My Asian Era

A curated journey through Asian literature

Thoughtful Reviews. Quiet Stories. Literary Depth.

For the past two years, I’ve been reading, reviewing, and quietly building a curated archive of books by Asian authors, mostly translated fiction, contemporary literature, and underrepresented voices that often get missed by mainstream reading lists.

What started as a personal reading habit has evolved into a full platform: a growing collection of spoiler-free reviews, thematic roundups, and quiet reflections meant to help more readers discover the emotional and cultural depth of Asian literature.

This isn’t a listicle site.
It’s not trend-based.
It’s intentional, built slowly, post by post, with care.

You’ll find:

  • Honest reviews from across Asia: Korean, Japanese, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Chinese, and Asian authors writing from around the world

  • Mini features for short books and chapbooks

  • Book club picks with community conversation prompts

  • Emotional clarity over academic critique

  • A calm space to discover books that linger

This is a living archive, part ongoing project, part reflective journal.
I’m in the process of centralizing older reviews and continuing to explore both contemporary releases and classic titles from across the region.

If you're tired of the same dozen titles getting recycled across book feeds — you're in the right place.

Welcome.

P.S. If you're looking to read along, I host a quiet book club through Fable. It's casual, thoughtful, and open to anyone curious about Asian literature.

Reviews Published 10 Book Reviews Professional Reader

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Maria Johnson Maria Johnson

If I Had Your Face

If I Had Your Face follows four young women living in Seoul, each navigating life under the weight of Korea’s beauty standards, economic pressure, and limited choices. Their paths are different, but they intersect through shared spaces and shared constraints.

This is not a light read. The book looks closely at how beauty functions as a kind of currency and how survival sometimes requires choices that feel impossible from the outside. It’s raw in places and often bleak, but it remains true to its characters. For me, it was worth sitting with.

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Maria Johnson Maria Johnson

With the Heart of a Ghost : Stories

A strange and unsettling collection of Korean speculative stories that resist explanation. With the Heart of a Ghost sits with grief, loneliness, and transformation, letting meaning hover just out of reach rather than spelling it out.

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Maria Johnson Maria Johnson

Two Women Living Together

A practical, emotionally grounded memoir about two women who choose to build a life together as chosen family. Two Women Living Together looks honestly at compromise, independence, and what it means to create a good life on your own terms.

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Maria Johnson Maria Johnson

Molka

When you know the horror on the page isn’t just fiction, when you’ve seen it reflected in real women’s lives, the rage hits differently. Molka is a brutal, all-too-real story of voyeurism, shame, and female rage that refuses to stay quiet.

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Maria Johnson Maria Johnson

b, Book, and Me

Fragmented, strange, and emotionally sharp — b, Book, and Me is a surreal story of teenage isolation, quiet rage, and the fragile survival found in friendship.

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Maria Johnson Maria Johnson

Convalescence

Quiet, strange, and emotionally raw, Convalescence is a sparse but unsettling meditation on isolation and the quiet disappearance of self.

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