Filipina-owned bookstore Bel Canto Books has partnered with the Long Beach Public Library to hold the city’s first Festival of Asian American + Pacific Islander (AAPI) Books on Saturday, May 21 at the Billie Jean King Main Library.
“We wanted to be able to show the rich diversity of the work that’s being done by Asian American writers,” said Jhoanna Belfer, owner of Bel Canto Books.
A total of 14 AAPI authors will be attending the event to meet local bookworms, read their work and sign copies of books. A vast majority of them are from Southern California.
The line up of participating authors includes: Naomi Hirahara, Jennifer J. Chow, Elle Cruz, traci kato-kiriyama [sic], Tori Eldridge, Anthony Christian Ocampo, Stephan Lee, Christine Su, Emery Lee, Steve Nguyen, Livia Blackburne, Karen Yin, Maggie P. Chang and Tracy Badua.
“I feel like with mainstream publishing we most often hear about what’s happening on the East Coast and we really wanted to be able to showcase these authors who are working in the West Coast, who are writing about the communities that we live in,” Belfer said. “And to be able to see ourselves in that work is really so important.”
Genres will include nonfiction, fiction and children’s authors as well as poets from a wide range of AAPI communities present in Southern California, including Cambodian, Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, Korean Americans and more.
Belfer said Bel Canto Books has “absolutely” seen an increase in customers interested in books by AAPI authors.
“Unfortunately, as anti-Asian violence has been on the news and happening so much, so regularly, we’ve been forced to contend with how we are sometimes viewed in the news or in the media,” Belfer said.
According to Data USA by the MIT Media Lab, in 2019 over 80% of people who worked as writers or authors in the U.S. were white.
“I’m just so excited to be able to show folks that there are amazing writers and artists who are doing beautiful work that speaks to the wide range of Asian American lives […] We just really wanted to showcase that all of these stories are valued and important and interesting and everyone should be reading them,” Belfer said.
The Festival of Asian American + Pacific Islander Books will also include cultural performances by Club Kaibigan, a club for Filipino high school students, and Ryujin Taiko, a taiko drumming group.
Food will also be available for purchase from Romeo Chocolates and Gemmae Bake Shop— two local Filipino-owned businesses.
“We’re hoping that it’s a huge success so that we can then make it an annual event,” Belfer said.
The Festival of Asian American + Pacific Islander Books will be held on Saturday, May 21 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Billie Jean King Main Library.
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