Seattle Chinatown Book Club: A Third Place of Belonging for the AANHPI Community

On the last Sunday of every month, Asian Americans form a long line at a small table in front of Mam’s Books in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District (CID). They’re there to participate in the Seattle Chinatown Book Club (SCBC) and are warmly greeted by Mitchell Keo, the book club’s founder.

SCBC started in late 2023, soon after the opening of Mam’s Books. The bookstore was founded by Sokha Danh and named after his father. As the only bookstore of its kind in the Pacific Northwest, Mam’s sells books written by AANHPI authors, with 5% by other BIPOC writers. Sokha wanted more than a bookstore and wanted a third space for the community, or what Sokha calls a “living room.” Mitchell explains how SCBC found its home,

“Around the same time that Mam’s had their soft opening, I had attended and talked to Sokha, for the first time ever actually, and he had mentioned that he wanted a book club…We launched about a month or two later. Ever since then, it's organically grown to what it is now. It’s amazing how big it's gotten.”

When the book club started, 25 people would gather to form one large circle at Mam’s to discuss the book selection of the month. Books range from fiction to memoirs, light-hearted to emotionally heavy, and represent diverse authors of the Asian diaspora. Today, the book club regularly hosts up to 75 attendees, requiring the club to be broken up into smaller groups. There are 8 groups total with 4 occupying each corner of Mam’s, and another 4 split between the main level and basement floors of their next-door neighbor One World Now.

“Up to that point, I've attempted several book clubs in Seattle and I never really hit it right…When I first got to Seattle, I found it very hard to make friends outside of going to a bar, which is fine but wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted a space for people to have meaningful, thoughtful connections,” Mitchell recalls.

Molly Nguyen, Mitchell’s partner, pipes in. Molly helps run SCBC and they work together to select books from the shared Google Doc compiled by the community and to formulate discussion prompts. Molly adds,  

“It's so important to have a space for Asian Americans and Asians to come together within the community and CID. At least in the last couple of years, since post-Covid…there haven't been many events that weren't pertaining to food walks and things like that. So being able to have something like a book club that meets every single month, something that's consistent to bring community together, I think it's a great way to bring life into the CID.”

When Mitchell began thinking about starting a book club, he envisioned its participants having deep, intellectual discussions about books.  SCBC turned out a bit differently than he expected. He explains,

“It's a little bit more than say another book club meeting about a Virginia Woolf book and seeing what they thought about a passage. This is relating to our personal lives and how we connect to this book and through that, we connect with each other based on these shared experiences.”

The book club discussions tend to be intimate and vulnerable and have become for many an opportunity to process experiences and feelings. When SCBC read Prachi Gupta’s memoir They Called Us Exceptional, for example, several people cried as they shared and listened. Nearly everyone related to the childhood traumas and relationship struggles of immigrant families depicted in the book. When the club read the light-hearted mystery novel, Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala, readers resonated with its themes of food and family, and what it meant to leave or return “home.”

Mitchell and Molly attribute some of this to the intentional discussion prompts they write to encourage participants to open up to each other, though Molly adds,

“Half the time we don't even follow the prompts… we answer the first two questions and then it's pretty much an open discussion, which I find very beautiful about book club because we are not hard set on the questions. We can have it open.”

Mitchell is grateful the book club turned out differently than expected,

“I love the fact that this took a more intimate route and now we have a space where people can have these therapeutic discussions and be emotionally vulnerable and connect with each other in ways that is healing.”

The feeling of community is palpable after book club meetings. People often bring food to share and stay to socialize. Molly explains this is an important aspect of Asian cultures,

“We love sharing food because it not only shows about our culture, but also our story about who we are…So, we've had people bring in a lot of homemade stuff, which has been wonderful. I feel like there's always something somebody brings in and I think it’s always fruit.”

Mitchell attributes SCBC’s growth and success to the generational habits of Gen Z, who comprise most of its participants,

“If you look at statistics, a lot of people are reporting that Gen Z are drinking less. We are engaging less in activities such as clubbing and bar hopping and are more invested in spaces like what SCBC is doing. I think there’s more intentionality in our generation to make these connections in a way that’s substantial and sustainable. So, I think the people that come to SCBC, regardless of Gen Z, millennial, or Gen X, a lot of people buy into the fact that yes, this is a space where I want to make a connection that’s meaningful and that’s going to persist and not just dissipate.”

Since its inception, SCBC has grown into more of a community hub. They’ve started AANHPI movie nights, hosted game nights including mahjong, and partnered with musician Dahlay to hold open mic nights which are so popular, they’re unable to accommodate everyone who wants to attend. Molly also started a CID recipe binder that lives at Mam’s where community members contribute their family recipes and tell their stories. Molly hopes to publish the binder into a proper book someday, which you can learn more about in her interviews with KUOW and International Examiner.

Mitchell is excited about the club’s evolution and future. He shares,

“It’s gotten to a point where SCBC’s now so multifaceted, we’re more than just the once-a-month meeting. We are doing stuff like volunteer work. We’re connecting with other organizations to host author talks, things of that nature…We’re always talking about how can we make this book club more philanthropic, how can we be a more community-service oriented organization. We’re thinking about how we can move the direction of SCBC and how we can also uplift the rest of the community that has given so much to us.”

Through their events and partnerships, SCBC has raised money for Gaza, Immigrants' Rights Alliance, and other organizations. Molly adds, “We’re taking a holistic approach because it’s always been just more than a book club to us. It’s building community outside the book club so supporting other business in every way that we can.”

Left to Righ: Sokha, Dahlay, Mitchell, Molly

If you want to check out SCBC, they meet on the last Sunday of every month at 11:00-12:00pm. Follow their Instagram to learn about which books to read, as well as their other events. Mitchell and Molly emphasize that SCBC welcomes everyone and that you don’t have to be Asian to attend. “With that being said,” Mitchell clarifies, “I think people that are not Asian should come respectfully to the space knowing it’s for us…Learn, listen, and experience what it’s like for us. Empathize and be in community with us.”

When Mitchell is not running SCBC, he works as a software engineer, which he’s reluctant to admit, and enjoys fitness and running. He was born in Houston, Texas. Molly is a physical therapist by day and enjoys running and lifting. She was born and raised in Washington. Molly and Mitchell are also in a hardcore band together called Cherub Chains, she as the frontwoman and he as the drummer. You can read about their band in this moving article, “One Hardcore Night in Little Saigon"  in The Stranger about the impact they have on the AANHPI community.