Hello AACP Newsletter Readers.

To my friends that may be reading the AACP newsletter for the first time, welcome!

I’ll dispense with my usual greetings and dive into the preview of what this edition of our newsletter is about.

For our first article, we have an interview with mystery author Scott Kikkawa. I’ve wanted to do this interview since the early part of the year when Joy Kobayashi-Cintron from Bamboo Ridge (the publisher of Scott Kikkawa’s books), sent me an announcement about the release of Char Siu. I didn’t have a chance to read his earlier books in the series and wanted to read some of them before I did the interview. Apologies for taking so long to finally read these books and get to this interview.

Scott’s books are historical fiction novels that take place in 1950s Hawaii. They’re noir style mysteries that are in a locale not commonly known for its darker side. Even if you’re not a mystery book fan hopefully you’ll learn something about Hawaii of the past, about law enforcement in those times, and about Scott Kikkawa and why his books are such marvelous reads.

For our second article, we have an article about a 1980s software development company called Nexa, its connection with the video game Tetris, AAPIs, and me. That’s right, this article is partly my own personal story. It’s not meant to be a self congratulatory piece where I claim credit for Tetris (one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time, according to Wikipedia), but I wanted to give a glimpse into the rest of the story not told by the recent Tetris movie (Tetris the Movie streaming on Apple TV).

To me, the story of Nexa is an Asian American story. We weren’t building a transcontinental railroad or doing some other spectacular feat. We were just video game makers and we weren’t even that significant within that industry.

Looking back, we really weren’t that far removed from the dawn of the personal computer era. Apple Computer was founded less than six years before Nexa and the Macintosh was released less than two years before I joined the company.

It’s hard to believe that I was there, but I was, and Nexa was a part of AAPI history. There’s so much more I wish I could have gotten into this article. I hope this at least helps in a small way of painting AAPIs into the story of the tech boom of the 1980s.

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For our featured books this month we’ve selected ten mystery novels, including Scott Kikkawa’s Char Siu, Naomi Hirahara’s Evergreen (sequel to her award winning Clark and Division), four cozy mysteries (all continuations of mystery series), three other prolific mystery writers, and The Verifiers by new mystery novelist Jane Pek.

Our children’s book selection includes four books on the Mid-Autumn Festival (which is coming up on September 29), a book on friendship in a refugee camp called Where the Wildflowers Grow, and a rhyming book about kimchi called Kimchi, Kimchi Everywhere.

Also for those of you that may be a taking a language course this fall or just wanting to learn a new language, we’re featuring new books on learning Indonesian, Bengali, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.

Check them all out.

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A Call for Article Submissions

Have an idea for an article or already have one written that you think our readers may be interested in? Are you an author that would like us to interview you? Do you have some interesting story about AAPI history or culture? Have a comfort food recipe or AAPI editorial piece you’d like to share? If so, please contact us.

We really could use your help this coming two months and are open to your possible article submissions. AACP may be going to five events in about a two month period. So we won’t have a lot of time to write our articles. If our next two newsletters seem a little deficient, you’ll know why.

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Apologies to Christine Su for not being able to participate in your Asian Pacific American Cultures and Community program taking place at the College of San Mateo on Wednesday, September 6th, from 3-5pm. It sounds like a wonderful event and we hope our readers come out and support your efforts.

Thank you Scott Kikkawa for doing the interview with us. We enjoyed doing it and reading your books.

Thank you to my old bosses and friends Kenneth Chan and Bryant Fong for your help with the article on Nexa. Thank you Gary Poon and Billy Sutyono for your remembrances of working on Tetris.

Thank you Mina, Philip, and Susan for your continued help with this newsletter.

Take care everyone!