Asian-American Literary Traditions
T
HROUGHOUT THE NINETEENTH and twentieth centuries, successive
groups of Asian immigrants have arrived in the United States—
Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Indian, Korean, Vietnamese—distinguished by language, education, religion, class, and even sex. One thing all
have shared is a racial-cultural stereotype—the “yellow peril”—that has influenced all aspects of Asian-American life. Likewise, the institutionalization of stereotypes in public law, in the popular sensibility governing all aspects of public media, and in institutions of public education may limit an
appreciation of any minority culture in American society. Understanding
the historical and social circumstances of Asian immigrants is a first step in
penetrating stereotypes.
CHINESE-AMERICAN LITERARY TRADITIONS
While early merchants and traders from China received public attention in the newspapers of the day as early as 1850—a delegation of “China
Boys” organized to receive missionary tracts in San Francisco, a similar group
marching in a parade to celebrate the admission of California to the Union,
and the like—significant numbers of Chinese immigrants did not arrive until 1852, when an estimated 20,000 Chinese laborers passed through the
Port of San Francisco, destined in the main for the newly developed mining
regions of northern California. In that same year, the California State Legislature enacted a Foreign Miners Tax which was aimed directly at the Chinese; and in 1854, the California Supreme Court ruled that an 1850 statute
prohibiting Indians and Negroes from testifying for or against white people
also applied to Chinese, stripping these newly arrived immigrants of access
to judicial remedies.
There was established from the onset of Chinese immigration a pattern
of statutory and social exclusion that paralleled the development of Chinese
settlement in the West, determining where and at what Chinese might be
employed, where they might live, and how they might be schooled. Eventually, in 1924, laws were passed to halt all Asian immigration by excluding
from entry any alien ineligible for citizenship.
Such widespread discrimination shaped the response of Chinese immigrants, some of whom maintained their language and cultural ethos as a
protective barrier. Another response was to adopt whatever terms of acceptance society might offer, and thereby find opportunities for succeeding gen1119
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erations to establish themselves, as waves of European immigrants on the
East Coast would in this same period.
Chinese-American literature thus reflects two major influences that
control the development of writings and writers. The first is an immigrant
tradition, rooted in the historical experience of the first Cantonese to settle
the western United States, a tradition discoverable in the popular art forms
recorded mainly in Chinese but also in English in the publications of the
day. The second and more pervasive influence is a Christian missionary tradition that offered the Chinese immigrant acceptance and interpretation
through white stereotypes of the “heathen Chinee,” deniable and properly
excluded, and his yellow counterpart, the convert who, characteristically,
denied the forms of traditional Chinese expression, substituting a confessional attitude in order to gain an avenue of acceptance in American society. Also reflected is the fact that many Chinese came to America not as
migrants, but as sojourners, intending to return home when they could.
Perhaps the most representative literary material of the nineteenthcentury Chinese immigrant sensibility discovered to date is a collection of
folk verse published by Pui-Chee Leung in his work, Wooden-Fish Book:
Critical Essays & an Annotated Catalog Based on the Collection in the University of Hong Kong (University of Hong Kong, 1978). Muk yu (wooden-fish)
as a traditional form of folk versification predates the Chinese settlement of
the West Coast of America by some two thousand years. Originally derived
from the formal chants of the Buddhist sutras, the muk yu takes its name
from the wooden blocks that are struck together in rhythm to recitation.
In the Chinese newspapers of the 1860s in San Francisco, publications
of these folk lyrics indicate experiments in form to include instrumentation
as popular songs as well as new content reflecting the immigrants’ experiences as settlers on a new frontier. As the published verses show, such folk
expression provides a starting point from which consistent cultural sensibility may be traced. Another significant Chinese development from this
period is the common use of Cantonese dialects in newspapers published
both in Hong Kong and in the Chinese-American communities of San
Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles.
Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910–
1940, by M. H. Lai, et al. (San Francisco, 1980), provides translations of
poems carved in the walls of the Chinese detention barracks on Angel
Island. Modeled after New York’s Ellis Island, Angel Island was used to
examine newly arrived Chinese immigrants, and was a prison for deportees
awaiting transportation to China. This remarkable work includes sixty-six
poems as well as photographs of and interviews with Chinese-Americans
who were detained at Angel Island, providing a valuable link with the
immigrant past, including extralegal immigration and Chinatowns with
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largely bachelor populations that eschewed traditional routes toward acculturation and assimilation for fear of detection and deportation by immigration authorities.
From this period, there is but one sympathetic portrayal of the Chinese
immigrants’ plight. Mrs. Spring Fragrance, written by Edith Eaton (Sui Sin
Far), is a collection of short stories that detail the settings of Chinatowns in
San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles. Eaton captures in her stories much
of the divided loyalties, the despair and cultural confusions, that mark the
sensibilities of emerging Chinese-Americans, and she documents the barriers that served to exclude the immigrant from more than a marginal settlement in American society. Most remarkable are her stories that compare
white male attitudes towards Chinese women to the attitudes of the immigrant Chinese, who come from a period in their own country’s cultural development when women were considered inferior.
Eaton’s observations illuminate what must be viewed in retrospect as
the only logical alternative open to Chinese settlers who would make their
homes in America. In a period of Chinese-American development where
men outnumbered women almost ten to one, women took on inordinate
importance. Children had to be born to make citizenship possible. It is on
this issue—women, their status, self-possession and legitimacy—that the
cultural sensibilities of the Cantonese immigrant can be traced from the traditional muk yu through the publication of Louis Chu’s novel Eat a Bowl of
Tea in 1961. It was no coincidence that the status of women became a major
issue that was used to justify discrimination and eventual exclusion of Chinese immigrants and to further substantiate traditional Western attitudes
towards Asian cultures as morally unenlightened.
It should also be emphasized that the first wave of Chinese immigration came during a period in world history when the ancient injustices of
colonial and neocolonial exploitation of Africa and Asia for slave and
coolie labor would soon cease. A casual reading of newspaper editorials and
legislative arguments supporting Asian exclusion shows that popular opinion considered Chinese labor on the western American border anathema to
American notions of populist independence and to an emerging consciousness of the rights of working men that was expressed through the labor
movement. Chinese labor, of course, built a good deal of the West.
The first bilingual newspapers distributed in the Chinese communities
of the 1850s were published by missionaries. Sunday schools and English
classes were among the very few public institutions in which Chinese immigrants could meet with white Americans for social intercourse. While the
number of Chinese converts was initially small, those converts’ representations of the Chinese immigrant to American society would later provide the
only acceptable portrait of Chinese aspirations for themselves as Americans.
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Virtually all works written by Chinese-Americans in English before
and during the exclusion period ape the form and sensibility of one book,
My Life in China and America by Yung Wing (1909). In form, this work and
the several to follow are confessional, condescending toward the customs
and practices of the Chinese social system and uncompromising in their
gratitude to the Christian order. The sensibility established here represents
a life testifying to conversion and salvation and denies that the Chinese
immigrant came to America with any initial commitment to specific moral
and cultural values. For Yung Wing, the first Chinese graduate from an
American university, his biography chronicles a life devoted to the modernization of China.
Father and Glorious Descendant (1943) by Pardee Lowe, Jade Snow
Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter (1950), and books by Lin Yutang such as On
the Wisdom of America (1950) are likewise devoid of the original immigrant
sensibility, and are presently out of favor. Stereotypes of the day were incorporated by Chinese-American writers of this generation and provided the
reading public the comfortable illusion that the social and moral melting
pot could make all manner of exotic ingredients palatable to American
tastes and sensibilities. Some Chinese, these writers were saying, want to be
accepted as Americans. The questions were: how many and at what cost?
JAPANESE-AMERICAN LITERARY TRADITIONS
There is a rich and complex tradition of Japanese-American writing in
English. Its variety and development through the internment of Americans
of Japanese ancestry in concentration camps during World War II—the
apotheosis of American intolerance—reflect common bonds of history, language, sensibility and culture.
In part, the early adoption of English as an expressive medium may be
attributed to an initial resolve among the Japanese to settle permanently in
the territories to which they migrated—Hawaii, the Pacific Coast, and the
largely undeveloped northwestern United States. Most came to stay and
they assimilated to the degree they were tolerated. The ability to make such
a resolve was abetted by the Japanese government’s interest in avoiding the
Chinese examples of Asians as a supply for cheap labor, or of immigration as
exile for political dissidents. Too, the arrival in numbers of Japanese immigrants occurred between 1890 and 1910. While legal restrictions limiting
Asian immigrants’ participation in American society were most intense during this period, exclusionary sentiments had at least become a matter of
law; a few decades earlier, vigilante injustice and the violent frontier ethos
had confronted Chinese immigrants.
In the decades that followed the Meiji Restoration with its policy of
encouraging greater contact with the West to increase trade and indus1122
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trialization, some Japanese sought their fortunes in the West and subsequently returned to contribute to the technological and cultural revolution
in Japan. There remained, however, a generation of Japanese immigrants
who were committed to staying in America. By early treaties between
America and Japan, and later by the establishment of a society based on
families and children who were citizens, a stable and secure community life
was established.
By the turn of the century, an early recognition by the Japanese of
Japan that the Issei (first generation) had become decidedly other than Japanese was acknowledged by Japanese travelers to the West. In a recent translation by Stephen W. Kohl of Nagai Kafu’s Amerika Monogatare (American
Tales ), the author dramatizes the difference between himself and the immigrant Issei, who insists on sharing something common with the traveler:
“I am an ignorant man who left home to find work. I don’t speak
English. In fact, I can’t even read much Japanese. All I have is
the strength in these two arms. I have to make what money I can
with my own strength. I have already saved a certain amount, but
. . . but . . .” His eyes darted around wildly and he clutched my
sleeve again.
Issei: A History of lssei Immigration in North America by Kazuo Ito (1973)
provides the most detailed social history of Japanese-American communities,
focusing on the Pacific Northwest. Ito documents the evolution of social
networks, kinship ties, business, social and cultural organizations, as recorded in the oral testimonies of Issei and Nisei (second generation) he collected between 1965 and 1967. As a resource for recovering JapaneseAmerican writing of the pre-camp period, he includes the haiku, tanka and
senryu verse written by these generations, and cites the membership and
records the history of community literary groups established to practice
these traditional verse forms. Ito also refers to Kyo Koike, founding member
of a haiku society in Seattle and an early experimenter with a camera.
Recognition has also been extended by an American literary establishment to a tradition of Japanese-American verse, in the work of such writers
as Yone Noguchi and Sadakichi Hartmann or in the more traditional haiku
of Shieshi Tsuneishi, that is acknowledged to have had some influence on
American writing. None of these three, however, can be termed a major
figure in the Japanese literary community. They function more as examples
of the West’s exotic mixture and evidence of the cultural vitality within
Japanese America.
The vitality of a literature, especially an ethnic literature, must come
from its ability to codify and legitimize common experience in the terms of
that experience and to celebrate life as it is lived, and those terms cannot be
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limited to assimilationism on the one hand or anti-assimilationism on the
other. For the Japanese who saw the Nikkei (Japanese-Americans) possessed
of some incomprehensible vision to settle in a land where they were despised—as Kafu saw them—or for the American literary establishment,
there was a common recognition that the Japanese immigrants had become
something else, Americans of a unique sort.
The founding in 1928 by James Y. Sakamoto of the first all-English
Japanese-American newspaper, The Japanese American Courier, and the formation one year later of the Japanese American Citizens League by Sakamoto
and a coterie of Nisei peers in Seattle, represent the emergence of a Nisei
vision of Japanese America. An interpretation of Sakamoto’s career spanning that period of Japanese-American history before the relocation camps,
portraying the vitality and diversity of Japanese-American life, may be read
in Nisei: The Quiet Americans (1963) by Bill Hosokawa.
With the recent publication of Toshio Mori’s The Chauvinist and Other
Stories (1979), and his novel The Woman from Hiroshima (1980), we have
available a pre-camp Nisei’s vision of Japanese-American life. Mori’s first
publication, Yokohama, California (1949), has long been recognized as a
pioneering effort to record the rhythms and sensibilities of the Issei and
Nisei before the war. Born in Oakland, California, in 1910, Mori recalls
the Japanese-American community of the San Francisco Bay area and his
own aspirations to become first a baseball player, then a writer, while working in the family nursery in San Leandro, in a social fabric embroidered by
the hopes and dreams of the Issei and Nisei who people his stories—Americans by birth and experience, rejected by public opinion that identified
them as soon-to-be-enemy aliens. Mori’s vision of Japanese-American life
before the war is perhaps the only work available that has a unity of vision,
that melds the variety of loyalties, experiences and sensibilities.
No discussion of Japanese-American literary resources can fail to mention the devastating consequences of the 1942–1945 imprisonment by the
War Relocation Authority of Japanese-Americans residing in the western
United States. The camps destroyed the common bonds of history, language
and culture by dividing the first generation—who were legally ineligible for
citizenship—from the youngest of the second generation. The young,
English-speaking Nisei found a measure of acceptance and authority in
American concentration camps. Stunned by their imprisonment, at a suspicious distance from the Issei, these Americans fell victim to a racist equation that confused their cultural identity with loyalty to Japan.
While older, experienced Nisei writers might assert the integrity of
a Japanese-American culture and identity, and did so in camp newspaper
editorials and literary magazines in defiance of camp policies, younger
Nisei saw cultural differences as barriers to their own acceptance. In his
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Minidoka Camp Diary, a young and understandably confused Ted Matsuda
records this entry:
July 3. Night before the Fourth—campaigning for favorite
queen—Odori (Japanese Folk Dancing) at night.
I wonder what goes through the minds of those who are enthusiastic about Japanese dancing? Are they by these dances, trying
to express their inclinations toward everything Japanese?
When we are in Rome, we do as the Romans. When we are in
America, is it too much to ask to do as Americans? As long as
Japanese insist on dragging out Japanese customs, Americans
are going to believe that we cannot be assimilated into American ways. (Twin Falls Times News, 1975)
FILIPINO-AMERICAN LITERATURE
European influence has been present in the Philippines since Magellan
landed in Cebu in the middle of the sixteenth century. Since then, the
Philippines have been infused with Spanish cultural elements that have
manifested themselves in everything from food to religious worship. Conversion to Catholicism was an important factor in the colonization of the
Philippines under Spain, perhaps because religious dogma and the fear of
hell kept the peasant people in line when the conquistadors were not on
guard. Thus, religion has been used, radical historians assert, as a paramilitary force in order to achieve a more complete colonization. This was
true mostly for the peasant classes. In the upper classes, Catholicism was
embraced along with the acquisition of skill in the Spanish language. Many
of the newly created landed gentry were mixtures of indigenous Filipino and
Spanish blood.
Filipino literature in English has roots in the Philippines itself, where
English constitutes a cultivated second language. Since 1898, when the
Philippines became a protectorate of the United States, English has been
used as the medium of instruction in the public schools. Not only was English the medium of instruction, but English and American literature were
taught as the primary literature of aesthetic expression.
Of Filipino immigrant authors in the United States—generally, postWorld War I migrants—who addressed the migratory experience, Carlos
Bulosan renders the finest socio-historical account of the lives of the Filipino immigrant workers. He depicts situations of internal colonization and
labor exploitation. So prevalent are these situations in his major work,
America Is in the Heart (1946), that it has been praised as social history. This
novel, partly autobiographical and partly a documentary of Bulosan’s compatriots’ experiences in America, is an expression of the working-class immigrant experience.
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As a collection of anecdotes or personal oral histories, America Is in the
Heart stands out as one of few documents of Filipino immigrant experience.
As a literary piece, it combines Filipino mythological themes with social
criticism and human affirmation. As a cultural carrier, it is explicit about
Filipino values and emotional life. Much of the work is focused on the unfortunate experiences of its characters and on the bonds of affection that are
developed between these characters as a result of an oppressive environment. The mythological essence of America Is in the Heart is the search for a
sense of home in the promised land. The novel begins in an impoverished
barrio in a province of the northern Philippines. Here anecdotal depictions
of traditional village life and regional customs establish the primary conditions of the emigrant. If the impetus for the protagonist’s journey needs explication, it is presented in this part of the book. The journey is then followed from its point of departure to its cyclical end in the hearts of the
protagonist’s compatriots and friends. As the title suggests, the promised
land turns out to be a place in the heart; so the protagonist finds, at the end
of his journey, that even in a dead-end situation there are compatriots in
the same predicament who can reestablish his almost obliterated faith in
the human race. The cultural consciousness of the immigrant experience,
not to mention its detail and style, render this a remarkable work.
A contemporary of Bulosan’s, poet José García Villa, exemplifies the
acceptance of English/American literary forms and taste. His work is often
metaphysical, bespeaking a universality that limns the human spirit rather
than ethnicity. Villa’s accomplishments challenge those who promote the
often unstated but deeply held notion that all immigrant writing must in
some way reflect proletarian or ethnic purposes. An artist may produce
beauty and, in doing so, elevate humanity in general as well as his own particular culture.
The final two stanzas of “Be Beautiful, Noble, Like the Antique Ant,”
reveal the Blakean quality of Villa’s art:
Speak with great moderation: but think
With great fierceness, burning passion:
Though what the ant thought
No annals reveal, nor his descendants
Break the seal.
Trace the tracelessness of the ant,
Every ant has reached this perfection.
As he comes, so he goes,
Flowing as water flows,
Essential but secret like a rose.
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The career of José García Villa points out the folly of trying to limit “ethnic” writers to the expression of cultural uniqueness or outrage at racism.
Other writers of the Filipino-American earlier immigrant generations,
like Villa, do not originate from the working classes, but the content
of some of their novels and short stories are reflective of the immigrant
working-class experience. The pathos of the community and the pathetic
alienation of its individuals become themes in the works of N. V. M. Gonzales and Bienvenido Santos—winner of the 1981 American Book Prize—
who are the two most prominent figures in current Filipino-American literature in the United States.
Many of the short stories and novels of Gonzales and Santos are reflective of the alienation in the lives of immigrant workers. Santos’s short story
“The Scent of Apples,” in fact, speaks of the alienated among the alienated, of Filipino working-class immigrants sans community. His “Tomato
Game” addresses the despicable exploitation of a migrant worker by a fellow
countryman who is a usurer of emotions as well as money. Gonzales, in
“The Popcorn Man” and “A Bread of Salt,” skillfully addresses the Filipino’s
alienation even within his own colonized geographical context.
In Philippine academic circles, there has been a recent resurgence of
interest in folk epic and other poetry of the oral tradition. The study of folkliterature as art demonstrates that something remains which may be recognized by Filipino-Americans as indigenously Filipino, not Spanish or American, and testifies that a thread of indigenous culture remains continuous
and intact in spite of a harsh history of colonization. Furthermore, if readers
are to understand the literature of the Filipinos that is now being written in
English, the oral and immigrant tradition cannot be ignored. It is a vital
link in Filipino-American consciousness.
POST-WAR ASIAN-AMERICAN WRITING
The final lifting of racial restrictions on immigration to the United
States in October 1966 completed more than two decades of evolving legislation that may, in the future, provide a stable base upon which successive
generations of Asian immigrants can construct a cultural sensibility. Indeed, today Southeast Asia constitutes a major new source of migrants. Of
course, not all Asian-Americans seek to retain or build a unique cultural
identity. Most simply seek to be accepted as Americans: the immigrants’
constant quest for assimilation wars with lingering racism and nativism.
Asian-American literature published during the post-war period incorporates the time of exclusion and finds themes and issues reflective of a halfcentury of isolation. Dr. Kazuo Miyamoto, a Nisei born in Hawaii in 1899,
attempted in 1964 the narrative reconstruction of Japanese-American his-
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tory. Not actually set in the classic West, Hawaii: End of the Rainbow was
written and published after the camps; Miyamoto blends the social history
of the pre-war Issei and Nisei into this biographic fiction to dramatize and
celebrate the compact between the immigrants and their children. Hawaii,
of course, served as a halfway point for Japanese who later migrated to the
American mainland.
Miyamoto speaks to an Issei vision of Japanese America that hopes to
produce an American integrity and tradition that will survive in American
history. The realization of the inevitable extinction of Japanese-Americans
as a people is evidenced in this book in a major character, the grandson,
who is happa, half-white. Racial blending is a major concern of AsianAmerican writers.
Perhaps the finest single novel by a Japanese-American is John Okada’s
powerful, uncompromising No-No Boy (1957). The novel traces the experiences of a Nisei, Ichiro, who refuses to be inducted into the armed forces,
choosing prison instead. His best friend is Kenji, a war hero with a medal
and one missing leg. Ichiro returns to Seattle after the war, to a world in
which everything he touches and loves dies, is killed, or goes mad. The
internment has shattered the lives of these Americans, humiliated them in
their own country. Thinks Ichiro:
. . . I wish with all my heart that I were Japanese or that I were
American. I am neither and . . . I blame the world which is made
up of many [countries] which fight with each other and kill and
hate and destroy again and again and again.
As the editors of Aiiieeeee! point out, “The distinction between social
history and literature is a tricky one, especially when dealing with the literature of an emerging sensibility.” No-No Boy is successful on both levels, for
Okada avoids polemic overstatements while not avoiding the truth of racial
self-doubt that was produced by America’s concentration camps. It is a
devastating book.
Another strong novel is Richard Kim’s The Martyred (1964)—by far
the finest literary work yet produced by a Korean-American. It is set in
Korea during the war which involved both the United States and Kim’s native land. Like Okada’s work, The Martyred is both powerful and understated. Since it is not set in the West, The Martyred must be viewed as an
example of Asian America’s cultural dynamism rather than a specific example of western writing.
The Immigration Acts of 1943 and 1946 allowed a quota of Chinese
immigrants and resident aliens to establish themselves legally in America.
With that opportunity Chinatowns began their gradual transition to familybased societies that established legal and financial security as employment
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and educational opportunities developed. A new cultural sensibility also
emerged that sought recognition rather than the narrowly defined terms
of acceptance offered by Christian conversion and commitment to American values.
Some writing during this period examines America’s understanding of
the Chinese, though without touching on the experience of the Chinese in
America. The early works of Han Suyin, for example, carry themes of cultural conflict in the example of her Eurasian protagonists. Diana Chang’s
Frontiers of Love (1956) also speaks to this issue. These works are set in
China. The popular success of C. Y. Lee’s play Flower Drum Song (1957)
established the idea that immigration laws created problems for ChineseAmericans. The work, however, is a musical burlesque and continues to
support the stereotype of a community divided equally between those who
adhere to Chinese ways and those who do not.
In 1961, Eat a Bowl of Tea was published. Louis Chu captured the
setting and social sensibilities of this isolated ethnic community on the
verge of transition, and his novel was the first work since Edith Eaton’s early
portrayals of the Chinatowns of the West to provide an accurate view of
Chinatown, its culture and language, its bachelor institutions and prejudices. Eat a Bowl of Tea, while set in the East, extrapolates to the West
because it is the only work to represent this experience from a sensibility
formed in a Chinatown milieu.
The rejection of popular stereotypes as models for expected and acceptable behavior, and a universally expressed desire to recover the fact and circumstances of Chinese-American history and culture, characterize ChineseAmerican writing during the two decades since the publication of Eat a
Bowl of Tea. Frank Chin is representative of radicalized writers seeking to
forge an ethnic identity for Chinese-Americans from the welter of popular
stereotypes, personal experience, and the recoverable history and culture of
the Chinese immigrants two generations past. Chin includes the following
dialogue in a short story, published in Contact Magazine (1962), “Food for
All His Dead.”
“Don’t you know there’s no such thing as a real Chinaman in
all of America? That all we are are American Indians cashing in
on a fad?”
“Fad? Don’ call me fad. You fad youself.”
“No, you’re not Chinese, don’t you understand? You see it all
started when a bunch of Indians wanted to quit being Indians and
fighting the cavalry and all, so they left the reservation, see?”
“In’ian?”
“And they saw that there was this big kick about Chinamen,
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so they braided their hair into queues and opened up laundries
and restaurants and started reading Margaret Mead and Confucius
and Pearl Buck and became respectable Chinamen and gained
some self-respect!”
“Chinamong! You battah not say Chinamong.”
“But the reservation instinct stuck, years of tradition, you
see? Something about needing more than one Indian to pull off a
good rain dance or something, so they made Chinatown! And
here we are!”
With the production of Chin’s first play, The Chickencoop Chinaman, at
the American Place Theatre in New York (1973–1975), the literary sensibility of the Chinatown enclaves established a place for itself in American
literature.
The publication of works such as Maxine Hong Kingston’s widely read
Woman Warrior (1976) and China Men (1980) asserts the significance of
Chinese America in its third generation, attempting to define for itself
terms of acculturation that allow respect for the cultural traditions brought
to this country by the early immigrants. Hong Kingston, America’s first
major writer of Chinese ancestry, breaks existing paradigms by the strength
of her original, dynamic fiction. In China Men, which Linda Ching Sledge
calls “a cultural literary epic,” Hong Kingston writes: “‘You say with the few
words and the silence: no stories. No past. No China’” (p. 9). With her
own powerful prose, she has at last and eloquently broken that silence: Yes
stories. Yes past. Yes China.
Shawn Wong also represents Chinese America coming to terms with
its already-long traditions. In his Home Base (1978), the narrator is a fifthgeneration Chinese-American with vivid legendary memories of his ancestors working railroad gangs in the Sierras. One of the book’s major themes is
his sense of rootedness in America’s western landscape. Another important
volume, Ruthanne Lum McCunn’s Thousand Pieces of Gold (1981), is a
roughhewn but powerful novelized biography of a Chinese pioneer woman
who arrived in Idaho in the 1870s.
No similar movement to encourage an examination of the social and
cultural sensibilities of the past is evident in writing by Japanese-Americans
during the past two decades. They show a propensity to dwell on the concentration camps as a symbol of discontinuity, which is certainly understandable; but very few Japanese-American writers venture, for example,
characterizations of the Issei. Where the Issei appear in contemporary writings, they border on the grotesque. The Issei become the stubborn elderly
who refuse public rest homes and engender guilt, as in Lonny Koneko’s and
Amy Tsembo’s play, Lady Is Dying.
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The sharp division between the Nisei who experienced the camps and
their Sansei children, who militantly aim to recall what their parents wish
to deny, is also a theme that recurs in much Sansei writing today. In an early
poem, titled “Japs,” Lawson Inada speaks to the unresolved self-contempt
engendered by the camp experience. This continues a theme left unresolved
by writers like John Okada and Hisaye Yamamoto of a generation before:
. . . Their tongues
are yellow
with “r’s,”
with “l’s.”
They hate
themselves,
on the sly. I
used to be
Japanese.
Inada’s Before the War (1971) represents the first volume of poetry by a
Japanese-American released by a major publishing company, and shows
a sensibility unlike anything conventionally expected from a JapaneseAmerican poet. (Reviewers point out Inada’s early interest in jazz and
rhythm and blues.)
Although not altogether a representative survey of Japanese-American
writing, Ayumi, an anthology published in 1981, is the best collection presently available. The anthology does include many well-known JapaneseAmerican writers: Wakano Yamauchi, Toshio Mori, Sue Kumitomi Embry,
Janice Mirikitani, Garrett Hongo, Yamamoto and Inada, among others. Its
most powerful selections deal with World War II relocation camp experiences. As Ed Iwata points out, the volume is deficient in dealing with rising
political consciousness and with assimilation, but it does redress one wrong:
“It was believed by many readers—including Japanese Americans—that
literature coloring and documenting their experiences in the country was
anemic.” With the publication of Ayumi, Iwata points out, a book is now
available for “those who wish to study the psyche, the heart and soul of
Japanese Americans.”
One writer not included in Ayumi, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, is
among the most widely read contemporary Japanese-American voices. With
her husband, novelist James D. Houston, she co-authored one of the finest
literary products of the relocation camp experience, Farewell to Manzanar
(1973). She has also contributed numerous articles to journals, including
the much-reprinted “Farewell to Momma: Perspectives on Asian-American
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A Literary History of the American West
Womanhood,” which explores, among other things, the sometimes-tabooed
topic of racial blending.
Filipino-American writers, relatively quiescent after the careers of
Bulosan and Villa, have only recently moved once more to the fore. Motivated by the general climate of ethnic awareness as well as by a growth of
scholarly interest in things uniquely Filipino—especially in Philippine universities—a cultural renaissance is underway, as evidenced by the new,
more ethnically accurate spelling “Pilipino.” Ben Santos is its acknowledged leader, and younger writers such as Sam Tagatac, Al Robles and
Oscar Peñaranda are emerging. Tagatac’s contemporary consciousness and
effective style are exemplified in his story, “The New Anak”:
. . . On the horizon, that which he steadily plows toward, he sees
the tree he planted, and still beyond it, the windmill and pale
house. Una the beautiful Mexican girl has married Roman of Visaya . . . she is considered white and he has no tail. She learns to
speak English and some Philipino. Ai Aanako, Roman says to his
son when Nam is created for his children and they leave to seek
their ancestry.
In the past two decades, a small body of critical literature devoted to
the recovery and analysis of Asian-American writing has developed, much
of it produced in Asian-American Studies programs at West Coast universities. Its tone has tended to be proletarian, marking the newfound surge in
political consciousness and aggressive ethnic pride that arose during the late
1960s and prompted the development of such programs. These scholars are
interested not merely in Asian or American cultures, but in what is uniquely
Asian-American. Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Asian-American Writers, edited
by Chin, Inada, et al., marks the first collection of work written from this
perspective.
But Asian America is complex and dynamic. Perhaps predictably, the
militant ethnicity and the quest for a recoverable social history as well as for
unique aesthetics come at a time when assimilation, rising intermarriage
with other races, the breakdown of Asian-American neighborhoods, and
other social forces are chipping away steadily at the identity many scholars
work to understand and honor. It also comes at a time when a new wave of
Asian migrants, the Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians, are joining
America’s cultural stew. In the dynamics of assimilation and change may
exist the seeds of future Asian-American expression, for young artists are
not only rooting out the remnants of negative stereotyping, they are assert-
1132
ASIAN-AMERICAN LITERARY TRADITIONS
ing their unique vision of America, producing more, and more candid,
literature than ever before.
J EFFERY P AUL C HAN and M ARILYN C. ALQUILOZA
San Francisco State University
with supplementary material provided by the editors
Selected Bibliography
Critical Studies and Anthologies
Adachi, Jeff. Yancha: A Collection of Short Stories and Poems from an Asian American
Sansei Experience. Los Angeles: n.p., 1980.
Adams, William, et al., eds. Asian American Authors. Multi-Ethnic Literature
Series. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972.
Agcaoili, T. D., ed. Philippine Writing: An Anthology. Reprint of 1953 edition.
Westport, Conn. : Greenwood, 1971.
Alcantara, Ruben R. Sakada: Filipino Adaptation in Hawaii. Washington, D.C.:
University Press of America, 1981.
Asian Students Association. Homegrown: Asian American Experience from the Pacific
Northwest. Seattle: University of Washington, 1980.
Casper, Leonard. New Writing from the Philippines: A Critique. New York: Syracuse
University Press, 1966.
Chang, C. J. “Chinese and Literature.” East/West, March 18, March 25, and
April 1, 1970.
Chin, Frank, et al., eds. Aiiieeeee! Washington, D.C.: Howard University
Press, 1974.
——. The Big Aiiieeeee. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1982.
Chin, Frank. “Chinamen, Chinks and the CACA.” East/West, Feb. 11 and
Feb. 18, 1970.
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A Literary History of the American West
——, and Jeffery Paul Chan. “Racist Love.” In Seeing Through Shuck, edited by
Richard Kostelanetz. New York: Ballantine, 1972.
Chong-wha, Chung. Meetings and Farewells: Modern Korean Studies. New York:
St. Martin, 1980.
Choy, Bong-Yong. Koreans in America. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979.
Daniels, Roger, ed. Asian Experience in North America Series. 47 volumes. Salem,
New Hampshire: Arno Press, 1979.
Dunn, Lynn P. Asian Americans: A Study Guide and Source Book. Palo Alto: R & E
Research Associates, 1975.
Ethnic Writers Conference; Seaattle, Washington. Greenfield Center, New York: Greenfield Review Press, 1976.
Fisher, Dexter, ed. The Third Woman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980.
Franke, Wolfgang. China and the West. New York: Harper and Row, 1967.
Gee, Emma. Counterpoint: Perspectives on Asian America. Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center of UCLA, 1976.
Givens, Helen L. The Korean Community in Los Angeles. Palo Alto: R & E Research
Associates, 1974.
Hanai: An Anthology of Asian American Writings. Berkeley: University of California, 1980.
Hardy, Tom. “Gidra: A Year Old, a Year Bold.” East/West, May 13, 1970.
Haslam, Gerald. The Forgotten Pages of American Literature. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1970.
——. “The Subtle Thread: Asian-American Literature.” Arizona Quarterly 25
(Autumn 1969).
——. “Three Exotic: Noguchi, Tsunieshi, and Hartmann.” CLA Journal 21
(Fall 1976).
Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki. “Beyond Manzanar: A Personal View of AsianAmerican Womanhood,” in Asian Americans, edited by Stanley Sue. Palo
Alto: Science and Behavior Books, 1980.
Hundley, Norris, Jr., ed. Asian American: The Historical Experience. Santa Barbara:
American Bibliographical Center-Clio Press, 1976.
Ito, Kazuo. Issei: A History of Issei Immigration in North America. Seattle: Japanese
Community Service, 1973.
Kim, Elaine. Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and their Social Context. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982.
Kim, Hyung-chan, ed. The Korean Diaspora: Historical and Sociological Studies of
Korean Immigration and Assimilation in North America. Santa Barbara: American
Bibliographical Center-Clio Press, 1977.
Knoll, Tricia. Becoming Americans: Asian Sojourners, Immigrants and Refugees in the
Western United States. Portland: Coast to Coast, 1982.
Lee, Peter H. Songs of Flying Dragons. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monographs
Series: No. 22. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975.
Manuel, Esperanza, and Resil Mojares, eds. Philippine Literature in English. Detroit:
Cellar Bookshop, 1973.
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ASIAN-AMERICAN LITERARY TRADITIONS
Melendy, H. Brett. Asians in America: Filipinos, Koreans and East Indians. Immigrant Heritage of America Series. Boston: Twayne, 1977.
Mirikitani, Janice, ed. Ayumi: Japanese American Anthology. San Francisco: Japanese American Anthology Committee, 1980.
——. Time to Greez: Incantations from the Third World. San Francisco: Glide/Third
World Communications, 1975.
Ogawa, Dennis. From Japs to Japanese: The Evolution of Japanese-American Stereotypes. Berkeley: McCutchan Publishing, 1971.
Okamoto, Daniel. American in Disguise. New York: John Weatherhill, 1971.
Roseburg, Arturo G., ed. Pathways to Philippine Literature in English. Quezon City,
Philippines: Alemar-Phoenix Publishing, 1966.
San Juan, E., Jr. Introduction to Modern Pilipino Literature. Boston: Twayne, 1974.
Santos, Bienvenido N. “The Filipino in Exile.” Greenfield Review 6 (Spring 1977).
Smith, William C. Americans in Process: A Study of Our Citizens of Oriental Ancestry. American Immigration Collection, Series 2. Reprint of 1937 edition.
Salem, N.H.: Arno, 1970.
Sung, Betty Lee. Mountain of Gold: The Story of the Chinese in America. New York:
Macmillan, 1967.
Tachiki, Amy, et al., eds. Roots: An Asian American Reader. Los Angeles: Asian
American Studies Center of UCLA, 1971.
Tong, Te-Kong, and Robert Wu. The Third Americans: A Select Bibliography on
Asians in America, with Annotations. Oak Park, Ill. : CHCUS Press, 1980.
Wand, David H., ed. Asian American Heritage. New York: Washington Square
Press, 1974.
Wong, James I. A Selected Bibliography on the Asians in America. Palo Alto: R & E
Research Associates, 1981.
Wu, William. The Yellow Peril: Chinese Americans in American Fiction; 1850–1940.
Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1980.
Newspaper and Journal Sources
Amerasia Journal. Asian American Studies Center of UCLA.
Bamboo Ridge: Hawaii Writers Quarterly. Honolulu.
Bridge: Asian American Perspectives. (Also called Bridge Magazine). The Basement
Workshop, New York.
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. San Francisco.
Bulletin of the Chinese Historical Society of America. San Francisco.
East/West: The Chinese-American Journal. San Francisco.
Echoes from Gold Mountain: An Asian American Journal. Long Beach, California.
Filipino American World. Washington, D.C.
Filipino Forum. Seattle, Washington.
Korea Week. Washington, D.C.
MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the
United States. Los Angeles, UCLA.
Rafu Shimpo. Los Angeles.
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A Literary History of the American West
Asian-American Writers: Chinese
Berssenbrugge, Mei-Mei. Random Possession. New York: Ishmael Reed, 1979.
——. The Summits Move with the Tide. Greenfield Center, New York: Greenfield
Review Press, 1974.
Chan, Jeffery Paul. “Eli, Eli.” Occident (Spring 1965).
——. “Jackrabbit.” Yardbird Reader III (1974).
Chang, Diana. Frontiers of Love. New York: Random House, 1956.
Chin, Frank. The Chickencoop Chinaman and the Year of the Dragon. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981.
——. “The Chinatown Kid.” In Cutting Edges: Young American Fiction for the
70’s. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973.
——. “Confessions of a Number One Son.” Ramparts 11 (March 1973).
——. “The Eat and Run Midnight People.” Chouteau Review 1 (Fall-Winter 1976).
——. “Food for All His Dead.” Contact 3 (Aug. 1962). Anthologized in The
Young American Writers: Fiction, Poetry, Drama and Criticism, edited by Richard
Kostelanetz (New York: Ultramarine Publishing, 1967); also in The Urban
Reader, edited by Susan Cahill and Michele Cooper (New York: PrenticeHall, 1971).
——. From A Chinese Lady Dies, a novel excerpt. Carolina Quarterly 24 (Winter 1972).
——. “Yes, Young Daddy.” Panache (1971). Anthologized in In Youth, edited by
Richard Kostelanetz (New York: Ballantine, 1972).
——. Various essays, 1968–1978, published in both The Seattle Times and The
Weekly newspapers of Seattle.
Chu, Louis. Eat a Bowl of Tea. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1961. Republished, Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1980.
Eaton, Edith Maud. Mrs. Spring Fragrance. Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1912.
Kingston, Maxine Hong. China Men. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980.
——. Woman Warrior. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976. Republished as
Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, New York: Random
House, 1977.
Kuo, Alexander. New Letters from Hiroshima. Greenfield Center, New York: Greenfield Review Press, 1976.
Lau, Alan Chong. Songs for Jadina. Greenfield Center, New York: Greenfield Review Press, 1980.
Lee, C. Y. Flower Drum Song. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957.
——. Land of the Golden Mountain. New York: Meredith, 1967.
Lee, Virginia. The House That Tai Ming Built. New York: Macmillan, 1963.
Leong, George. A Lone Bamboo Doesn’t Come from Jackson St. San Francisco: Isthmus Press, 1977.
Leong, Monfoon. Number One Son. San Francisco: East/West Press, 1975.
Lin, Yutang. Chinatown Family, a Novel. New York: John Day, 1948. Rpt. Beaverton, Ore.: International Scholarly Book Services, 1980.
Lord, Bette Bao. Spring Moon: A Novel of China. New York: Harper and Row, 1981.
Lowe, Pardee. Father and Glorious Descendant. Boston: Little, Brown, 1943.
1136
ASIAN-AMERICAN LITERARY TRADITIONS
McCunn, Ruthanne Lum. Thousand Pieces of Gold. San Francisco: Design Enterprises, 1981.
Telemaque, Eleanor Wong. It’s Crazy to Stay Chinese in Minnesota. New York:
Thomas Nelson, 1978.
Tsung, L. C. The Marginal Man. New York: Pageant Press, 1963.
Wong, Jade Snow. Fifth Chinese Daughter. New York: Harper & Row, 1950.
——. No Chinese Stranger. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.
Wong, Nellie. Dreams in Harrison Railroad Park. Berkeley: Kelsey Street Press,
1977.
Wong, Shawn Hsu. Homebase. Berkeley: Ishmael Reed Books, 1979.
Yep, Laurence. Child of the Owl. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
——. Dragonwings. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.
Yung, Judy, et al., eds. Island: Poetry & History of Chinese Immigrants of Angel Island, 1910–1940. San Francisco: Hoc Doi Project of the San Francisco Study
Center, 1980.
Yung, Wing. My Life in China and America. New York: H. Holt, 1909.
Asian-American Writers: Japanese
Aoqawa, Joy, Aubasan, a Novel. Boston: D. R. Godine, 1981.
Hosokawa, Bill. Nisei: The Quiet Americans. New York: Morrow, 1969.
Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki and James D. Farewell to Manzanar. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1973.
Inada, Lawson. Before the War. New York: William Morrow, 1971.
Kafu, Nagai. “An Early Account of Japanese Life in the Pacific Northwest: Writings
of Nagai Kafu.” Edited and translated by Stephen W. Kohl. Pacific Northwest
Quarterly 70 (April 1979).
Kawakami, Iwao. The Parents and Other Poems. San Francisco: Nichi Bei Times, 1947.
Kikuchi, Charles. Kikuchi Diary. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1973.
Kikumura, Akemi. Through Harsh Winters. Navato, Ca.: Chandler & Sharpe, 1982.
Kitagawa, Daisuki. lssei and Nisei: The Internment Years. New York: The Seabury
Press, 1967.
Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. Boston: D. R. Godine, 1982.
Kudaka, Geraldine. Numerous Avalanches at the Point of Intersection. Greenfield
Center, New York: Greenfield Review Press, 1979.
Matsuoka, Jack. Camp II, Block 211: Daily Life in an Internment Camp. San
Francisco: Japan Publications, 1974.
Mirikitani, Janice. Awake in the River. San Francisco: Isthmus Press, 1978.
Miyakawa, Edward. Tule Lake. Waldport, Ore.: House by the Sea Publishing, 1979.
Miyamoto, Kazuo. Hawaii: End of the Rainbow. Rutland, Vt.: Charles Tuttle, 1964.
Mori, Toshio. The Chauvinist. Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center of
UCLA, 1979.
——. Woman from Hiroshima. San Francisco: Isthmus Press, 1980.
——. Yokohama, California. Caldwell, Id. : Caxton Press, 1949.
Murayama, Milton. All I Asking for Is My Body. San Francisco: Supa Press, 1975.
Okada, John. No-No Boy. Rutland, Vt.: Charles Tuttle, 1957. Republished,
Seattle: University Of Washington Press, 1979.
1137
A Literary History of the American West
Okubo, Mine. Citizen 13660. New York: Columbia University Press, 1946.
Shirota, Jon. Lucky Come Hawaii. New York: Bantam Press, 1965.
——. Pineapple White. Burbank: Ohara Publications, 1972.
Sone, Monica. Nisei Daughter. Boston: Little, Brown, 1953. Republished, Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1980.
Tanaka, Ronald. The Shino Suite. Greenfield Center, New York: Greenfield Review
Press, 1981.
Uchida, Yoshiko. Desert Exile. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982.
——. Journey Home. New York: Atheneum, 1978.
——. Journey to Topaz. Rutland, Vt. : Charles Tuttle, 1971.
Yamada, Mitsuye. Camp Notes and Other Poems. Berkeley: Shameless Hussy
Press, 1976.
Yamamoto, Hisaye. “Seventeen Syllables.” Ethnic American Short Stories. New
York: Washington Square Press, 1975.
Yamauchi, Wakako. “The Sensei.” Yardbird Reader III (1974).
Asian-American Writers: Filipino
Bernard, Miguel A. The Lights of Broadway and Other Essays: Reflections of a Filipino
Traveler. Detroit: Cellar Bookshop, 1981.
Buaken, Manuel. I Have Lived with the American People. Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton
Press, 1948.
Bulosan, Carlos. America Is in the Heart. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
1946. Republished, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973.
——. Letter from America. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1942.
——. Sound of Falling Light. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1960.
Lava, Juan Cabreros. His Native Soil. Manila: University Publishing, 1941.
Santos, Bienvenido N. The Day the Dancers Came. Manila: Bookmark, 1967.
——. The Praying Man: A Novel. Quezon City, Philippines: New Day Publishers, 1982.
——. Scent of Apples: A Collection of Stories. Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1967.
——. “Solomon King, excerpts from The Man Who (Thought He) Looked Like
Robert Taylor.” Manila Review 1 (April 1975).
——. You Lovely People. Detroit: Cellar Bookshop, 1978.
Villa, José García. Appassionata: Poems in Praise of Love. New York: King &
Cohen, 1979.
——. Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others. New York: Scribner’s, 1933.
——. Poems 55. Manila: A. S. Florentino, 1962.
Asian-American Writers: Korean
Kim, Richard. The Martyred. New York: George Braziller, 1964.
Pahk, Induk. September Monkey. New York: Harper, 1954.
1138