Customer Reviews

Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings By and About Asian American Women

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Let me first qualify myself in saying that I'm not Asian nor am I female. I'm a Caucasian male who is also a pastor. Most of the people that I worship with and minister to are Asian Americans. I became fascinated with it when I read about it on Amazon a few years back. Not Long later I read about "Making More Waves," a follow-up book with many of the same ladies from the first book.

This book details the struggles that Asian ladies go through. Some of the things covered are immigration, tension w/parents, growing up in 2 cultures (Asian & American), sexism, racism, interracial marriages, among the many. It really is thorough from start to finish. One of the best parts about it is that it's written by several ladies, not just one. So in the end, you hear many voices instead of just one.

This book has been an immense help to me, both personally and professionally. It was both an eye-opener and a life changer. I'd recommend this book to all Asians and those who are friends with, dating, or married to an Asian.

Kudos to Elaine Kim and the other ladies that wrote this book!

Another anthology - but it's OK, because "Making More Waves" is a follow-up on the 1989 anthology "Making Waves." These two books should be read together to show how the editors' definition of Asian American women and decision about what to emphasize and focus on changed between the late 1980's and the late 1990's. "Making Waves" contained a lot of historical introductory material, especially on Chinese and Japanese Americans. "Making More Waves" stretched itself to deal more with Indian, Cambodian, Laotian, and Filipino Americans, with some similar topics but many new ones, like Susan Ito's essay on mixed race identity, Dana Takagi's piece on sexual orientation, Lisa Park's thoughts on race and suicide, and Anuradha Advani's piece on organizing South Asian taxi drivers in New York City. Writers and thinkers like Helen Zia and Lisa Lowe contributed great essays to this new volume. There are a lot of published writers of poetry and novels as well. An excerpt from a Lisa See novel is included, as well as work by Kimiko Hahn, Mitsuye Yamada, Chitra Divakaruni, Marie G. Lee, Nora Okja Keller, Carolyn Leilani-Lau, Marilyn Chin, Myung Mi Kim, and Mong Lan. But what I like best is that first-time writers of really good stuff are sprinkled in among the veterans. A great collection.

Parts of it were good. The plot thickened in the midlle but faded nearer the end. An OK read for passing time.