The real Anna Leonowens wrote two books about her adventures in Siam teaching the children of King Mongkut. Her books, The English Governess at the Siamese Court (1870) and The Romance of the Harem (1873), were renounced by Mongkut's biographer, who claimed that her accounts grossly misrepresented the Siamese king as a tyrant and that her description of the court was inaccurate.

Margaret Landon wrote a popular novel based on Leonowens's books, called Anna and the King of Siam (1944). It was also the basis for a 1946 film, starring Rex Harrison and Irene Dunne, before Hammerstein adapted it to the stage play.

Maxine Hong Kingston's novels China Men and The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girl among Ghosts discuss the situation of contemporary Chinese Americans m California.

Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston portrays the experience of Japanese-American citizens in internment during...