Encyclopedia of Asian-American literature

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

ASIAN-AMERICAN

LITERATURE

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

ASIAN-AMERICAN

LITERATURE

Seiwoong Oh

Encyclopedia of Asian-American Literature

Copyright © 2007 by Seiwoong Oh

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Oh, Seiwoong,

Encyclopedia of Asian-American literature / Seiwoong Oh.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 10:0-8160-6086-X (acid-free paper)

ISBN 13:978:0-8160-6086-3

1. American literature—Asian American authors—Encyclopedias. 2. American literature—

Asian American authors—Bio-bibliography—Dictionaries. 3. Canadian literature—Asian

authors—Encyclopedias. 4. Canadian literature—Asian authors—Bio-bibliography—Diction￾aries. 5. Asian American authors—Biography—Dictionaries. 6. Asian Americans—Intellectual

life—Encyclopedias. 7. Asian Americans in literature—Encyclopedias. I. Title.

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TABLE OF

CONTENTS

Introduction and Preface vi

A to Z Entries 1

Appendixes

Bibliography of Major Works

by Asian-American Writers 342

Bibliography of

Secondary Sources 359

List of Contributors 361

Index 363

vi

INTRODUCTION

AND PREFACE

The 337 entries in this volume introduce more

than 200 North American authors of Asian descent

and their major literary works. Many of these

authors were born and educated in the United

States; some, like Ha Jin and Carlos Bulosan, are

naturalized citizens or permanent residents; a few,

like Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, are transnational citi￾zens or cultural travelers whose claim to “Ameri￾canness” is limited but whose works nevertheless

constitute an integral part of Asian-American

culture. While the emphasis remains on authors

active in the United States, Canadian authors such

as Joy Kogawa are also included for their critical

importance in the Asian-American literary canon.

Many authors trace their roots to East Asia, many

others to Southeast and South Asia, and a few to

Hawaii, Afghanistan, and the Middle East.

The inclusiveness of this volume, however

debatable, is forward-looking and reflective of

the most recent thinking in Asian-American

studies, which has constantly been redrawing

and expanding its geographical and intellectual

boundaries since its inception in the late 1960s

on the heels of the Civil Rights movement. In

the early days of the Asian-American movement,

its primary aim was to claim that Asian Ameri￾cans are not foreigners but legitimate American

citizens whose history in America goes back more

than a hundred years. To this end, participants in

the movement underlined not only their Ameri￾can nativity and their cultural difference from

Asians who came “fresh off the boat” but also

their visible contributions to America’s nation￾building: serving in the U.S. military, building the

transcontinental railroad, and participating in

mining and agricultural industries.

In the late 1970s, when most Americans still

insisted that Asians, wherever they were born, were

alike and culturally and linguistically distinct from

“real Americans,” it was necessary to seek bound￾aries and parameters so as to advertise and estab￾lish the existence of Asian America. One of the

first items of business for Asian-American activ￾ists was to do away with the term Oriental, which

connoted an exotic, perilous, and faraway place of

geishas, heathen Chinese, and opium dens. So the

umbrella term Asian-American was popularized

to help undo the stereotype, to assert American

identity, and to promote solidarity among Asian

Americans. Soon the hyphen in Asian-American—

which implied a half-membership in American

society—was removed to further stress the word

American. This “strategically constructed unitary

identity, a closed essence sharply dividing ‘Asian

Introduction and Preface vii

American’ from ‘Asian,’ ” explains Elaine H. Kim,

“was a way to conjure up and inscribe our faces

on the blank pages and screens of America’s hege￾monic culture” (Foreword xii).

In the 1970s and 1980s critics did not agree

on the precise definition of Asian America, but

nearly all of them focused on Americans of East

Asian descent. In 1972, for example, when Kai-yu

Hsu and Helen Palubinskas published a literary

anthology titled Asian American Authors, the edi￾tors included, with a few exceptions, American￾born authors of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino

origin. Two years later, when Frank Chin, Jeffery

Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong

edited Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American

Writers, they included only the works that they

judged to show “authentic” Asian-American sen￾sibilities free from “white supremacist” ideology

(qtd. in Ling 30). When Elaine H. Kim published

Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the

Writings and Their Social Context (1982), a semi￾nal work in the field, she defined Asian-American

literature as “published creative writing in English

by Americans of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and

Filipino descent” and limited herself to discussing

works that deal with the American experience of

Asian Americans (xi).

The definition and boundaries of Asian Amer￾ica continued to change in the following years.

While early scholars focused on authors with cul￾tural ties to East Asia and on works that deal with

American domestic issues, subsequent scholars

began to expand the field to include immigrant

authors and works that portray not just the United

States but also their countries of origin, imagined

or otherwise. Whereas early scholars and activists

tried to claim America at the expense of severing

ties with the ancestral cultures of Asia, later schol￾ars attempted to empower themselves by reclaim￾ing their ancestral cultures and embracing them.

The expansion of the field, in a sense, was close￾ly tied to the changing global economic landscape.

The economic strengths of China, South Korea,

Taiwan, Singapore, and, of course, Japan had

undoubtedly contributed to an improved image

of Asian Americans in recent decades. Moreover,

transportation between the United States and

Asia became no longer a long, daunting jour￾ney but now a matter of hours and much more

affordable. Immigration patterns also changed,

as students, middle-class and affluent families,

and professionals began flowing in and out of the

country, changing the makeup of Asian America.

In addition, the emergence of multinational cor￾porations and such technological advancements

as the Internet and satellite broadcasting had

significantly shortened the distance between Asia

and America.

The growing permeability in the boundaries

between Asia and Asian America, however, cre￾ated an anxiety within the Asian-American com￾munity. For example, Sau-ling Cynthia Wong, a

prominent scholar, voiced caution in her 1995

essay, “Denationalization Reconsidered: Asian

American Cultural Criticism at a Theoretical

Crossroads.” Wong poignantly argued that Asian

America should remain distinct from diasporic

Asia because, among other things, “collapsing the

two will work to the detriment more of Asian

Americans as a minority within U.S. borders than

of ‘Asian Asians’ ”:

In fact, in the age of Newt Gingrich, Rush

Limbaugh, Proposition 187, and increasingly

vicious attacks on affirmative action and other

policies safeguarding the rights of peoples of

color, there seems to me to be an even greater

need for Asian Americanists to situate them￾selves historically. (20)

In practical terms, Wong’s point was valid. After

all, despite all the efforts made by many activ￾ists from the late 1960s, even a fifth-generation

Asian American is likely to hear, “Where are you

really from?” or “You speak English very well.”

Most scholars agree, however, that Asian-Ameri￾can identities are determined not solely by the

American history of immigration, exclusion laws,

racial discrimination, and internment but also

by the ever-changing paradigm of international

politics and global exchange of goods and cul￾tures. Despite the unease expressed by Wong and

others, more and more critics began to analyze

Asian-American literature not just from an Amer￾ican domestic perspective but from a diasporic

one as well.

The Asian-American movement was soon

joined by Pacific Islanders and Pacific Ameri￾cans. To reflect this geographical expansion,

some Asian-American organizations and projects

changed their names to “Asian Pacific American.”

This coalition, nonetheless, has been tenuous for

a few reasons. First, Native Hawaiian political and

community leaders were often less than enthralled

with the alliance because they had a different

political agenda. Unlike Asian-Americans, they

wanted to have themselves recognized as an indig￾enous people, like Native Americans or Alaska

Natives. They were also concerned with a different

set of issues, such as the environment and coloni￾zation by the United States. Furthermore, Pacific

and Hawaiian issues have rarely been addressed by

Asian-American organizations, prompting critics

like Jonathan Y. Okamura to abandon the use of

the term “Asian Pacific American.” According to

Okamura, “its deployment is a discursive practice

that constitutes a form of Asian American domi￾nation of Pacific Islanders” (187).

Despite these objections, the commonalities

between the two communities have helped to

maintain the coalition. Besides the geographi￾cal overlap and proximity between Asia and the

Pacific Islands, many Chinese, Japanese, Korean,

and Filipino Americans have their American roots

in the sugar plantations of Hawaii, which became

in 1959 the 50th state of the United States. More￾over, a number of canonical Asian-American

authors, such as Cathy Song and Garrett Hongo,

are natives of Hawaii. The increasing geopoliti￾cal and economic significance of the Pacific Rim

will only strengthen the coalition between Asian

America and the Pacific Islands.

Once Asian-American studies successfully

began to establish itself as a vibrant field of inquiry,

resulting in the founding of Asian-American stud￾ies programs or departments in several universities,

other Asian ethnic groups began to join the field.

In just a few decades, the number of ethnic groups

housed in Asian-American studies grew from just

a few to more than 50. Southeast Asian– and South

Asian–American voices became a particularly rec￾ognizable presence. Vietnamese-American authors

such as Le Ly Hayslip and Jade Ngọc Quang Huy`nh,

Filipino-American writers such as Cecilia Brainard

and Jessica Hagedorn, and Indian writers such as

Bharati Mukherjee and Meena Alexander, among

many others, helped expand the Asian-American

literary canon. South Asian diasporic literature,

which was and remains at the center of postcolonial

studies, joined Asian-American studies to focus on

examining the American experience of the South

Asian diaspora and on carving out its own niche

within the field.

These two major developments in the field—

the blurring of boundaries between Asia and

Asian America and the increasing participation

of Southeast and South Asian immigrants—

resulted in cross-pollination between the fields

of Asian-American studies and postcolonial

studies. The commonalities between the two

have allowed scholars to borrow ideas from one

another as they grappled with questions about

race, gender, identity, and representation. As if

to demonstrate the cross-fertilization of the two

fields, what used to be key terms in postcolonial

studies—diaspora, fragmentation, subjectivity,

hybridity, and multiplicity—are now common￾ly used in Asian-American studies as well. As

Moustafa Bayoumi says, South and Southeast

Asian-Americans have changed the “landscape

of study for the discipline” of Asian–American

studies (“Staying Put” 226).

In 2003 Bayoumi predicted that “it may only be

a matter of time for West Asians (Arabs, Iranians,

Afghans, etc.) to carve a place there” (“Staying

Put” 226). Arabs are still legally defined as “white”

in the United States, and West Asians have yet to

wrestle with the question of a coherent group

identity, if there is to be one. However, the impetus

to join Asian-American studies is certainly there.

As Bayoumi insists,

Arab Americans and Asian-American studies

have much to learn from each other, and this

viii Encyclopedia of Asian-American Literature

has less to do with some abstract land mass

long ago defined as “Asia” (which includes

more than half of the Arab world) and more to

do with American imperialism and domestic

repression. . . . Palestine and Iraq ought now

to be seen as Asian American issues. (“Our

Work” 9)

This coalition is likely to become visible in the

near future, as Bayoumi has predicted. I have

therefore included several representative authors

of Afghan and Middle-Eastern descent: Khaled

Hosseini (Afghan), Samuel Hazo and Lawrence

Joseph (Lebanese-Syrian), Naomi Shihab Nye

(Palestinian-German), Diana Abu-Jaber (Jorda￾nian), and Suheir Hammad (Palestinian).

HISTORY OF ASIAN-AMERICAN

LITERATURE

Immigrants from Asia came to the United States in

significant numbers from the 1850s. The news of

the gold rush attracted thousands of people from

China, who arrived in California as cheap laborers

to work in the mining and agricultural industries

and to complete the transcontinental railroad.

From the 1880s Japanese and Koreans arrived in

Hawaii to work as field hands at sugar plantations

and soon found their way onto the mainland. In

1907 a large number of Punjabis who initially set￾tled in Canada moved south to find jobs at lumber

mills in Washington and agricultural fields in

California. Following the two world wars, the 1965

Hart-Cellar Act, which eliminated immigration

quotas based on national origins, and the end of

the Vietnam War, immigrants and refugees came

in the thousands and tens of thousands, making

Asian Americans the fastest-growing minority

group in the United States. According to the U.S.

Census Bureau, 14 million people in the United

States in 2004 identified themselves as Asian

Americans, making up 5 percent of the total U.S.

population. The bureau also predicts that the

number will grow to 37.6 million by 2050, 9.3

percent of the U.S. population.

Historically speaking, Asian Americans such

as Sui Sin Far (Winifred Eaton) have been writ￾ing and publishing since the 19th century. In the

first half of the 20th century, immigrant authors

such as Younghill Kang and Carlos Bulosan wrote

about life as Asian immigrants searching for a

home in the United States. During and after World

War II, as Americans became interested in China

as a newfound ally against Japan, books such as

Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter (1950)

were published to help promote the fledgling

U.S.-China relationship. In the decades follow￾ing World War II and the internment of Japanese

Americans, Hisaye Yamamato, Milton Murayama,

and John Okada explored the question of Japa￾nese-American identity and began to show depth

and maturity as literary writers.

What is now called the “Asian-American liter￾ary canon,” however, had its meaningful beginning

with the publication of Maxine Hong Kingston’s

The Woman Warrior in 1976, which depicts her

life as a girl growing up in California. She received

the National Book Critics Circle Award for the

year’s best work of nonfiction. A few years later,

she went on to write China Men, which won the

National Book Award in 1981. By developing a

uniquely Asian-American literary voice, Kingston

inspired a number of other Asian Americans to

write in their own voices, and by producing a

“crossover hit” in the mainstream marketplace,

she paved a pathway for Asian-American writers

into the book market.

Two other authors of Chinese descent followed

suit. David Henry Hwang won the Tony Award for

his M. Butterfly (1988), which was a great success

on Broadway and was later made into a movie.

Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club (1989) remained on the

New York Times best-seller list for more than nine

months and was also made into a commercial

movie. As publishers began to recognize the tal￾ent and marketability of Asian-American writers,

newcomers like Gish Jen, Gus Lee, Fae Myenne Ng,

and Chang-rae Lee have been making successful

debuts with their novels, and neglected works of

the past such as those of John Okada and Richard

E. Kim have resurfaced on the market. In poetry

also, David Mura, Garret Hongo, Li-Young Lee,

and Cathy Song made their presence conspicuous

on the national scene.

Introduction ix

The individual works by these and other writ￾ers led to several literary anthologies, allowing a

choice for students and teachers. First published

in 1974, Aiiieeeee! gave a wake-up call to the liter￾ary consciousness of Asian Americans. In 1991

the volume was reedited as The Big Aiiieeeee! as a

more comprehensive collection. Jessica Hagedorn’s

Charlie Chan Is Dead came out in 1993, focusing

on Asian-American fiction, while Garret Hongo’s

The Open Boat of the same year collected poems

exclusively. As if to prove the popular demand

from the public, dozens of Asian-American liter￾ary anthologies have been published in just the

last decade.

In 1992 Elaine H. Kim asserted that we were

witnessing the start of a “golden age of Asian

American cultural production” (Foreword xi).

Looking at the shelves in major bookstores now,

one would agree that she was right. Moreover,

as multicultural education gained momentum

in school curricula, works by talented writers

of South Asian background—Meena Alexander,

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Jhumpa Lahiri, and

Bharati Mukherjee, for example—have been mak￾ing regular appearances in school syllabi and

academic conferences. Following the terrorist

attacks against the United States on September

11, 2001, and the continuing unrest in the Middle

East, public interest in works by authors of West

Asian origin surged noticeably, creating another

momentum for rich cultural production from

Afghan- and Arab-American authors.

CHALLENGES: SOCIAL CONTEXTS

AND LITERARY AESTHETICS

In her Asian American Literature, Elaine H. Kim

cogently argues that understanding the social

context of Asian-American immigration history

is crucial to reading Asian-American writings,

and that there are specific images, metaphors, and

themes relevant to Asian-American writings. Sau￾ling Cynthia Wong, in her Reading Asian American

Literature, echoes this idea, although she adds

that there are actually several contexts for differ￾ent ethnic groups. While it is possible to enjoy

a literary work without understanding its cul￾tural background, the number-one challenge for

a beginning reader is to learn about the historical

and cultural contexts in which Asian-American

literature has been produced.

Another challenge has to do with literary aes￾thetics. When Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan,

and David Henry Hwang were making spectacular

debuts into the book market, Frank Chin claimed

that they were popular mainly because they pan￾dered to the taste of mainstream readers. Accord￾ing to Chin, they were the first writers of Asian

ancestry to “so boldly fake the best-known works

from the most universally known body of Asian

literature and lore in history” (3). Chin further

argued that the works of Jade Snow Wong and

Maxine Hong Kingston “completely escaped the

real China and Chinese America into pure white

fantasy where nothing is Chinese, nothing is real,

everything is born of pure imagination” (49). In

response to Chin’s accusations, Maxine Hong

Kingston and Amy Tan insisted that myths change

as people face new adventures and that early

Chinese immigrants changed details of ancient

Chinese myths to deal with their new realities in

America. Despite the long and heated debate, this

question about “authenticity” remains unresolved:

Are writers responsible for representing their cul￾tures accurately, and who is to say what is authen￾tic and what is fake?

Another challenge facing readers of Asian￾American literature is to find a proper means to

evaluate each literary piece. American students

who are used to reading only European or Euro￾pean-American literature may be tempted to

dismiss any piece of Asian-American literature

just because it is different or hard to understand.

If a Laotian character in a short story seems

impenetrable, if the symbols and metaphors used

in a Korean-American poem are different from

those in Shakespeare, if the historical setting

used in a novel by a Pakistani-American writer

seems remote and irrelevant, do we dismiss them

as inferior works with no literary merit? If the

issues explored in these pieces seem to have little

or nothing to do with us, why should we con￾tinue to read them? To address these issues, new

critical paradigms are being created, and readers

x Encyclopedia of Asian-American Literature

are urged to develop multicultural sensibilities.

In the meantime, it seems important at this

point to remain open-minded and not to dismiss

Asian-American or any multiethnic literature just

because it is different, hard to understand, or

seemingly irrelevant.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

This volume is designed for high school or col￾lege students who are beginning to read Asian￾American literature in the classroom and on their

own. Teachers select works that are aesthetically

valuable, historically significant, teachable, and

commercially available; I have therefore chosen

the authors and works that meet these qualifica￾tions. Nearly every author and literary work that

is likely to be taught in high school or college is

included in this volume. All the canonical authors,

such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, and

David Henry Hwang, are, of course, included.

Most of the authors who are frequently talked

about in academic circles are also included. I have

ventured to include several recent authors as well

whose works are not yet tested but who promise

to become prominent literary voices in the future.

Also included are authors of detective fiction

(Leonard Chang, Sujata Massey, and Laura Joh

Rowland, for example) and young-adult literature

(Linda Sue Park, Lawrence Yep, and Marie G.

Lee). These authors are marginalized and rarely

discussed in academic circles but nonetheless

enjoyed by many readers. Although fiction, poetry,

and drama make up the majority of the works

included, memoirs, screenwriting, nonfiction, and

experimental writings have also been included.

Space is allocated for individual authors and

major works according to their significance and

availability of critical material. Canonical authors

and their major works are treated at length; new

authors and minor works are introduced briefly.

This volume is the product of a truly inter￾national collaboration. Ninety-five specialists of

Asian-American literature based in the United

States, Asia, and Europe have generously donated

their expertise by writing entries that are uniform￾ly packed with well-informed and updated infor￾mation about each author and a brief synopsis and

critical analysis of each major work. Each entry is

designed to be as readable as possible and to offer

enough information to get a student started on his

or her own journey into the work or the author’s

world. To this end, lists of recommended further

readings are provided wherever appropriate.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bayoumi, Moustafa. “Our Work Is of This World.”

Amerasia Journal 31, no. 1 (2005): 6–9.

———. “Staying Put: Aboriginal Rights, the Ques￾tion of Palestine, and Asian American Studies.”

Amerasia Journal 29, no. 2 (2003): 221–228.

Cheung, King-kok, and Stan Yogi. Asian American

Literature: An Annotated Bibliography. New York:

MLA, 1988.

Chin, Frank. “Come All Ye Asian American Writ￾ers.” In The Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Chi￾nese American and Japanese American Literature,

edited by Jeffery Paul Chan, Frank Chin, Lawson

Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong, 1–92. New York:

Penguin, 1991.

Chin, Frank, Jeffery Chan, Lawson Inada, and Shawn

Wong, eds. Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian￾American Writers. Washington: Howard Univer￾sity Press, 1974.

Espiritu, Yen Le. “Asian American Studies and Ethnic

Studies: About Kin Disciplines,” Amerasia Journal

29, no. 2 (2003): 195–209.

Hsu, Kai-yu, and Helen Palubinskas. Asian-American

Authors. Boston: Houghton, 1972.

Kim, Elaine H. Asian American Literature: An Intro￾duction to the Writings and Their Social Context.

Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982.

———. Foreword. In Reading the Literatures of Asian

America, edited by Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Amy

Ling, xi–xvii. Philadelphia: Temple University

Press, 1992.

Leonard, George J. Introduction. In The Asian Pacific

American Heritage: A Companion to Literature

and Arts, edited by George J. Leonard, xxiii–xxix.

New York: Garland, 1999.

Ling, Amy. “Asian American Literature: A Brief Intro￾duction and Selected Bibliography.” ADE Bulletin

80 (Spring 1985): 29–33.

Introduction xi

Okamura, Jonathan Y. “Asian American Studies in

the Age of Transnationalism: Diaspora, Race,

Community.” Amerasia Journal 29, no. 2 (2003):

171–193.

Palumbo-Liu, David. “The Ethnic as ‘Post’: Reading

the Literatures of Asian America.” American Liter￾ary History 7 (1995): 161–68.

———. “Theory and the Subject of Asian American

Studies,” Amerasia Journal 21, nos. 1 & 2 (1995):

55–65.

Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore: A

History of Asian Americans. Boston: Little Brown,

1989. Reprint, New York: Penguin, 1989.

Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. “Denationalization Recon￾sidered: Asian American Cultural Criticism at

a Theoretical Crossroads.” Amerasia Journal 21,

nos. 1 & 2 (1995): 1–27.

———. Reading Asian American Literature: From

Necessity to Extravagance. Princeton, N.J.: Princ￾eton University Press, 1993.

Seiwoong Oh

xii Encyclopedia of Asian-American Literature

A TO Z

ENTRIES