Racism impacts various facets of the lives of people of color (POC) in the United States, spanning across historical and contemporary contexts. Chinese Americans, as an ethnic group historically excluded from entering the United States and denied naturalized citizenship, have endured distinctive and enduring forms of racism that are "quantitatively and qualitatively different from [those] suffered by other disempowered groups" (Chang, 1993, p. 1247). Furthermore, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese Americans, along with other Asian communities, were once again painted as a "yellow peril" (Wu et al., 2023). Anti-Asian, specifically anti-Chinese, sentiment increased during the pandemic and caused serious forms of racial stigmatization and violence toward Chinese Americans (Zhou et al., 2022). This study, informed by AsianCrit and reader response theories, explores how second-generation Chinese American students in a southern state negotiate their understandings of anti-Asian racism through reading historical fiction and relevant texts illustrating the racialized experience of Chinese Americans during COVID-19 pandemic.