Asian-American Literary Traditions
THROUGHOUT 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.
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 generations 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 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.
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?
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 industrialization, 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:
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 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 Minidoka Camp Diary, a young
and understandably confused Ted Matsuda records this entry:
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)
"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.
July 3.
Night before the Fourth–campaigning for favorite
queen–Odori (Japanese Folk Dancing) at night.
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.
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:
Trace the tracelessness of the ant,
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.
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.
Every ant has reached this perfection.
As he comes, so he goes,
Flowing as water flows,
Essential but secret like a rose.
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 postwar 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 history. 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 prewar 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 Asian-American 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:
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 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 Chinese-Americans.
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, 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!"
. . . 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.
"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.
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
They hate
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 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 asserting their unique vision of America,
producing more, and more candid, literature than ever before.
Selected Bibliography
are yellow
with "r's,"
with "l's."
themselves,
on the sly. I
used to be
Japanese.
San Francisco State University
with supplementary material provided by the editors
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. MultiEthnic 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
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April 1, 1970.
Chin, Frank, et al., eds. Aiiieeeee! Washington,
D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974.
Chin, Frank. "Chinamen, Chinks and the
CACA." East/West, Feb. 11 and
Feb. 18, 1970.
Chongwha, 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; Seattle,
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.
Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki. "Beyond Manzanar:
A Personal View of Asian-American Womanhood," in Asian Americans,
edited by Stanley Sue. Palo
Alto: Science and Behavior Books, 1980.
Hundley, Norris, Jr.,
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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, Hyungchan, 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.
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.
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
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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
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Filipino Forum. Seattle, Washington.
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MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the
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Rafu Shimpo. Los Angeles.
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Yung, Wing. My Life in China and America.
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Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki and James D. Farewell
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Kafu, Nagai. "An Early
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Kawakami, Iwao. The Parents
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Uchida, Yoshiko. Desert Exile.
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Yamamoto, Hisaye. "Seventeen Syllables." Ethnic American Short Stories. New
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Yamauchi, Wakako. "The
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Asian-American Writers: Filipino
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Buaken, Manuel. I Have Lived with the American People. Caldwell, Idaho:
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Bulosan, Carlos. America Is
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Lava, Juan Cabreros. His Native Soil. Manila: University
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Santos, Bienvenido N. The Day the Dancers Came. Manila:
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Pahk, Induk. September Monkey. New York: Harper, 1954.
. The Big Aiiieeeee. Washington, D.C.: Howard
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. "The Subtle
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