I was a 20-something when I first found a book character like me: Dimple Lala, an Indian-American teenager growing up in New Jersey whose coming of age in New York City is depicted in Tanuja Desai Hidier’s Born Confused. Finally discovering a book that mirrored my hyphenated American experience was life-changing, and I learned how powerful seeing one’s own story reflected in the pages of a book can be. I felt valued and validated, things I had never felt reading books with white characters. Until then, the books I read hadn't represented my reality, and the message I got was that my experiences didn't matter.

2017 brings a bumper crop of books about the South Asian experience that I only wish I'd had as a younger person. These books span a variety of genres, from fantasy to graphic novel, and grapple with love, racism, immigration, war, and religion. They touch upon topics rarely addressed in literature of the diaspora, such as single motherhood in Pashmina by Nidhi Chanani and anti-Asian laws in the early 20th century in Step Up to the Plate, Maria Singh by Uma Krishnaswami. And these books draw from a wide range of narrative traditions — from Urdu poetry in That Thing We Call a Heart by Sheba Karim to popular Hindi cinema in When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon.

This collection is especially read-worthy in a political climate that demonizes South Asian Americans, whether for their religion or their immigration status and “foreignness.” In these times, South Asian readers need mirror books, in which we see ourselves and our stories; and others need window books, in which they see us.