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Discover weekly, the best short stories

Looking for a steady supply of asian american short stories? Every week thousands of writers submit stories to our writing contest.

340+ Asian american Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. What happens when two different sides of the earth are brought together in a community, a family, or even a single person? Our collection of Asian American short stories can give you some ideas.

Asian american Short Stories – Page 2 of 23

Minh Stared Up

Submitted to Contest #286

TW: Sexual violence, gore The Americans were leaving. The last convoy of tanks and soldiers rumbled and marched out of the city streets. A final procession of victory, or what they perceived to be victory. They had on their faces the satisfaction of the gourmet, moving slowly in the wake of their hedonistic revelry. The appetite of their bodies sated by violence, the memories of their inhumanity churned through their lower intestines – to be discarded in some ditch or rice paddy or off the front of a boat. The blades of the helicopters over...

7 likes 4 comments 4
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The Serpent We Know: A Holiday Tale of the Arts Department

Submitted to Contest #284

“Could I get mansions covering ten thousand miles, I’d house all the poor scholars…”Du Fu “By the way, we’ve got New Year’s plans,” Wei Zhao announced as she pulled into the long drive in the campus fringe of Mulberry. Wei heard the entomologist sink into the upholstery.“I thought we were doing a peaceful evening of Huluween horror, Sichuan Palace and Papa John’s, and bringing 2025 in with a bang or maybe three,” Will sulked.“Now, that’s a Hallmark movie I’d watch,” the University’s youngest tenured prof mulled, waiting out the ailing garage...

19 likes 12 comments 12
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A Name Too Big For Me

Submitted to Contest #276

Nothing brings my family together quite as good as a funeral. They’re like ants to spilled sugar. This time, the sugar being my grandmother's will. The last bit of her belongings spanning from her time here in the Philippines, Holland, Hawaii, and finally where she spent most of her time, with us in America. However, she wanted to die in the house her husband built for her, so she spent the last bit of time she had left in this world reminiscing about a man who was no longer there. Something that runs in our family, apparently. Our father, m...

6 likes 1 comment 1
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Gwisin Girlie

Submitted to Contest #275

Don’t ask me how I turned into a gwisin, I don’t know how. I mean, I’m barely even Korean. One minute I’m on the commute back to my Harlem duplex after a long shift serving cappuccinos to Patagonias on the Upper West, and the next I’m flat on my ass in a white hanbok in the middle of a forest surrounded by a bunch of other creepy ladies in white hanboks. I tried to ask around, ok, I really did. The second I woke up in the afterlife, I stood right up and started trying to get answers, but it turns out the guy in charge – God, I guess – o...

9 likes 3 comments 3
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Thank you wave.

Submitted to Contest #274

Finals hadn’t been over more than 48 hours before Sonny was barefoot on her beach again. She would have been back sooner if her cross-country bus hadn't gotten a flat no more than 20 miles out of the Manila city center. You don’t hop on a bus in the Philippines and expect to get anywhere on time. Despite her thick black hair sticking to her neck and having to sit with her backpack in the only space for her feet to go, she was relaxed knowing she was en route to her home island for the summer. The tourists fly but the locals take the bus, the...

2 likes 0 comments 0
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Storytellers

Submitted to Contest #274

*Trigger Warning - Description of death* It was cold for September. Charlotte pulled her hoodie over her baseball cap and adjusted the earbuds attached to her phone. It was lunch time, and the sidewalks were full. Barely audible through the sounds of Midtown Manhattan, Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries played as she made her way through the crowds to the subway station. Mercifully, it was empty except for the attendant at the booth. She scanned her metro card once, twice, three times – the new metro cards were awful, at least Charlotte’s was...

5 likes 0 comments 0
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A Haunting in Vietnam

Submitted to Contest #274

Author's note: The event of this story is true and happened to my parents when we visited Vietnam in 2006. Names have been changed for privacy.****I heard the knife before ever seeing it. The sound it made cut through the quiet night, sharp and clean. Sleep was settled in my bones, invisible strings tugging my eyelids, and I struggled to fight it—but something in my guts screamed at me to wake. I ripped the strings and opened my eyelids— rubbing at the blurriness.Strange noises teetered at the edge of my awareness, but lucidity hadn’t found ...

10 likes 5 comments 5
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VIBRANCE IN THE DEADENED VOID

Submitted to Contest #274

The air thickened with haunting sounds—a relentless chorus of moaning and mewling unsettled the senses. High-pitched moans pierced the air, reverberating with an unnerved intensity, sending shivers through the screamer's body. Their fear radiated, overshadowing the listeners' apprehension around them. Yet, this was a unique terrain she discovered herself traversing. Despite Sarah's efforts to block out the jarring sounds in her ears and cloud her mind, the noise continued to surge, relentless and menacing. Sarah felt the familiar sensation ...

17 likes 4 comments 4
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Every Type of Cabbage

Submitted to Contest #270

“They hate me, don’t they?” The burn of the kimchi jigae still coats my tongue in fire despite the ginseng tea I try to douse it with. I feel a similar burn in my cheeks as Minjun’s parents patter around in the kitchen but the tea doesn’t help much in extinguishing that. My Korean skills are minimal but even I pick up the occasional, “isanghan” – strange. As in, the isanghan blue-eyed, blonde-haired girl their son somehow, inexplicably fell in love with. As in, the isanghan way he lets her call him MJ instead of his full name. As i...

36 likes 28 comments 28
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One Man's trash is another Man's... Demon?

Submitted to Contest #269

Come on Imogene! This thrift store is supposed to have the best stuff!” I was not as excited as my sister, Kathy, as she tried to drag me to yet another store to look at what she called “ good thrift store stuff”. Lately, I hated thrift shopping. It seemed like every time I picked up an object, I just felt depressed. Over the last few years, I got better about not picking up the objects with violent histories at least, but in a thrift shop more often than not, the objects were just sad. The dishes sold after their grandmother died, furn...

12 likes 4 comments 4
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Sorano

Submitted to Contest #269

Hana is a girl who lives in a New York penthouse with her mom and dad. Her mom’s name is Jenny and her dad’s name is Kiyoshi. He was a Japanese immigrant who came to the US to study engineering, and along the way ended up marrying Jenny and staying in the USA without returning home for a long time. Hana’s parents thought that now she had completed her 8th grade, they should take her to see his dad’s hometown which was in Shinjuku, Japan.  Hana was not that excited as she wanted to hang out with her friends from school and have some fun,...

7 likes 1 comment 1
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AFTER ....THE ACCIDENT?

Submitted to Contest #267

AFTER ……..THE ACCIDENT???? I am staring up at a ceiling that isn’t  mine, on a hard mattress in in a bed that definitely isn’t  mine, in some kind of  nightshirt  that I would never have to worn to bed or anywhere else.! Where are my clothes? Where am I?  I have to get out of here. What’s this, bandages around my wrists?  And what is this tag on my wrist? It says Harrison Carmichael?  Who is Harrison Carmichael?  My name is Jack. Jack Keller.  It’s always been Jack Heller. Is this some kind of jok...

4 likes 1 comment 1
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Sunrise Mesa High School in Copenhagen

Submitted to Contest #265

No one slept much the night before the early morning flight to Copenhagen. Maeve messaged Sol into the early hours of the morning and only stopped when her phone ran out of texts. They were supposed to arrive at the McCarran airport an hour before dawn for the ambitious itinerary ahead of them: Las Vegas to Seattle to Reykjavik to Copenhagen. In the backseat that morning, it felt to Maeve that her parents were driving her through a murky ocean; the inky dark sky rendered the ride murky and viscous. Still, she felt relieved--she had just put ...

9 likes 2 comments 2
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My Crazy Year

Submitted to Contest #265

My Crazy Year by Amanda Stogsdill The wintery Colorado wind blew fiercely, numbing tingly fingers as my friends and I gulped in the frosty air. Bundled up in winter coats, scarves, multiple pairs of gloves, we boarded our usual bus to the Center for the Blind.The center was recommended by my vocational counselor, a place for learning new skills while living independently. So, there I was boarding a plane for Colorado. I'd arrived very unsure of what would happen. I was met by staff who assisted me through the airport, driving me to my...

9 likes 6 comments 6
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A Side of Banh Cuon

Submitted to Contest #265

Chapter 1 “Uncle Pig snorted at the webcam,” Did you say a doctor?”“Um … a medical scribe, the person who takes notes for the doctor.”“So, you’re a note-taker?”“Yes, but I also ….”My uncle squealed, “You spent five years at college taking notes to take more notes!”“Well, I ….”“What happened to medical school?” His words sunk into my subconsciousness. Like most humans, I once had a dream. But eventually, you learn that nothing is free, and medical school comes with a price tag of $324,500.99. Bo and Ma, my immigrant parents, ra...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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