Welcome to AsiaBookCenter! Your source for Asian American literature, Asian studies, Ethnic Studies, language learning, traditional Chinese medicine and martial arts books.  This online website is operated by Eastwind Books of Berkeley which has been serving the reading public since 1982. Individual and institutional special orders are welcomed. If you cannot locate a title on our database, please fill out the contact form on the left and let us know what titles you need. Store Hours: 11-6 PM Monday through Saturdays, Sundays 12noon-5PM. Pacific Time.
New release available at Eastwind:
STAND UP! [More Info]	STAND UP: An Archive Collection of the Bay Area Asian American Movement, 1968-1974 Asian Community Center Archive Group. Stand Up chronicles the beginning of the Bay Area Asian American movement through an unprecedented collection of period newspaper articles, documents, and photographs. From the Third World Liberation Front student strikes at San Francisco State College and University of California Berkeley campuses, to the formation of the Asian American Political Alliance, this book traces the origins of student concerns and follows the movement into the Asian American communities, by focusing on the International Hotel tenants fight against eviction and the formation of the Asian Community Center in San Francisco Chinatown-Manilatown. "The Asian American Movement of the 1960s-70s has been largely ignored by those who have researched and written about the civil rights and social justice movements of those turbulent decades.  Asian Community Center Archive Group has done an excellent job of compiling the key documents that give us a historical overview of the issues and organizations that contributed to the emergence of the Asian American Movement.  Most importantly, it will be an important organizational tool for today's activists in their efforts to educate youth in their communities about the historic role Asian Americans have played in our nation's history of struggles for racial/ethnicand social justice." (Carlos Muñoz, Jr., author of "Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement") ISBN 978-0-615-27903-9  Price $20.  222 pages.  8.5 x11 inches. Trade paperback.  Publisher: Eastwind Books of Berkeley.

AOKI: A Documentary Film

AOKI is a documentary film chronicling the life of Richard Aoki (1938-2009), a third-generation Japanese American who became one of the founding members of the Black Panther Party. Filmed over the last five years of Richard's life, this documentary features extensive footage with Richard and exclusive interviews with his comrades, friends, and former students. Viewers will learn about Richard's childhood in a WWII Japanese American concentration camp, growing up in West Oakland, and serving eight years in the U.S. military. The film explores previously unknown facts about the formation of the Black Panther Party such as how Richard became intimately involved in its founding and contributed the first two firearms to the Party. AOKI highlights how Richard's leadership also made a significant impact on individuals and groups in the contemporary Asian American Movement. Richard's contributions to the groundbreaking organization Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) and its involvement in the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) student strike led to the formation of ethnic studies at U.C. Berkeley. Above all else, AOKI is a film that demonstrates the incredible dedication to justice that one man's life has had and how the lessons of solidarity, commitment, and discipline can carry on from one generation to the next.a

Price: $20.00 ISBN: 728028003871 DVD

The Boat

The Boat by Nam Le

A dazzling, emotionally riveting debut collection: the seven stories in Nam Le's "The Boat" take us across the globe as he enters the hearts and minds of characters from all over the world. Whether Nam Le is conjuring the story of 14-year-old Juan, a hit man in Colombia, or an aging painter mourning the death of his much-younger lover, or a young refugee fleeing Vietnam, crammed in the ship's hold with 200 others, the result is unexpectedly moving and powerful. This is an extraordinary work of fiction that takes us to the heart of what it means to be human, and announces a writer of astonishing gifts.

Price: $15.00 ISBN: 0307388190 Trade Paper

A Good Fall

 A Good Fall by Ha Jin

With the same profound attention to detail that is a hallmark of his previous acclaimed works of fiction National Book Award winner Ha Jin gives us a collection of stories that delves into the experience of Chinese immigrants in America.

Price: $24.95 ISBN: 9780307378682  Hardcover

Thousand Years of Good Prayers

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers:Stories by Li, Yiyun

Yiyun Li's A Thousand Years of Good Prayers is a remarkable debut -- as acute and authentic-sounding about the domestic effect of cross-cultural change in modern China as Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies was about India. Also like that book, it's one of those rare short story collections where you find yourself reading one perfectly realized gem after the next.

Price $13.95 ISBN: 9780812973334 Trade Paper

Miles from Nowhere

Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun

In raw and beautiful prose, debut novelist Mun delivers the story of a young woman who is at once tough and vulnerable, world-weary and naive, faced with insurmountable odds and yet fiercely determined to survive. In the process, Mun creates one of the most indelible characters in recent fiction.

Price: $14.00 ISBN: 9781594483981 Trade Paper

Eternal Smile

The Eternal Smile by Yang, Gene Luen

This collaboration between multiple-award winners Yang (American Born Chinese) and Kim (Same Difference and Other Stories) is an eagerly awaited event that actually pays off. Yang writes and Kim illustrates in a medley of different styles united by meticulous detail, almost throwaway beauty and riveting storytelling. All three stories deal with levels of fantasy and how humans use it to escape or transcend everyday tedium and suffering.

Price: $16.95 ISBN: 9781596431560 Trade Paper

Factory Girls

Factory Girls:Voices from the Heart of Modern China by Chang, Leslie T 

 'Head and shoulders above almost all other new books about China, this unflinching and yearningly compassionate portrait of the lives and loves of ordinary Chinese workers is quite unforgettable' - Simon Winchester. Every year in China millions of migrant workers leave their rural towns to find jobs in the cities. These people are the driving forces behind China's economic boom: they work very hard and for little money to make the trainers, ornaments, designer handbags and toys which we buy. Through the lives of two young women, Chang vividly portrays a world where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a cell phone; where lying about your age, your education, and your work experience is often a requisite for getting ahead; and, where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. This is a powerful and humane portrait of the forces which are shaping China. 'Astonishing ...Heartbreaking ...As one tool in trying to understand today's China, this is a most valuable, if troubling read' - "Irish Times". 'Engrossing ...An exceptionally vivid and compassionate depiction of the day-to-day dramas, and the fears and aspirations, of the real people who are powering China's economic boom' - "Scotsman". 'Chang's elegant book is evidence that the best trips home often require a circuitous approach' - Nell Freudenberger, "Financial Times"

Price: $16.00  ISBN: 9780385520188 Trade Paper