From Publishers Weekly
An impressive feat of cultural reclamation, this anthology of stories, essays and excerpts from novels and memoirs records the enormously varied responses of Asian-Americans to life and identity in the U.S. Complexity is the keynote of the 32 selections by Amy Tan, Gish Jen, Cynthia Kadohata, Maxine Hong Kingston and others. The sensitive Chinese-American protagonist of Gus Lee's "Toussaint" (from his novel China Boy ) copes with local bullies, grief over his mother's death, an abusive stepmother and being one of few Asian-Americans in a predominantly African American San Francisco neighborhood. In "A Parrot's Beak," an ebullient autobiographical odyssey, Indian-American Kartar Dhillon describes life dominated first by her frustrated widowed mother, then by her own authoritarian husband and her eventual decision to strike out on her own with her three children. Several selections deal with the imprisonment of over 120,000 Japanese-Americans during WW II and the shattering impact of this experience on lives and families through successive generations. Writers of Filipino, Korean and multiracial descent are also represented in narratives marked by storytelling power and distinctive voices.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Divided into "First Memories," "The Beginnings of Identity," and "Growing Up," this compilation of fiction and essays by 32 Asian American authors recounts life mostly in California but also in New York and Hawaii. Important as documents, Sui Sin Far's "Pat and Pan" and an excerpt from Tooru J. Kanazawa's Sushi and Sourdough are hard-to-find depictions of late 19th-century life for Asians in America. Two excerpts (from Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's Farewell to Manzanar and Gene Oishi's In Search of Hiroshi ) show life in the World War II Japanese internment camps. The rest include excerpts from works by well-known writers Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, and Jade Snow Wong, in addition to fine stories by Frank Chin, Garrett Hongo, Gish Jen, and Mavis Hara. Stories of teenage and college-age problems dominate, but a list of "Suggested Further Readings" is helpful for continuing the stories.
- Kitty Chen Dean, Nassau Coll., Garden City, N.Y.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Kitty Chen Dean, Nassau Coll., Garden City, N.Y.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
