Hello AACP Newsletter Readers.

Summer is sure going by fast. I hope you’re all having a good one.

I’ll get straight to mentioning a few highlights for this newsletter.

I was talking with our new summer intern Charles Zhong, when we received a call from a documentary maker named Gary Ono. The documentary is an interesting film about Japanese Americans that worked for the United States government to do propaganda broadcasts to Japan during World War II. I asked Gary if he would be interested in being interviewed by Charles and he agreed. So please have a read of this fascinating article “An Interview with Photographer and Documentary Maker Gary Ono.”

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This month’s featured books list is part two of our summer reading suggestions. As in part one, it is filled with interesting novels and children’s books. Have a look.

One of the books that I want to highlight includes “The Pink Pajamas” by Charlene Chua. Chua wrote and illustrated the cute book “Hug.” The description for her latest book touched me and I knew I had to include it in this month’s newsletter. Please check it out.

Rajani Larocca, author of a book that made my end of the year favorites (“Where Three Oceans Meet”) has a relatively new books called “Mauntie and Me” about a girl and her favorite auntie.

Hmm, I just noticed that our first two children’s books, this one and “The Pink Pajamas” are about favorite aunts. We often feature children’s books about grandparents, now it looks like there are great books about aunts too.

Anyway, it’s getting really late, so I’ll just name a few more –

Padma Venkatraman’s “Safe Harbor”

Ha Jin’s “The Woman Back from Moscow: In Pursuit of Beauty”

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard’s “The Newspaper Widow”

Shobha Rao’s “Indian Country”

Please check out the entire list and let us know what you think.

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This weekend we will be at the Palo Alto Obon. We have two authors that will be with us – Oliver Chin and Apala Egan. Oliver will be doing a discussion about his book “Discovery of Anime & Manga” and Apala will do a presentation about her book "Behind Latticed Marble---Inner Worlds of Women.” You can read more about Apala and her book in an article she did for us in July 2024.

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Thank you very much, Charles and Gary for doing the interview.

Thank you to our editors, especially Mina.

That’s all the time I have for this message.

Take care and continue having a wonderful summer everyone.