Nine years ago, Long Le-Khac, now an assistant professor in the ethnic studies department at the University of California, Berkeley, encountered a significant challenge while planning a data-driven research project on Asian American literature. He intended to use analytics to map settings in Asian American fiction and test whether its geography had become more international. However, he first needed to determine which works qualified as “Asian American” for his analysis.

This question led Le-Khac to examine what it means to label something as “Asian American.” He explained that this inquiry became increasingly central to his work: “Wrestling with that definition... was a ‘digression that increasingly got bigger and bigger and richer and more interesting to me.’”

The result of nearly a decade of research is a newly published database cataloging 1,900 entries in the Asian American literary canon. Le-Khac said he hopes the dataset illuminates a central issue: “How has the canon of Asian American literature changed over time, as defined by the people who study it?”

The dataset begins with works from 1971 because the term “Asian American” itself was coined only in 1968 by two UC Berkeley student activists. The phrase emerged as an effort to unite different ethnic groups under one identity and move away from older terms considered exoticizing. As scholars began using “Asian American” in their analyses, they helped shape which works received attention within this category.

Le-Khac noted that definitions vary among academics. Some define any work by an American writer of Asian descent as “Asian American,” while others focus on content about Asian American experiences regardless of authorship. There are also debates about whether works engaging with traditional Asian aesthetics or responding to Orientalist stereotypes should be included.

“When we were gathering data, we tried not to impose our own definitions so that we could capture the whole mess of various definitions colliding with each other in the formation of this canon,” Le-Khac explained.

To build the database, researchers wrote code to scan academic publications featuring the keyword “Asian American” or appearing in journals dedicated to Asian American studies. They extracted references from these sources, ultimately identifying 1,886 mentions tied to nearly 984 works by 783 authors.

The current dataset focuses on works recognized by scholars; Le-Khac plans future projects documenting works outside academia’s purview. He prioritized scholarly sources because academic circles circulated the concept before it entered popular culture.

Additional information gathered for each text includes form, publication year, frequency of mention in academic studies, publisher details, and markers such as bestseller status or awards won. Demographic data about authors—such as gender, ethnicity, education level, and immigration generation—were also recorded.

Notable figures represented include playwright David Henry Hwang; poet Naomi Shihab Nye; novelist and Berkeley professor emerita Maxine Hong Kingston; and others across genres like comic books (“World War Hulk”) and films (“Crazy Rich Asians,” “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”). The latter film is included for its depiction of a stereotyped Japanese character played by a white actor.

The researchers plan updates every five years so scholars can use cultural analytics—a computational approach—to explore questions about trends within Asian American literature.

Le-Khac emphasized scrutiny over how minority canons are formed: “This canon we have built is uneven, as most canons are. But for a minority canon to replicate unevenness is a fraught and charged thing, and is worth scrutiny.”

He cited findings from previous research showing declining citation rates for Filipino authors. According to Le-Khac: “One of the major impulses behind this dataset is to help us as a community of scholars look at what we are actually building and see if we need to do better.”

Researchers may also use the dataset to examine factors such as bestseller status or regional clustering among writers whose work receives scholarly attention.

Le-Khac observed that many authors identified through this process hold advanced degrees—a trend he described as problematic given ongoing critiques within Asian American studies about model minority narratives.

Another line of inquiry compares how scholarly definitions differ from those created by general readers on platforms like Goodreads.

For undergraduate researcher Taylor Huie—who contributed metadata collection—the project expanded their understanding of diverse Asian experiences represented in literature beyond what they encountered during high school assignments focused mainly on white authors’ texts.

“[This research] really broadened my horizons, and it got me a lot more excited about Asian American literary works,” Huie said.