice … it’s so weird … it nails my feet to the floor. As if it has physically grabbed hold of me somehow. But there’s a warmth in it that wraps itself around me, making me feel safe and secure, even when it comes from that unsmiling face.

What am I looking for? I’m looking for … A reason to work, something I’m good at – stuff like that. But I don’t think that’s the kind of answer she expects. ‘Um, I’m looking for books on how to use a computer.’

Made up of short, relatable stories, What You Are Looking for is in the Library is a reminder that sometimes you just need to slow down and curl up with a good book. It is a celebration of third spaces but without the atmospheric romanticisation that comes with it. Robin Sloan describes it as “a novel about the bone-deep thrill of things working out”. He further writes about how the defining characteristic of the library is not the rich smell of books, it is the impact those books have on the lives of the readers.

Unfortunately, there is a problem in the novel that has been left unaddressed by the author: fatphobia. Although it is a minor part of the stories, I cannot fathom why it was necessary to describe the librarian by her weight every time a new character visited her. Once is understandable, but to portray all Japanese people as being shocked at the sight of someone bigger than them is…questionable, to say the least.

어서오세요, 휴남동 서점입니다 (oso oseyo, hyunam-dong sojom imnida), Hwang Bo-Reum

English: Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, Shanna Tan (Translator)

Yeongju stood by the door and watched his retreating figure before turning into the bookshop. The moment she stepped inside, she relaxed, as if her body and senses basked in the comfort of returning to her workplace. In the past, she used to live by mantras like passion and willpower, as if by imprinting the words on her mind, they would somehow breathe meaning into her life. Then one day she realised it felt like she was driving herself into a corner, and she resolved never to let those words dictate her life again.

As I mentioned earlier, Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop is the cosy genre awakening that does not get talked about enough. It’s not perfect, books as soft as these require a certain mood. I even dropped it midway a few times before I was ready to appreciate the story, and it was worth the retries.

It sounds typical: a burned-out woman in her twenties opening up a bookshop with a small cafe and figuring out how to serve and create a community. But she is not an apothecary; Yeonju is active on the social and business side of the endeavour. While she seeks real connections with her customers, she also understands the risk that comes with running such a shop and takes the initiative to keep it going. A beautiful blend of self-discovery and doubt, individual bravery and community, Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop is a tribute to living life on your own terms and being meticulous about it.

キッチン (Kitchin), Banana Yoshimoto

English: Kitchen, Megan Backus (Translator)

The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. White tile catching the light (ting! ting!).

I love even incredibly dirty kitchens to distraction—vegetable droppings all over the floor, so dirty your slippers turn black on the bottom. Strangely, it’s better if this kind of kitchen is large. I lean up against the silver door of a towering, giant refrigerator stocked with enough food to get through a winter. When I raise my eyes from the oil-spattered gas burner and the rusty kitchen knife, outside the window stars are glittering, lonely.

After her grandmother passes away, Mikage moves in with Yuichi Tanabe, the boy who shares her grief, and his charismatic and loving transgender mother Eriko. As Mikage forms new bonds (and endlessly admires their kitchen), she collects the strength to take a step forward and pursue culinary school. When Yuichi begins to fall behind, she lends him a hand and helps him find his way. Kitchen is thus about food, family, and the simple ways of healing.

Crying in H-Mart, Michelle Zauner

Neither one of my parents graduated from college. I was not raised in a household with many books or records. I was not exposed to fine art at a young age or taken to any museums or plays at established cultural institutions. My parents wouldn’t have known the names of authors I should read or foreign directors I should watch. I was not given an old edition of Catcher in the Rye as a preteen, copies of Rolling Stones records on vinyl, or any kind of instructional material from the past that might help give me a leg up to cultural maturity. But my parents were worldly in their own ways. They had seen much of the world and had tasted what it had to offer. What they lacked in high culture, they made up for by spending their hard-earned money on the finest of delicacies. My childhood was rich with flavor—blood sausage, fish intestines, caviar. They loved good food, to make it, to seek it, to share it, and I was an honorary guest at their table.

Michelle Zauner is the lead vocalist of the band Japanese Breakfast (my favourite song of theirs is The Body is a Blade). As evident from the title, her memoir is centred around H-mart, a Korean grocery store that reminds her of her mother. She goes into detail about her family’s love for food and the cultural heritage she grew up with. Culinary traditions are often the only peek we get into our mother’s lives. It is the only connection that children of immigrants can actually feel to the grandparents they rarely get to meet. As someone whose mother was isolated from these traditions, reading this memoir filled me with a longing I never knew I had: for my mother and for the grandmother who was bedridden and unable to speak by the time I met her when I was six, who passed away soon after.

Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai

A pair of pink plastic chopsticks. A bowl full of instant noodles. The smell of chicken stock and jasmine tea. Steam starts to tickle my nose. Popo, my grandmother, watches me from her lacquered chair.

This is one of my very early memories, where the shapes are blurred and colours flare out in waves. Pink and yellow plastic, deep blue Tibetan carpet. I don’t know if all the parts are real, but I do know what happened next. When no one was looking, I flipped the bowl. The rim hit the table with a clatter, flinging out noodles and sending my chopsticks onto the floor. My mother shouted Aiyah! as I knew she would. But in the memory-dream, Popo doesn’t move. She sits still, watching me.

While it has some of the same touches as Crying in H-mart, Tiny Moons is a reflective travelogue rather than a deeply personal memoir of grief. Powles’ essays focus on her year in Shanghai, the sensory experience of the city and the connection she feels to the food.

Gothic Fiction

*All of these books have one or more content warnings. Although I have not included them in the reviews, you can find them on thestorygraph.

Beloved, Toni Morrison

124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old—as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard). Neither boy waited to see more; another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and strewn in a line next to the door-sill.

Not to be cliche since Beloved is already a popular pick for gothic fiction, but I could not help myself. When I finished reading it, it seemed to me a genre definer. Set in post-Civil War Ohio, the story revolves around Sethe, an escaped enslaved woman whose house is haunted by her deceased daughter. The rich lyrical prose and non-linear writing were tough to get into at first, but it quickly gripped me and left a permanent heart-wrenching impression.

Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The parties at the Tuñóns’ house always ended unquestionably late, and since the hosts enjoyed costume parties in particular, it was not unusual to see Chinas Poblanas with their folkloric skirts and ribbons in their hair arrive in the company of a harlequin or a cowboy. Their chauffeurs, rather than waiting outside the Tuñóns’ house in vain, had systematized the nights. They would head off to eat tacos at a street stand or even visit a maid who worked in one of the nearby homes, a courtship as delicate as a Victorian melodrama. Some of the chauffeurs would cluster together, sharing cigarettes and stories. A couple took naps. After all, they knew full well that no one was going to abandon that party until after one A.M.

An atmospheric blend of gothic horror and post-colonial critique, Mexican Gothic has it all: a headstrong heroine unravelling dark secrets in an eerie castle on a forgotten hill, a cemetery, and well, the iron chain of patriarchy. It reinvents the gothic tradition while paying homage to fairytales and classics such as Snow White and Wuthering Heights. Highly recommended for lovers of immersive, atmospheric books.

海辺のカフカ (Umibe no Kafuka), Haruki Murakami

English: Kafka on the Shore, Philip Gabriel (Translator)

From the back of another drawer I take out a photo of me and my older sister when we were little, the two of us on a beach somewhere with grins plastered across our faces. My sister's looking off to the side so half her face is in shadow and her smile is neatly cut in half. It's like one of those Greek tragedy masks in a textbook that's half one idea and half the opposite. Light and dark. Hope and despair. Laughter and sadness. Trust and loneliness.

For my part I'm staring straight ahead, undaunted, at the camera.

Kafka on the Shore is a double deal; the novel intertwines the lives of Kafka Tamura, a teenager who runs away from home, and Nakata, a mysterious elderly man. Both of their stories are gripping, surreal, and full of intricate symbolism as they traverse their separate yet connected paths towards self-discovery. Murakami also references Oedipus Rex and the Metamorphosis, adding yet another layer to their multifaceted story.

Siren Queen, Nghi Vo

Wolfe Studios released a tarot deck’s worth of stories about me over the years. One of the very first still has legs in the archivist’s halls, or at least people tell me they see it there, scuttling between the yellowing stacks of tabloids and the ancient silver film that has been enchanted not to burn.

Siren Queen echoes the struggles and triumphs of classic Hollywood tales, the ones riddled with passion, mystery, sacrifice, and danger. The story follows a Chinese American actor, Luli Wei, as she navigates her rise to stardom on her own. What makes it stand out is the cultural commentary on the inescapable racism and greed, and the light yet captivating touch of the supernatural that taints everything and everyone in the novel.

The Magic Fish, Trung Le Nguyen

The Magic Fish is a heart-touching story of a young Vietnamese American boy named Tiến and his mother, Helen, who asks him to read her old fairytales. Throughout this practice, Tiến hopes to find the words to come out to his parents, and Helen tries to communicate her own story to her son. The rich, colourful artwork mirrors their confusing and stark reality as well as the magic of storytelling until the two blend together in shared understanding.

Poetry

Almond Blossoms and Beyond, Mahmoud Darwish

In autumn I delight to see the commonness of colors,

no throne holds the humble gold in the leaves of humble trees

who are equal in the thirst for love.

I delight in the truce between armies,

awaiting the contest between two poets,

who love the season of autumn, yet differ

over the direction of its metaphors.

In autumn I delight in the complicity between

vision and expression.

The Veiled Suite, Aga Shahid Ali

Those autumns my parents slept

warm in a quilt studded

with pieces of mirrors

On my mother’s arms were bangles

like waves of frozen rivers

and at night

after the prayers

as she went down to her room

I heard the faint sound of ice

breaking on the staircase

breaking years later

into winter

Time is a Mother, Ocean Vuong

Stand back, I’m a loser on a winning streak.

I got your wedding dress on backward, playing air guitar in these streets.

I taste my mouth the most & what a blessing.

The most normal things about me are my shoulders. You’ve been warned.

Where I’m from it’s only midnight for a second

& the trees look like grandfathers laughing in the rain.

For as long as I can remember I’ve had a preference for mediocre bodies, including this one.

How come the past tense is always longer?

Is the memory of a song the shadow of a sound or is that too much?

Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I imagine Van Gogh singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” into his cut ear & feeling peace.

Green voices in the rain, green rain in the voices.

Non-fiction

Discours sur le colonialisme, Aimé Césaire

English: Discourse on Colonialism, Joan Pinkham (Translator)

A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization.

A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization.

A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization.

The fact is that the so-called European civilization-"Western" civilization-as it has been shaped by two centuries of bourgeois rule, is incapable of solving the two major problems to which its existence has given rise: the problem of the proletariat and the colonial problem; that Europe is unable to justify itself either before the bar of "reason" or before the bar of "conscience"; and that, increasingly, it takes refuge in a hypocrisy which is all the more odious because it is less and less likely to deceive.

Calligraphy and Architecture in the Muslim World, Mohammad Gharipour and Irvin Cemil Shick

While no agreement seems to be in sight as to the parameters of such categories as ‘Islamic art’ and ‘Islamic architecture’, nor even as to whether or not they are meaningful in the first place, there can be little doubt that calligraphy is a ubiquitous feature of art and architecture throughout the Muslim world. It is, in other words, one of the most persistent ‘Islamic’ or ‘Islamicate’ elements in art and architecture.

This popularity of calligraphy is often attributed to the supposed iconophobia of Islam. Yet, while representations of animate objects have indeed been shunned in religious architecture, there is evidence that similar concerns were often raised about calligraphy as well.

Sumi-e, the Art of Japanese Ink Painting, Shozo Sato

Suiboku-ga and Sumi-e is commonly described as art done in monochrome, with the use of sumi ink and handmade paper. Sumi-e means “black ink painting” (sumi = black ink; e = painting). The ideogram 墨: which is read sumi in Japanese can also be read as boku in Chinese, and as is true of most Asian art and culture, the roots of Japanese painting are found in China.

The early stages of monochrome art became a recognized genre during the ninth century in China, and suiboku-ga (sui = water; boku = sumi ink; ga= painting) was gradually disseminated throughout the Far East. These paintings were usually done on silk. Later, when handmade paper became readily available, the spreading of sumi ink upon that new, absorbent surface created another, different form of monochrome painting.

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Behind the Scenes

Because you scrolled this far.

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Wait, Why Don’t All the Books Have a Review or Description?

I tried and…I failed. For two months, I stared at this list every single day willing myself to get it done. It became so stressful to the point that I was tempted to delete this post altogether. In the end, I reminded myself that this is my newsletter and there are no rules here except for giving it my all and being the first supporter of my work. The reviews in this list are still my first and I can be proud of them instead. This is my best right now and that’s okay.

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Thank you so much for reading! If you pick up a book from this list, I’d love to hear your thoughts.