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Way back in April of 2020, I attended a virtual panel called The Asian American Experience. Cathy Park Hong, Kevin Nguyen, and Mira Jacob were phenomenal, and I’d highly recommend watching the recording of the event. Because it was the early days of all-virtual-everything, there were some technical difficulties as the event was kicking off, and a magical thing happened: the attendees started enthusiastically recommending books to each other. 

This list is inspired by that excited energy, but a little more homegrown. These are the titles that keep popping up in my group chats, and that make my phone overheat because everyone wants to talk about them...

Like a fresh notebook or a back-to-school fashion experiment, campus novels are full of promise and possibility. And in a year when academic pursuits feel paused at best, fraught at worst, we’ve compiled some of our favorite novels that conjure the specific community norms a campus has to offer, and let you experience that first chill of the still-fresh school year, without having to move into a dorm.