Asian American Literature - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature [PDF]

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Asian American Literature Kella Svetich Subject: American Literature

Online Publication Date: Sep 2017

DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.765

Any discussion of “Asian American literature” must address the inadequacy of the term to describe the array of writings that spring from a multiplicity of cultures and experiences. Ultimately, the phrase has come to encompass writers of Asian heritage living in, writing about, born in, or having sojourned to America. This set of definitions is not limited to written literatures or those originally created in the English language; it can also be extended to transcribed Chinese oral narratives, narratives written in Vietnamese and translated into English, or Chinese characters carved into walls. The term Asian American literature also prompts questions regarding national boundaries. “America” need not be limited to the United States; the fluid concept of nation can spill over geographical boundaries to reach neocolonies where complex constructions of “America”—economic and cultural—significantly affect other countries. Asian American literature, therefore, reflects contexts of immigration, discrimination, and international relations—including war. Historically, reception of immigrants from Asian countries by Euroamericans has been fraught with racism. The Exclusion Laws of 1882, 1888, and 1892 refused entry to Chinese laborers. Employment opportunities largely available only to men and laws prohibiting the immigration of Asian women created unequal sex ratios that initially attenuated the development of many Asian American communities. Antimiscegenation legislation in states including California exacerbated this situation, and Asian immigrants were furthermore prohibited from becoming U.S. citizens or owning property. Although antimiscegenation laws were eventually declared unconstitutional and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 finally allowed quotas of Asian immigrants equal to European immigrants, racism continues to surface as a theme in contemporary Asian American literature. Circumstances of war have also inflected these writings: the Philippine-American War (1899–1902), World War II and the Japanese occupation of Asian countries, the internment of Japanese Americans, wars in Korea and Vietnam—these conflicts are recorded throughout Asian American literature. The conditions under which Asian American writers labor are connected to a number of recurring issues running throughout this enormous body of work: loss of homeland, alienation in a new country, cultural conflicts, issues of identity, family, gender relations, class differences, hope in America, anger against America, memory, longing, history. The recent proliferation of Asian American literature has been accompanied by an ever-broadening range of scholarly studies on these texts. Literary approaches to these works include analyses of class, gender, and sexuality; postcolonialism and neocolonialism; transnationalism; and cultural studies. Controversies have arisen in the field, most notably in the prioritization of racism over sexism and the question of who may write about and therefore represent “the Asian American experience.” Rather than rely on the concept of the “native informant” of impossibly pure origins, scholarly studies have shifted toward recognizing hybrid identities and multiple representations that defy homogenizing descriptions of human experience. This increasing emphasis on multiple identities includes a resistance to categories that limit people to one tidy but narrow ethnicity. Writers like the poet Cathy Song, whose background is Chinese and Korean and whose bioregion is Hawaii, or Alison Kim, a Chinese Korean lesbian writer and activist raised in California and also born in Hawaii, suggest a particular complex of cultural identities unique to Asian Hawaiian literature. Further demonstrating a need for flexible boundaries are Sui Sin Far and Diana Chang, both of Chinese and white parentage, and Brenda Wong Aoki, a playwright who describes herself as Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Scots and draws on Western and Japanese traditions in her drama (The Queen's Garden, 1992). Sigrid Nunez's novel A Feather on the Breath of God (1995) reflects Nunez's experiences as a child born in New York City to a Chinese Panamanian father and a German American mother. The short-story writer Marie Murphy Hara (Bananaheart, 1994), who comes from Asian and white parentage, edited the anthology Intersecting Circles (2000), a collection of writings by women of mixed ethnicities. This embrace of multiplicity and its concomitant resistance to homogeneity does not, however, preclude the possibility for individuals within ethnic groups to share historical experiences that allow for groupings helpful in organizing essays such as this one. Nonetheless, the following categorizations must be viewed as nonrigid and always open to intersections between ethnic identities.

Chinese American Literature Large-scale immigration from China to America began in the nineteenth century with the importation of Hawaiian plantation workers, the 1848 discovery of gold in California, and the construction of the transcontinental railroad from 1863 to 1869. A rich oral tradition arrived with these early immigrants, traces of which were recorded in the publication of folk verse known as muk yu (wooden fish) in the 1860s San Francisco Chinese newspapers. Lee Yan Phou's When I Was a Boy in China was published in 1887, and in the late 1880s short pieces by Sui Sin Far (a.k.a. Edith Eaton) began appearing in American periodicals. Some of Sui Sin Far's writings were collected in Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912), which was noted for its nonstereotypical Asian and American characters; her autobiographical sketch Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian (1909) details her years growing up in Canada and the United States. Other early works documenting the lives of Chinese immigrants include Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown (edited by Marlon K. Hom, 1987), which were originally published in 1911 and 1915. Among the injustices suffered by Chinese immigrants was their detention in holding centers like Angel Island, where they were forced to wait off the coast of California—sometimes for years —while officials perused their paperwork and subjected them to interrogation. The barracks walls at Angel Island (the center operated from 1910 to 1940) bear Chinese characters registering that experience; these poems have been translated and collected in Island (edited by Mark Him Lai et al, 1980). The period immediately preceding World War II saw the publication of Huie Kin's Reminiscences (1932), which describes his experiences as a Christian minister in America, and H. T. Tsiang produced a wealth of writings throughout the 1930s, including the novel And China Has Hands (1937). With the onset of World War II, anti-Asian discrimination shifted toward Japanese Americans, and China became an ally of the United States. The resulting change in atmosphere contextualizes works by Chinese American writers like Helena Kuo, whose autobiography I've Come a Long Way (1942) details her career as a journalist. U.S.-born writers Pardee Lowe (Father and Glorious Descendant, 1943) and Jade Snow Wong (Fifth Chinese Daughter, 1945) depict San Francisco's Chinatown, while on the opposite coast, Louis Chu's Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961) confronts the emasculation of Chinese men in America. The 1950s saw the appearance of Su-ling Wong's Daughter of Confucius (1952) as well as Diana Chang's autobiographical novel The Frontiers of Love (1956), which describes the life of a young Eurasian girl growing up in China. As the civil rights movement exploded in the 1960s and students on American campuses demanded the inclusion of ethnic studies in university curricula, Chinese American texts found new venues for expression. In 1974 the playwright Frank Chin, together with Jeffery Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Hsu Wong (Homebase, 1979; American Knees, 1995), published the seminal anthology of Asian American literature Aiiieeeee! (1974). In 1976 Maxine Hong Kingston's debut novel, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts, created a sensation with its genre-subverting style and its representation of a Chinese American girl's coming of age. The Woman Warrior and Kingston's later works, China Men (1980) and Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989), echo with a unique Chinese American cultural history drawn from Chinese and American myths and sensibilities. The novels of Amy Tan share with Kingston's work an attention to mother-daughter relationships; Tan's most famous book, The Joy Luck Club (1989), enjoyed particular success as an established best-seller and a Hollywood film. More women's perspectives are offered by Louise Leung Larson, whose autobiographical Sweet Bamboo (1989) recalls the life of her immigrant family in Los Angeles at the turn of the century; Gish Jen, whose multiethnic experiences growing up in New York are reflected in A Typical American (1991) and Mona in the Promised Land (1996); and Fae Myenne Ng, whose novel Bone (1993) depicts a family with three daughters growing up in San Francisco's Chinatown. Chinese American writers who create representations of strong women are Ruthanne Lum McCunn (Thousand Pieces of Gold, 1981; The Moon Pearl, 2000), Alice Murong Pu Lin (Grandmother Had No Name, 1988), and Katherine Wei (Second Daughter, 1984). Fiona Cheong's novels re-create her native Singapore: Scent of the Gods (1991) reconstructs the political upheaval following the country's independence in 1965, and Shadow Theatre (2002) channels a little girl's ghost who follows around a young unwed mother. In 1972, Aiiieeeee! editor Frank Chin, whose works also include the novels Donald Duk (1991) and Gunga Din Highway (1994), saw his Chickencoop Chinaman become the first Asian American play to be performed on the New York stage, signaling the beginnings of a flourishing Chinese American drama scene. The celebrated David Henry Hwang wrote his first play, FOB, in 1978, and a decade later his M. Butterfly (1988), based on the true story of a twenty-year affair between a French diplomat and a Chinese transvestite opera singer, garnered a Tony award for best play of the year. Laurence Yep's Pay the Chinaman (1990) reveals a group of Chinese immigrants' struggles with identity in Northern California at the end of the nineteenth century; the journalist and playwright Elizabeth Wong comments on the boycott of Korean stores by African Americans in Kimchee and Chitlins (1990); and Paper Angels (1991), by the poet, performance artist, and playwright Genny Lim, portrays Chinese immigrants in Angel Island's detention center. The Chinese Filipino playwright Paul Stephen Lim's Figures in Clay (1989) subverts heterosexism with his portrayal of an Asian American writer and his two homosexual lovers, and Ping Chong's multimedia performances such as Nuit Blanche (1981) explode genre boundaries. Among a wealth of Chinese American poets is Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, whose early verse has been characterized as imagistic (Summits Move with the Tide, 1974) and whose later work weds poetry and medical terminology in images of the body (Four-Year-Old Girl, 1998). Marilyn Chin's collections of poetry, such as Dwarf Bamboo (1987) and The Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty (1994), reveal the melding of Eastern and Western poetic forms, and New York–born Arthur Sze (Dazzled, 1982; The Redshifting Web, 1998) is celebrated for his striking poetic evocations of nature. The prolific Chinese Malaysian writer and literary scholar Shirley Geok-lin Lim has won a number of literary honors including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Crossing the Peninsula and Other Poems (1980) and the American Book Award for her memoir Among the White Moon Faces (1996); Lim's first novel, Joss and Gold (2001), challenges stereotypes of Asian American women and gender relationships. Priscilla Lee's Wishbone, (2000) chronicles the experiences of a Chinese American woman coming of age in the United States. Also noteworthy for its attention to women's issues is Nellie Wong's The Death of Long Steam Lady (1986), and the writers Kitty Tsui (The Words of a Woman Who Breathes Fire, 1983) and Merle Woo (Yellow Woman Speaks, 1986) espouse a specifically lesbian sensibility. Gay sexuality and politics provide the focus for Timothy Liu's poetry collections Vox Angelica (1992) and Say Goodnight (1998). A contingent of Chinese American writers dedicate their texts to representations of Hawaii. Darrell H. Y. Lum's work (Sun: Short Stories and Drama, 1980 and Pass On, No Pass Back!, 1990) deploys pidgin English to assert preservation of Hawaiian linguistic culture, and Norman Wong's prose collection Cultural Revolution (1994) explores the experiences of a gay Chinese American man whose family moves from China to Hawaii. The Chinese Korean poet Cathy Song, influenced by visual artists like Kitagawa Utamaro and Georgia O'Keeffe, paints poetic collages of Oahu rains, quotidian details of domestic life, and the mysteries of her ancestors, from her picture-bride grandmother to her aging parents; her collections include Picture Bride (1983), Frameless Windows, Squares of Light (1988), and The Land of Bliss (2001). Eric Chock's poetry collections Ten Thousand Wishes (1978) and Last Days Here (1990) speak of the poet's lifelong experiences of Hawaii; other poets who evoke the islands are Wing Tek Lum (Expounding the Doubtful Points, 1987) and John Yau (Radiant Silhouettes, 1989). Among numerous other voices in Chinese American literature are the poets Fay Chiang (In the City of Contradictions, 1979), Alexander Kuo (Changing the River, 1986), Alan Chong Lau (Songs for Jadina, 1980), Li-Young Lee (The City in Which I Love You, 1990), George Leong (A Lone Bamboo Doesn't Come from Jackson Street, 1977), Russell Leong (The Country of Dreams and Dust, 1993), Amy Ling (Chinamerican Reflections, 1984), Stephen Liu (Dream Journeys to China, 1982), the Chinese Malaysian poet Chin Woon Ping (The Naturalization of Camellia Song, 1993), and John Yau (Radiant Silhouette, 1989). Fiction writers include Adet Lin and Lin Taiyi, who published in the 1940s (their father, Lin Yutang, published Chinatown Family in 1947); Virginia Lee (The House That Tai Ming Built, 1963); Betty Lee Sung (Mountain of Gold, 1967); and sojourner Yung Wing (My Life in China and America, 1909).

Filipino American Literature The circumstances of American colonization of the Philippines from 1899 to 1946 and the continued use of English in government, schools, and other settings inflect the concept of Filipino American literature, so a strict differentiation between Filipino literature in English and Filipino American literature becomes problematic. Among early examples of Filipino writing in English is Paz Marquez Benitez's short story Dead Stars (1927) and the works of José García Villa, who is often described as a modernist writer; his short stories (Footnote to Youth, 1933) and poetry (Have Come, Am Here, 1941) drew praise from such notables as W. H. Auden and Edith Sitwell. Angela Manalang Gloria's poetry, written in the 1930s and 1940s, conveys daring exposures of women's oppression so controversial that the Commonwealth Literary Award committee for 1940 rejected Gloria's work, including the poem Revolt from Hymen. Also among important writers of Filipino literature in English is F. Sionil José, who began writing short stories and novels while working as a journalist in Manila. The Rosales saga, including The Pretenders (1962) and Po-on (1984), is considered José's masterpiece, a five-volume work spanning four generations and more than a hundred years of Philippine history. The novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist Nick Joaquin references Spanish colonization as well as Filipino heritage; his works include the novel The Woman Who Had Two Navels (1961) and The Aquinos of Tarlac (1983), a biography of the assassinated presidential candidate Benigno Aquino. After the Spanish-American (1898) and Philippine-American (1899–1902) wars, the Philippines became a “protectorate” of the United States, rendering the Filipino people U.S. “nationals.” Thus began a major wave of immigration from the Philippines to the United States; these immigrants included mostly laborers who moved along the West Coast between the Alaskan canneries and California's agricultural fields. Carlos Bulosan is the most prominent writer from this cohort of immigrants, which also includes Manuel Buaken (I Have Lived with the American People, 1948) and Benny Feria (Filipino Son, 1954). Bulosan, who came to the United States in 1931, produced an outpouring of prose and poetry, including the autobiographical novel America Is in the Heart (1946). Although the book refuses to elide the racism encountered by Filipino immigrants in the United States, Bulosan's most famous work was considered an example of optimism and faith in “America.” A contemporary of Bulosan, Bienvenido Santos (Scent of Apples, 1979) came to the United States under different circumstances. As a pensionado, or government-sponsored scholar, Santos traveled the American Midwest and East Coast, but his academic adventure was overshadowed by the distant Japanese invasion of the Philippines. In 1949 N. V. M. Gonzalez arrived in America on a writing fellowship. He embraced the conviction that Filipino languages shape Filipino writing in English, an aesthetic evident in his novels The Bamboo Dancers (1959) and A Season of Grace (1956). Linda Ty-Casper began her prolific writing career in 1963 with the appearance of The Transparent Sun and Other Stories; however, political censorship prevented the publication of her novel Awaiting Trespass (1985) in the Philippines, and the book became her first American publication. Political circumstances also inform the work of Ninotchka Rosca (State of War, 1988), who came to the United States as an exile after martial law was declared under Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s. Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn has pursued a multifaceted career that includes singing, performance art, and writing fiction, plays, and poetry. Danger and Beauty (1993), a collection of poetry and prose published between 1968 and 1992, offers a sampling of her work; her 1990 novel Dogeaters garnered a nomination for the National Book Award. Writers who also present Filipina perspectives include Sabina Murray, whose 1990 novel Slow Burn portrays the downward slide of a Manila party girl, and Marianne Villanueva, who explores family and gender relationships in her collection Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila (1991). The impacts of American cultural and military presence upon women in the Philippines are inscribed in Michelle Cruz Skinner's stories (Balikbayan, 1988; Mango Seasons, 1996), while M. Evelina Galang's Her Wild American Self (1996) features women's perspectives deriving mainly from the experiences of a U.S.-born generation of Filipino Americans living in the Midwest. Filipino American narratives published at this time also include Peter Bacho's novel Cebu (1991), which recounts the story of a Filipino American priest and issues of identity, religion, and morality, and Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's Song of Yvonne (1991), which evokes Filipino myth while simultaneously revealing the horrors of Japanese occupation. Brian Ascalon Roley's novel American Son (2001) portrays the cultural conflicts of a U.S.-born generation, specifically of two brothers living in Southern California with their Filipino mother. Other Filipino American voices in fiction include Gina Apostol (Bibliolepsy, 1997), Tess Uriza Holthe (When the Elephants Dance, 2002), Lia Relova (Sacred Places, 1997), Sophia G. Romero (Always Hiding, 1998), Lara Stapleton (The Lowest Blue Flame before Nothing, 1998), and Sam Tagatac (The New Anak, 1974). The “Flip” writers of the San Francisco Bay Area presented selections from their poetry in the anthology Without Names (1985), edited by Al Robles, whose volume Rappin with Ten Thousand Caribou in the Dark appeared in 1996. Among the poets in Without Names are Virginia Cerenio (Trespassing Innocence, 1989), Jeff Tagami (October Light, 1987), Shirley Ancheta, Oscar Peñaranda, and Jaime Jacinto. The ingenuity and vision of Filipino American poetry is also evident in work from Nick Carbó (El Grupo MacDonald's, 1995; Secret Asian Man, 2000); Eileen Tabios, whose Beyond Life Sentences (1998) won the Philippines' National Book Award for poetry; Myrna Peña-Reyes (The River Singing Stone, 1983); Maria Luisa B. Aguilar Cariño (In the Garden of the Three Islands, 1994); Gémino H. Abad and his daughter Cyan Abad (Father and Daughter: The Figures of Our Speech, 1996); Fatima Lim-Wilson (Crossing the Snow Bridge, 1995); Nerissa S. Balce; Jean Vengua Gier; Karina Africa-Bolasco; Mila D. Aguilar; Carlos A. Angeles; and Catalina Cariaga. Many of these poets are published in the anthology Returning a Borrowed Tongue (1995), edited by Nick Carbó. Filipino American dramatists have drawn upon tales of immigration, family histories, and regional connections in their theater pieces. The playwright Jeannie Barroga has written dozens of plays, including Talk-Story (1990), which portrays the relationship between an immigrant father and his U.S.-born daughter, and The Bubble-Gum Killers (1999), based on the true story of a Filipino immigrant gang leader. Han Ong has authored over thirty plays including Bachelor Rat (1992) and Middle Finger (2001); Ong's first novel, Fixer Chao, was published in 2001 to critical acclaim, and in 1997 he became the first Filipino American to be awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. Balangiga (2002), by Ralph B. Peña and the Korean American playwright Sung Rno, exposes the horrors of the Philippine-American War, and other Filipino American artists bringing Filipino cultural scenes to the stage are Louella Dizon (Till Voices Wake Us, 1992) and Linda Faigao-Hall (Americans, 1987). An extensive body of Filipino American writing is dedicated to exploring gay and lesbian sexualities. R. Zamora Linmark's Rolling the R's (1995) deploys pidgin English and 1970s popular cultural references to portray a group of teenagers coming of age in Hawaii; in his novel The Umbrella Country (1999), Bino A. Realuyo depicts a family tormented by domestic violence and poverty in the Philippines; and Chea Villanueva's lesbian erotica is collected in Jessie's Song (1995). Anthologies include Ladlad: An Anthology of Philippine Gay Writing (1994) and Ladlad 2 (1996), both edited by J. Neil, C. Garcia and Danton Remoto, as well as Tibok: Heartbeat of the Filipino Lesbian (1998), edited by Anna Leah Sarabia. Although Filipino American literature suggests writing in English, works in native dialects cannot be excluded from this designation. Since 1971 the writers group Gunglo Dagiti Mannurat Nga Ilokano Iti Hawaii has published Ilokano-language texts by Filipino American writers in Hawaii; the group works to preserve their native tongue as well as the literary forms particular to Filipino and Ilokano cultures. Poetry written in English and translated to Cebuano, or written in Kinaray-a or Ilokano and translated into English, appears in the anthology Babaylan: An Anthology of Filipina and Filipina American Writers (2000), edited by Nick Carbó and Eileen Tabios, demonstrating the possibilities for subverting the restrictions of an English-only Filipino American literary canon.

Japanese American Literature Although literature regarding Japanese American internment receives much attention, the years before World War II also produced writing that reflects the experiences of first-generation immigrants. This generation of Japanese Americans, known as Issei, arrived toward the end of the nineteenth century, when the Chinese Exclusion Acts and the easing of Japanese emigration laws spurred male Japanese immigrants to Hawaii and the mainland. Miss Numé of Japan (1899) by Onoto Watanna is considered by some the first Asian American novel to be published in the United States; other early Issei literary figures include Carl Sadakichi Hartmann, a critic, writer, and artist working at the turn of the century, known particularly for composing haiku in English. Etsu Sugimoto, raised and educated in Japan, sought to describe her culture for American audiences through four novels and an autobiographical narrative, A Daughter of the Samurai (1925); poet Bunichi Kagawa's Hidden Flame was published in 1930. The internment during World War II of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans raised questions of national loyalty and identity, particularly for the Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans); consequently, internment literature often reflects Japanese Americans' ambivalence toward the United States. John Okada's No-No Boy (1957) directly confronts the loyalty oath that Japanese Americans were forced to sign; Monica Sone's autobiographical account of internment in Minidoka, Idaho, Nisei Daughter (1953), is also among works that portray life in the camps; and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's narrative of conditions at Manzanar, California, Farewell to Manzanar (1973, cowritten with James Houston), was made into a television film in 1976. In 1949 Toshio Mori published his collection of short stories, Yokohama, California. Although Mori was incarcerated at Topaz, Utah, his work leans away from internment themes to envision a community of first- and second-generation Japanese Americans living in the San Francisco Bay Area of the 1930s. Hisaye Yamamoto, who was interned at Poston, Arizona, wrote a number of short stories collected in Seventeen Syllables (1988). Her fiction reflects camp life but delves into other experiences, such as jobs as a reporter and as a cook in Massachusetts. Mitsuye Yamada's poetry and fiction (Camp Notes, 1976; Desert Run, 1988) confront crises of racism and sexism during World War II and within the camps; her work also reaches back to ancestral forms, as in her translations of her father's senryu poems. In 1982 Yoshiko Uchida published her war and internment memoirs, Desert Exile (1982), but such literature is not limited to the United States; Joy Kogawa's novel Obasan (1981) weaves recollections of the camps in Canada. Japanese American writers drawing upon their parents' lives as immigrants include Akemi Kikumura (Promises Kept, 1991) and R. A. Sasaki (The Loom and Other Stories, 1991). Cynthia Kadohata's The Floating World (1989) portrays a Japanese American migrant-worker family driving through the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, and David Mas Masumoto's shortstory collection Silent Strength (1984) focuses on California farming communities in the 1930s. In 1988 the journalist and fiction writer Gene Oishi expanded Asian American investigations of racism to reference discrimination by whites against African Americans and Native Americans in his book In Search of Hiroshi, and in 1989 Tooru J. Kanazawa's Sushi and Sourdough appeared, an account of Japanese Americans living in Alaska from the late 1890s through the early 1920s. Lydia Minatoya's memoir Talking to High Monks in the Snow: An Asian American Odyssey was published in 1992; her first novel, The Strangeness of Beauty (2001), depicts three generations of Japanese and Japanese American women as they reunite in pre–World War II Japan. The filmmaker, poet, playwright, and performance artist David Mura has produced the book Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei (1991); a multimedia performance titled Relocations: Images from a Sansei (1990); and a poetry collection, The Colors of Desire (1995). Early Japanese Americans rendering literary visions of Hawaiian culture include Shelley Ota (Upon Their Shoulders, 1951), Margaret Harada (The Sun Shines on the Immigrant, 1960), and Kazuo Miyamoto (Hawaii: End of the Rainbow, 1964). Edward Sakamoto's plays (In the Alley, 1961; Aloha Las Vegas, 1998) create characters whose use of pidgin English helps them carve out identities from their positions among several cultures. Milton Murayama's novels All I Asking for Is My Body (1975) and Plantation Boy (1998) also experiment with pidgin to present stories of Japanese Americans working and living on Hawaiian plantations. Sylvia Watanabe's short-story collection Talking to the Dead (1992) evokes the islands' natural and cultural phenomena, and Juliet S. Kono's volume of poems Hilo Rains (1988), haunted by Pearl Harbor and internment, sketches family dynamics with special awe for the maternal. The awardwinning poet Garrett Hongo (Yellow Light, 1982; The River of Heaven, 1988) draws landscapes of Hawaii and the American West Coast, asking questions regarding identity and place and connecting with ancestors and their cultural mythos. The injuries of racism, war, and internment also emerge through Japanese American poets such as Lawson Fusao Inada, whose jazz-influenced verse reflects the political sensibilities of the 1960s and 1970s; his collections include Before the War (1971) and Legends from Camp (1992). Janice Mirikitani's poetry is gathered in Awake in the River (1978), We, the Dangerous (1995), and her ferocious volume Shedding Silence (1987), which calls up racism and internment in association with scenes of sexual violence. The National Book Award–winning poet Ai, born in Arizona of Native American, African American, and Japanese heritage, presents visions that intertwine the personal and the political, particularly in terms of racist historical atrocities (Cruelty, 1973; Fate, 1991). Notable Japanese American poets also include Kimiko Hahn (Mosquito & Ant, 1999), Geraldine Kudaka (Numerous Avalanches at the Point of Intersection, 1979), James Mitsui (Crossing the Phantom River, 1978), Yasuo Sasaki (Village Scene/Village Herd, 1986), and Ronald Tanaka (Shino Suite, 1981). Japanese American playwrights include Wakako Yamauchi, who was interned at Poston with Hisaye Yamamoto and whose drama often centers around her childhood observations of Issei women, as in And the Soul Shall Dance (1973) and The Music Lessons (1977). Philip Kan Gotanda's plays (Yankee Dawg You Die, 1988; Floating Weeds, 2001) have been produced internationally, and Dwight Okita's The Rainy Season (1996) portrays the relationship between a mother and her gay son. Velina Hasu Houston's Asa Ga Kimashita (1981) reflects her experiences as the daughter of an African American serviceman and a Japanese mother, and the critically acclaimed play Tea (1987) depicts Japanese American women in Kansas in the 1960s. Other dramatists offering performances of culture and identity are Amy Hill (Tokyo Bound, 1990), Momoko Ito (Gold Watch, 1970), Denise Uyehara (Hiro, 1994), and Karen Tei Yamashita (Godzilla Comes to Little Tokyo, 1990).

Korean American Literature Korean American literature shares with other Asian American literatures the historical contexts of immigration and discriminatory legislation as well as experiences of racism and alienation in the United States. The circumstances of Japanese occupation (1910–1945), World War II, and the Korean War (1950–1953) and its aftermath are also present in the works of immigrant and U.S.-born Korean American writers. New Il-han's When I Was a Boy in Korea (1928) exemplifies an early text that proffers an immigrant's description of Korean culture for an American audience, but perhaps the most prominent writer from this time period is Younghill Kang, who came to America in 1921. Kang's novel The Grass Roof (1931) offers a glimpse of Kang's life in Korea; his second book, East Goes West (1937) focuses upon life in America and a bachelor society of intellectuals whose dreams of success are destroyed. Other early Korean American autobiographical works include Induk Pahk's September Monkey (1954), which describes American missionaries and Japanese colonization in Korea, and Taiwon Koh's The Bitter Fruit of Kom-pawi (1959). Richard E. Kim's novel The Martyred (1964), set in the North Korean city of Pyongyang during the Korean War, remains the only Asian American book to be nominated for a Nobel Prize. Kim's next novel, The Innocent (1968), renders a sympathetic portrayal of South Korean military officers during a coup, and his Lost Names (1970) recounts his boyhood in Korea under Japanese occupation. Other immigrant Korean American writers include Ty Pak, author of two volumes of short stories (Guilt Payment, 1983; Moonbay, 1999) and a novel (Cry Korea Cry, 1999). Sook Nyul Choi, who emigrated to the United States in 1968, has crafted a number of works for young readers, including Year of Impossible Goodbyes (1991), which portrays Japanese occupation and Soviet invasion from the perspective of a ten-year-old girl, and Gathering of Pearls (1994). Ahn Jung-Hyo originally wrote his novel White Badge (1989) in Korean and then translated the text into English to present his experiences in the Korean army during the Vietnam War to an American audience. Writers who base their art on their immigrant families' experiences include Margaret K. Pai, whose The Dreams of Two Yi-Min (1989) is an autobiographical account of her parents' immigration from Korea and their attempts to settle in America. Like Pai's work, Mary Paik Lee's Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America (1990) describes the struggles of Lee's family upon arriving in the United States. Clay Walls (1986), a novel by Ronyoung Kim (a.k.a. Gloria Hahn), shows how U.S.-born children are influenced by their immigrant parents' culture. Other depictions of young people navigating their parents' cultures are Marie G. Lee's Finding My Voice (1992) and If It Hadn't Been for Yoon Jun (1993); Heinz Insu Fenkl's Memories of My Ghost Brother (1996), which fictionalizes the author's experiences as the child of a white American soldier and a Korean mother in a military camptown in South Korea; and Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman (1997), which intertwines the narratives of a mother, previously a comfort woman, and her mixed-ethnicity daughter. Gary Pak's fiction (The Watcher of Waipuna, 1992; A Ricepaper Airplane, 1998) explores a multiplicity of ethnicities and sexualities and draws upon Hawaiian plantation history and narrative traditions such as talk-story and pidgin English. Native Speaker (1995), by Chang-rae Lee, deals with a Korean American protagonist who feels caught between cultures; the novel garnered great critical praise, which led to Lee's inclusion in The New Yorker magazine's list of the twenty best writers under the age of forty. Other Korean American writers include Leonard Chang (Over the Shoulder, 2000), Susan Choi (The Foreign Student, 1998), Sun-Won Hwang (The Descendants of Cain, 1997), Peter Hyun (Man Sei!, 1986), Nancy Kim (Chinhominey's Secret, 1999), Frances Park and Ginger Park (To Swim across the World, 2001), Therese Park (A Gift of the Emperor, 1997), Mira Stout (One Thousand Chestnut Trees, 1998), and Mia Yun (House of the Winds, 1998). The poet Willyce Kim, whose work espouses lesbian Asian American sensibilities replete with humor and play, has published two volumes of verse, Eating Artichokes (1972) and Under the Rolling Sky (1976), as well as two novels, Dancer Dawkins and the California Kid (1985) and Dead Heat (1988). Myung Mi Kim's poetry takes on more somber tones: Under Flag (1991) portrays immigration, national identity, and the legacy of war; The Bounty (1996) invokes the maternal; and Dura (1998) wields fragments of haunting natural imagery. Other writers representing Korean American experiences in verse are Debra Kang Dean (News of Home, 1998), Chungmi Kim (Selected Poems, 1982), Won Ko (The Turn of Zero, 1974), Yearn Hong Choi, and Moon Hee Kim. Performance and playwriting are represented by a group of versatile Korean American artists. Writer, filmmaker, and performance artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha created a multigenre masterpiece with her book DICTEE (1982), which portrays Korean women's suffering under Japanese occupation while simultaneously demonstrating cultural displacement through the use of Korean, French, and English languages. Diana Son, a fiction writer and dramatist, saw the premier of her production R.A.W. Plays: Short Plays for Raunchy Asian Women—R.A.W. ('Cause I'm a Woman) in 1993. Performing the relationship between a Korean American brother and sister in the Midwest, Sung Rno's play Cleveland Raining was produced in several U.S. cities in 1995, and his 1999 play wAve boasts a pastiche of images from Asian and American cultures. Rob Shin's The Art of Waiting (1991) explores the uneasy relationship between Korean Americans and African Americans, and Susan Kim, besides writing a number of plays, adapted Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club for the theater; the play premiered in 1997.

South Asian American Literature The term “South Asian American,” like the term “Asian American,” inevitably homogenizes a group of people who derive from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, and the Maldive Islands, or who have sometimes arrived in the United States or Canada by way of East Africa and South America. Early South Asian immigrant laborers arrived on the American West Coast between 1904 and 1924; their narratives represent some of the earliest records of South Asian American lives. This literature today often reflects influences of Western literary traditions as well as South Asian classic and folk literatures; many South Asian American writers have lived or live now in Canada or England, demonstrating the vestiges of British colonization also apparent in the proliferation of English-language South Asian literature. Prolific among South Asian American writers is Ved (Parkash) Mehta, who came from India to the United States to attend the School for the Blind in Arkansas. A writer for The New Yorker, his numerous works include the autobiographical narrative Face to Face (1957), a novel (Delinquent Chacha, 1966), and a book of short stories (Three Stories of the Raj, 1986). Raja Rao, whose writing is deeply rooted in Brahmanism and Hinduism, has published a number of works, including The Serpent and the Rope (1960), a narrative of the search for spiritual truth, and Cat and Shakespeare (1965), in which a cat symbolizes karma. Bharati Mukherjee, a fiction writer who immigrated from Calcutta to Canada and then to the United States, claims identity as an American writer while acknowledging her roots in Indian culture. Her books The Wife (1975), The Tiger's Daughter (1972), and Jasmine (1989) allude to the experiences of upper-class women moving from Calcutta to the United States, their displacement and alienation, and their disillusionment with the “American Dream.” Bapsi Sidhwa, a Pakistani diasporic novelist, reveals attention to women's issues and her own childhood exposure to storytelling: The Crow Eaters (1979), Cracking India (1991), and An American Brat (1993). Other South Asian American writers have found voice through verse. G. S. Sharat Chandra began a career as a lawyer and turned instead to poetry; he has published numerous collections, including Family of Mirrors (1993), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and Immigrants of Loss (1994), which won nominations for the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. Agha Shahid Ali has composed five volumes of poetry, including In Memory of Begum Akhtar (1979) and A Nostalgist's Map of America (1991). Ali's work is particularly inscribed by the loss of and longing for home; his own wanderings from Kashmir, India, to New Delhi and then to the United States are revealed in his work's vision of regional history and geography. Zulfikar Ghose, from pre-partition India and Pakistan, moved in 1969 to the United States. His work demonstrates attention to identity issues such as religious affiliation; his oeuvre includes The Triple Mirror of the Self (1992) and Veronica and the Góngora Passion (1998). South Asian American women have also forged writing careers throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's Vine of Desire (2002), the sequel to her novel Sister of My Heart (1999), continues the narrative of two women's friendship in India and the United States; her collections of poetry include Black Candle (1991). The poet, fiction writer, and essayist Meena Alexander has published several volumes of poetry, a novel (Nampally Road, 1991), and a memoir (Fault Lines, 1993); her work details the nuances of women's perspectives of family, migration, and memory. The Pakistani American literary critic and writer Sara Suleri depicts her relocations between Pakistan, England, and the United States in the narrative Meatless Days (1989), and Indira Ganesan created a bildungsroman of a young Indian girl who has an affair with an older American man in Inheritance (1998). Tanuja Desai Hidier's novel Born Confused (2002) presents the story of an aspiring woman photographer encountering questions of cultural authenticity against the backdrop of the New York nightclub scene. Santha Rama Rau's prolific writing career has yielded cookbooks, travel books, fiction, and poetry, including the novel The Adventuress (1971) and a theatrical adaptation of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India. Anita Desai's works are infused with the cultural divisions that she witnessed and experienced with an Indian father and a German mother, including In Custody (1984), which was made into a motion picture, and Fasting, Feasting (1999), which also focuses on women's experiences within Pakistani culture. Vikram Seth's books of poetry include Mappings (1982) and Three Chinese Poets (1992), and his critically acclaimed A Suitable Boy (1993), at 1,349 pages, is the longest single-volume novel published in English. Shashi Tharoor has written several novels, including Riot (2001), India: From Midnight to the Millennium (1997), and Show Business (1992), a rollicking look at the Indian filmmaking industry that was made into the film Bollywood. The Glass Palace, Amitav Ghosh's novel about a young man seeking a childhood love against the backdrop of a politically unstable Burma, appeared in 2000. Not limited to English-language texts, South Asian American literature also encompasses poets writing in other languages. Panna Naik, whose work has been described as Indian feminist, has written several volumes of poetry in Gujarati; Usha Nilsson (Priyamvada) composes poetry in Hindi; and A. K. Ramanujan composes in English and Kannada (Speaking of Siva, 1973). South Asian American literature is further highlighted by the works of the poet Indran Amirthanayagam (The Elephants of Reckoning, 1993); the novelist Boman Desai (The Memory of Elephants, 1988); the memoirist and writer Kartar Dhillon, whose granddaughter Erika Surat Andersen adapted Dhillon's work for the short film Turbans (1999); the Pakistani American shortstory writer and translator Tahira Naqvi (Attar of Roses 1995); the novelist Kirin Narayan (Love, Stars, and All That, 1994); and the playwright Bina Sharif (My Ancestor's House, 1992). South Asian Canadian writers include Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient, 1992), the poet Rienzi Crusz (The Rain Does Not Know Me Anymore, 1992), and Uma Parameswaran (The Door I Shut Behind Me, 1990).

Vietnamese American Literature Over the course of just a few days in April 1975, more than 86,000 Vietnamese refugees came to the United States, fleeing the aftermath of the fall of Saigon. Although a number of immigrants came from Vietnam before this influx, the beginnings of Vietnamese American literature are often pinpointed on or about 1975. Soon after, a number of Vietnamese American narratives began to appear, albeit in the form of translated, transcribed, and/or edited interviews like Al Santoli's To Bear Any Burden: The Vietnam War and Its Aftermath in the Words of Americans and Southeast Asians (1985) and James M. Freeman's Hearts of Sorrow: Vietnamese-American Lives (1989). Other writings appearing in the late 1980s also took the form of collaborations, such as the poetry and prose collection by Wendy Wilder Larsen and Tran Thi Nga, Shallow Graves: Two Women in Vietnam (1986). When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (1989) and Child of War, Woman of Peace (1993), two volumes representing Le Ly Hayslip's autobiographical writing, were coauthored by Jay Wurts and James Hayslip, respectively; the two works were made into a film directed by Oliver Stone (Heaven and Earth, 1993). A number of autobiographical narratives not reliant upon collaboration have emerged since the mid 1990s; among these is Nguyen Qui Duc's Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family (1994), which focuses on his family members' inability to escape Vietnam during the war, and Jade Ngoc Huynh's South Wind Changing (1994), which describes the horrific conditions of war and the author's imprisonment in a forced labor camp. Catfish and Mandala (1999), Andrew X. Pham's travel memoir of a Vietnamese American man traveling through Mexico, Japan, and Vietnam, won the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize for nonfiction, and Kien Nguyen's The Unwanted (2001), a memoir of his experiences as a half-white American, half-Vietnamese boy growing up in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon, is being planned as a Hollywood film. More writing that draws upon experiences of war includes Lan Cao's novel Monkey Bridge (1997), which portrays the strain within a mother-daughter relationship as the pair flee Vietnam for Virginia in 1975, and Mong-Lan's Song of the Cicadas (2001), a collection of poems and drawings that garnered the Juniper Prize. Truong Tran's collection Placing the Accents (1999) intertwines food and family dynamics with Vietnamese and French phrases, layers of language that reveal multiple national influences. Linh Dinh, who also writes as a poet (Drunkard Boxing, 1998) and translator, returned in 1999 to Vietnam after spending twenty-four years as a refugee in the United States. Half of the short stories in his collection Fake House (2000) take place in America; the other half are set in Vietnam. In The Book of Salt (2003), the literary critic and writer Monique T. D. Truong evokes Paris between the world wars, as seen from the viewpoint of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas's male Vietnamese cook. The performance artist and writer Le thi diem Thuy transforms her memories of Vietnam into theater in Mua He Do Lua (Red Fiery Summer, 1994), and Vietnamese American histories and narratives are further traced in the works of Jackie Bong-Wright (Autumn Cloud, 2001), Nancy Tran Cantrell (Seeds of Hope, 1999), Duong Van Mai Elliott (The Sacred Willow, 1999), and Mai Nguyen (Little Daisy, 1993). Other Vietnamese American literary figures include Bao-Long Chu, Maura Donohue, Lan Duong, Elizabeth Gordon, Lai Thanhha, Andrew Lam, Trinh T. Minh-ha (also an important critic and theorist), Bich Minh Ngyuen, Minh Duc Nguyen, Dao Strom, and Barbara Tran.

More Asian American Literatures Works by writers who have arrived in America from Laos include Where the Torches Are Burning (2002), a poetry chapbook by the Hmong American Pos Moua that recounts his family history in Southeast Asia, his flight from Laos, and his adaptation to life in the United States. The novelist T. C. Huo was born in Laos of Canadian descent and came to the United States in 1979; his first book, A Thousand Wings (1998), takes place in present-day San Francisco and in Laos during the Vietnam War. Huo's second novel, Land of Smiles (2000), which depicts a family living in a Thai refugee camp in the late 1980s, won the Asian Pacific American Award for Literature in adult fiction. The Burmese American writer Wendy Law-Yone, born in Mandalay and raised in Rangoon, published her first novel, The Coffin Tree, in 1983 and a second book, Irrawaddy Tango, in 1993. The Coffin Tree reflects the painful experiences of the narrator and her half-brother as they flee the volatile situation in Burma after a violent political coup in the 1960s. In America they suffer such discrimination and poverty that the narrator is driven to a suicide attempt and her brother to death. The Cambodian American writer Loung Ung's autobiographical account of her childhood, First They Killed My Father (2000), describes the tyranny of the Khmer Rouge regime under which Ung and her family were sent to forced labor camps. The book garnered the 2001 Asian Pacific American Award for Literature in adult nonfiction, and Ung currently continues her vocation as an activist working to increase awareness of the global consequences of landmines.

Further Reading Asian Women United of California, eds. Making Waves: An Anthology of Writing by and about Asian American Women. Boston, 1989. A collection of prose and poetry from Asian American women; includes historical and sociological essays. Find this resource: Chan, Jeffery Paul, Frank Chin, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong, eds. The Big Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature. New York, 1991. The follow-up volume to the first; focuses exclusively on Chinese American and Japanese American writers. Find this resource: Chan, Sucheng. Asian Americans: An Interpretive History. Boston, 1991. An often-referenced work describing Asian immigrants in America and the legal and socioeconomic obstacles they have historically encountered. Find this resource: Cheung, King-kok, ed. An Interethnic Companion to Asian American Literature. Cambridge, 1997. A collection of overviews on different Asian American literatures, accompanied by a selection of essays dealing with specific topics such as gender, journalistic representations, and Hawaiian literature. Find this resource: Cheung, King-kok, and Stan Yogi, eds. Asian American Literature: An Annotated Bibliography. New York, 1988. References to numerous primary and secondary sources for literary research. Find this resource: Chin, Frank, Jeffery Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Hsu Wong, eds. Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Asian-American Literature. Washington, D.C., 1974. A collection of novel excerpts and short stories by Asian Americans; includes introductory essays on various literary histories. Find this resource: Chock, Eric, and Darrell H. Y. Lum, eds. Pake: Writings by Chinese in Hawaii. Honolulu, 1989. A broad selection of writers conveying their various perspectives on Hawaiian culture. Find this resource: Fenkl, Heinz Insu, and Walter K. Lew, eds. Kori: The Beacon Anthology of Korean American Fiction. Boston, 2001. Comprising book extracts and short fiction from sixteen noteworthy Korean American writers. Find this resource: Francia, Luis H. Brown River, White Ocean: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Philippine Literature in English. New Brunswick, N.J., 1993. Short stories and poetry written in English by Filipinos and Filipino Americans; accompanied by an introduction and brief biographies. Find this resource: Francia, Luis H., and Eric Gamalinda, eds. Flippin': Filipinos on America. New York, 1996. Literature from Filipino American artists; includes English-language writers and poets in the Philippines. Find this resource: Hagedorn, Jessica, ed. Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction. New York, 1993. A range of Asian American literature including poetry, novel excerpts, and short stories. Find this resource: Hara, Marie Murphy, and Nora Okja Keller, eds. Intersecting Circles: The Voices of Hapa Women in Poetry and Prose. Honolulu, 2000. A collection of writing by women of mixed Asian and white backgrounds and their representations of their experiences living between ethnic categories. Find this resource: Hongo, Garrett, ed. The Open Boat: Poems from Asian America. New York, 1993. Thirty poets are collected in this anthology, which features contemplations of identity and culture. Find this resource: Houston, Velina Hasu, and Roberta Uno, eds. But Still, Like Air, I'll Rise: New Asian American Plays. Philadelphia, 1997. A selection of recent plays by Asian American dramatists; includes a foreword by Uno. Find this resource: Kim, Elaine H. Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context. Philadelphia, 1982. A seminal literary study of a range of Asian American writers from Younghill Kang to Carlos Bulosan; historically contextualizes authors and works. Find this resource: Lew, Walter, ed. Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry. New York, 1995. Anthologizes seventy-three poets, descended from a multitude of Asian regions, writing in traditional and experimental forms. Find this resource: Lim, Shirley Geok-lin, and Mayumi Tsutakawa, eds. The Forbidden Stitch: An Asian American Woman's Anthology. Corvallis, Oreg., 1989. This American Book Award–winning anthology encompasses poetry, prose, and visual art (including photographs of art pieces) by Asian American women. Find this resource: Lim, Shirley Geok-lin, and Amy Ling, eds. Reading the Literatures of Asian America. Philadelphia, 1992. A collection of essays discussing issues portrayed in Asian American literature, such as gender and nationality. Find this resource: Lim-Hing, Sharon, ed. The Very Inside: An Anthology of Writing by Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian and Bisexual Women. Toronto, 1994. A collection of Asian American and Asian Canadian lesbian and bisexual women's writing. Find this resource: Rustomji-Kerns, Roshni. Living in America: Poetry and Fiction by South Asian American Writers. Boulder, Colo., 1995. A gathering of verse and prose with introductory material from the editor and Rashmi Sharma. Find this resource: Srikanth, Rajini, and Esther Y. Iwanaga, eds. Bold Words: A Century of Asian American Writing. New Brunswick, N.J., 2001. Memoirs, poetry, and fiction from an impressive range of Asian American writers; includes a general introduction. Find this resource: Tran, Barbara, Monique T. D. Truong, and Luu Truong Khoi, eds. Watermark: Vietnamese-American Poetry and Prose. New York, 1998. Represents a group of Vietnamese American artists writing on themes of war and beyond. Find this resource: Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. Reading Asian American Literature: From Necessity to Extravagance. Princeton, N.J., 1993. A literary study that analyzes themes, including food and landscape, in a range of literature by Asian American writers. Find this resource:

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