List of Leadership Books by AAPI Authors
We researched a list of leadership related books written by Americans of Asian and Pacific Islander heritage.
We at my company, CuriosityBased, are passionately committed to promoting leadership narratives written by women and people of color. We created this list to promote leadership narratives written by Americans of Asian Pacific Islander (API) heritage. Working on this list has inspired us to commit to researching and creating lists of leadership-related books by other groups of authors underrepresented in the leadership category.
When we pulled books from Amazon's Top 100 leadership recommendations, there were 8 books by AAPI authors. We realized we would have to expand the definition of "leadership book" beyond a book specifically designed to teach leadership skills. There were a few existing lists of AAPI authors of any genre. We scoured lists of AAPI leaders to see if they had written books or had biographies written about them by AAPI authors.
We included memoirs by leaders who talked about their leadership journeys, bios of leaders written by AAPI authors, self-published books like Maureen Francisco's “It Takes Moxie” to those published by major trade press like Vice President Kamala Harris’s “The Truths We Hold.”
The list has books by poker champions, tech executives, journalists, comedians, and chefs. That said, our current list even with such a broad definition of "leadership book" is less than 80 books.
This list is meant to be a resource, not an official endorsement. The books are not ranked or listed in any particular order. This is not a ranked list of books we endorse. We haven't read or even heard of most of them before our research. We want to celebrate any leadership-related books by AAPI authors. Our list is far from complete.
Please send us recommendations of authors and titles we should add.
Download the PDF of the list here. We will update the PDF from time to time.
I just heard about Sour Hearts by Jenny Zhang yesterday. It it not about leadership but an immigrant story on how a family went through the Chinese Cultural Revolution and came to America. I plan on reading it because my grandparents were survivors of those darker days and it resonates with me.