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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.

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 5

A story of tea and jungle juice: my teenage life in America

Weekly Contest #287

After inviting me to her house for the first time, Victoria offered me a choice of tea, juice, or water. When I chose tea, she opened the kitchen drawer in response, revealing a space full of cartons in different colors and sizes. I chose peach as my next selection, fascinated by the number of options. I watched as dark orange swirls emerged from the sachet of my choice into the boiling water, eventually filling the whole cup. After she made peppermint for herself, we brought our cups to the living room. The top of the fireplace was lined wi...

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A Break and a Surprise

Weekly Contest #287

A Break and a SurpriseJoshua poured a cup of tea into the cup. The hot water pouring was music enough for the young man, Chris to be soothed. But they both knew that it wouldn’t be the only sound that they would be subject to. Chris waited anxiously as Joshua had finished preparing the green tea for both of them. Joshua put the cup down in front of Chris and sat in the chair in front of him. Chris took the cup and then chuckled, “Sir, it feels a little awkward taking this from you. I mean, shouldn’t I be the one to serve you?” Joshua wa...

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Minh Stared Up

Weekly 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...

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Essential Personal Effects

Weekly Contest #286

The old man remained idly inside the door to his flat, racking his brain for memories that seemed to retreat from his grasp like minnows, ribbon-like and slippery.  Civil Control Station. 8:00AM on Saturday. Essential personal effects. His mind whirred fruitlessly, grasping at these wisps of cloud and trying to tie a thread from one thought to another. Saturday. 8AM. It was Friday afternoon, a brisk March day typical of this lower end of San Francisco. Kiyoshi could always note the afternoon hours by the lances of clean light that cut t...

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The Serpent We Know: A Holiday Tale of the Arts Department

Weekly 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...

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A Name Too Big For Me

Weekly 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...

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Gwisin Girlie

Weekly 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...

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VIBRANCE IN THE DEADENED VOID

Weekly 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 ...

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A Haunting in Vietnam

Weekly 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 ...

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Thank you wave.

Weekly 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...

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Every Type of Cabbage

Weekly 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...

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

Weekly 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...

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Sorano

Weekly 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,...

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AFTER ....THE ACCIDENT?

Weekly 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...

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Sunrise Mesa High School in Copenhagen

Weekly 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 ...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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