The Big Aiiieeeee!

The Big Aiiieeeee! PDF Author: Jeffery Paul Chan
Publisher: Plume
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 648

Get Book Here

Book Description
An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature When the first volume of this collection of Asian American literature appeared in 1974, it showed readers the roots and the richness of Chinese American and Japanese American writing. The authors called their anthology Aiiieeeee! because that was the shout, the scream, often the only sound coming from the yellow man or woman in American movies, television, or comic books. But as that work demonstrated, the Asian American writer, long ignored and excluded from participating in American culture, has an articulate and creative voice. The Big Aiiieeeee!--an entirely new and truly comprehensive collection--brings together the earliest writings to appear in America, such as the revealing An English-Chinese Phrase Book used by the first generation of Chinese immigrants, and recent stories and essays, such as "Come All Ye Asian American Writers" by Frank Chin, about the importance of Chinese and Japanese heroic tradition. Here we all can now learn of the pain, the dreams, the betrayals, and the indelible sense of "otherness" of Americans of Chinese and Japanese descent, in a seminal collection of poetry, prose, and drama--writings filled with rage and beauty, memory and vision. "Here is a Gold Mountain of voices. In the telling and retelling of our stories, we create a community of memory. This huge collection invites all of us to become listeners and to claim America."--Ronald Takai, author of Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans

The Big Aiiieeeee!

The Big Aiiieeeee! PDF Author: Jeffery Paul Chan
Publisher: Plume
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 648

Get Book Here

Book Description
An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature When the first volume of this collection of Asian American literature appeared in 1974, it showed readers the roots and the richness of Chinese American and Japanese American writing. The authors called their anthology Aiiieeeee! because that was the shout, the scream, often the only sound coming from the yellow man or woman in American movies, television, or comic books. But as that work demonstrated, the Asian American writer, long ignored and excluded from participating in American culture, has an articulate and creative voice. The Big Aiiieeeee!--an entirely new and truly comprehensive collection--brings together the earliest writings to appear in America, such as the revealing An English-Chinese Phrase Book used by the first generation of Chinese immigrants, and recent stories and essays, such as "Come All Ye Asian American Writers" by Frank Chin, about the importance of Chinese and Japanese heroic tradition. Here we all can now learn of the pain, the dreams, the betrayals, and the indelible sense of "otherness" of Americans of Chinese and Japanese descent, in a seminal collection of poetry, prose, and drama--writings filled with rage and beauty, memory and vision. "Here is a Gold Mountain of voices. In the telling and retelling of our stories, we create a community of memory. This huge collection invites all of us to become listeners and to claim America."--Ronald Takai, author of Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans

Bulletproof Buddhists and Other Essays

Bulletproof Buddhists and Other Essays PDF Author: Frank Chin
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824819590
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 442

Get Book Here

Book Description
“America doesn’t want us as a visible native minority. They want us to keep our place as Americanized foreigners ruled by immigrant loyalty. But never having been anything else but born here, I’ve never been foreign and resent having foreigners telling me my place in America and America telling me I’m foreign. There’s no denial or rejection of Chinese culture going on here, just the recognition of the fact that Americanized Chinese are not Chinese Americans and that Chinese Americans cannot be understood in the terms of either Chinese or American culture, or some ‘chow mein/spaghetti’ formula of Chinese and American cultures, or anything else you’ve seen and loved in Charlie Chan.” —from “Confessions of a Chinatown Cowboy”

Eat a Bowl of Tea

Eat a Bowl of Tea PDF Author: Louis Chu
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295747064
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Get Book Here

Book Description
At the close of the Second World War, racist immigration laws trapped enclaves of old men in Chinatowns across the United States, preventing their wives or families from joining them. They took refuge from loneliness in the repartee and rivalries exchanged over games of mahjong in the backrooms of barbershops or at the local tong. These bachelors found hope in the nascent marriages and future children who would someday grow roots in American soil, made possible at last by the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943. Louis Chu tells the story of a newlywed couple that inherits the burden of this tightly bonded community’s expectations. Returning soldier Ben Loy travels to China to marry Mei Oi, a beautiful, intelligent woman who then emigrates to New York. After their honeymoon, Ben Loy becomes impotent, and his inability to father a child frustrates both Mei Oi and the Chinatown bachelors. This discontent boils over when Mei Oi has an affair and the community learns of Ben Loy’s humiliation. Eat a Bowl of Tea remains a groundbreaking and influential work. The first novel to capture the tone and sensibility of everyday life in an American Chinatown, it is an incisive portrayal of Chinese America on the brink of change. A new foreword by Fae Myenne Ng explores the depth and meaning of Mei Oi’s lust and elucidates the power of Chu’s uncompromising writing.

American Knees

American Knees PDF Author: Shawn Wong
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780295984964
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description
"I cracked up reading Shawn Wong's witty, tender, wise, and sexy new novel. His lovable but ambivalent protagonist collides memorably with a cast of female characters who are a welcome change from the shrinking violets and silent martyrs we've come to expect from 'ethnic' literature. American Knees is contemporary to the bone - a highly entertaining, deftly written, provocative and moving work of fiction." -- Jessica Hagedorn, author of Dogeaters Shawn Wong is the author of the award-winning novel Homebase and an editor of several anthologies of Asian American literature, including Aiiieeeee! and The Big Aiiieeeee! He is the director of the University Honors Program at the University of Washington. Read about the movie, Americanese, based on Shawn Wong's book, at: http://www.americanesethemovie.com

Homebase

Homebase PDF Author: Shawn Wong
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295999721
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 122

Get Book Here

Book Description
Homebase is the coming of age story of Rainsford Chan in 1950s and '60s California. Rainsford is a fourth-generation Chinese American named after the town where his great-grandfather worked during the gold rush. Orphaned at fifteen, he attempts to claim America as his homebase, and his personal history is interwoven with dreams, stories, and letters of his family's life in America. Moving through time and place, the story allows the reader to discover the past as Rainsford does, to see the world through his eyes, and to learn the truth about the Chinese American experience.

Legends from Camp

Legends from Camp PDF Author: Lawson Fusao Inada
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Get Book Here

Book Description
AUTOGRAPHED TO TIM BY THE AUTHOR.

No-no Boy

No-no Boy PDF Author: John Okada
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Japanese
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description


Born in the USA

Born in the USA PDF Author: Frank Chin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742518520
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 532

Get Book Here

Book Description
A history of the Japanese American saga, this text details the lives of first and second generation Japanese Americans before World War II with images drawn from interviews, songs, novels and newspaper articles.

Gunga Din Highway

Gunga Din Highway PDF Author: Frank Chin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this wickedly satirical follow-up to Donald Duk, Frank Chin presents a freewheeling saga of two generations of Kwans: Longman, the Chinese-American who dies in countless bad Hollywood films, and his son Ulysses, who depises his father's dream of someday playing Charlie Chan.

The Confessions of a Number One Son

The Confessions of a Number One Son PDF Author: Frank Chin
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824854551
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the early 1970s, Frank Chin, the outspoken Chinese American author of such plays as The Chickencoop Chinaman and The Year of the Dragon, wrote a full-length novel that was never published and presumably lost. Nearly four decades later, Calvin McMillin, a literary scholar specializing in Asian American literature, would discover Chin’s original manuscripts and embark on an extensive restoration project. Meticulously reassembled from multiple extant drafts, Frank Chin’s “forgotten” novel is a sequel to The Chickencoop Chinaman and follows the further misadventures of Tam Lum, the original play’s witty protagonist. Haunted by the bitter memories of a failed marriage and the untimely death of a beloved family member, Tam flees San Francisco’s Chinatown for a life of self-imposed exile on the Hawaiian island of Maui. After burning his sole copy of a manuscript he believed would someday be hailed as “The Great Chinese American Novel,” Tam stumbles into an unlikely romance with Lily, a former nun fresh out of the convent and looking for love. In the process, he also develops an unusual friendship with Lily’s father, a washed-up Hollywood actor once famous for portraying Charlie Chan on the big screen. Thanks in no small part to this bizarre father/daughter pair, not to mention an array of equally quirky locals, Tam soon discovers that his otherwise laidback island existence has been transformed into a farce of epic proportions. Had it been published in the 1970s as originally intended, The Confessions of a Number One Son might have changed the face of Asian American literature as we know it. Written at the height of Frank Chin’s creative powers, this formerly “lost” novel ranks as the author’s funniest, most powerful, and most poignant work to date. Now, some forty years after its initial conception, The Confessions of a Number One Son is finally available to readers everywhere.