Hi everyone and happy Chinese New Year (if you celebrate it)! If you remember, last year I wrote a post similar to this one. I really loved being able to compile a list of Asian characters so I decided to do it again this year. Last year, I really had the list limited to people of East Asia so this year, I expanded the characters a bit to cover more parts of Asia.

Sadly, Asians are still so under-represented in the YA community and I really hope that I can come back next year and be able to say something along the lines of "Wow, I had a lot of trouble choosing characters this year." Diversity is still such a fragile thing and we're still very much working on more diverse books. It's getting better but Asians are still definitely under-represented (and that's for shows and movies too *cough*). Anyway, I hope you enjoy this post, have yourself a nice Saturday (or Chinese New Year if you celebrate!) and find yourself a new diverse book from this post.

Mercy // Outrun the Moon by Stacey Lee
Every time I think of books that include Asian or Chinese characters in a book, Outrun the Moon is the first book that comes into mind. I love Stacey Lee and this one has got to be my favorite book of hers. It's about a Chinese girl navigating her way through the 1906 earthquake of San Francisco and issues like discrimination play a pretty large part in Outrun the Moon. I think this book has such a great variety of ethnicities within its group of characters and Chinese characters are definitely involved.