Featuring Asian American Authors: David Mura

Poet, memoirist, novelist, playwright, and essayist David Mura graduated from Grinnell College in 1974 and received an honorary degree in 1997.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Through poetry, memoir, and fiction, David Mura has sought to unravel the complicated tangle of threads that make up his identity as a third generation Japanese American, including the threads of race, sexuality and history.  His writings cover topics ranging from the long term consequences of the interment camps  on those interned and their children, to contemporary Japan, to the history of Japanese Americans in America. He has won numerous awards including the Lock McKnight award for achievement in prose and the Minnesota Book Award for memoir.

For more information on David Mura see the entry in Asian American Writers available in Literatrue Resource Center or visit his web site.

The following books are available at Burling Library:

Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire: A Novel
Burling 3rd Floor PS3563.U68 F36 2008

Angels for the Burning: Poems
Burling 3rd Floor PS3563.U68 A84 2004

From Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality, and Identity
Burling 2nd Floor E184.J3 M7844 1996

The Colors of Desire: Poems
Burling 3rd Floor  PS3563.U68 C65 1995

Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei
Burling 2nd Floor E184.J3 M784 1991

After We Lost Our Way: Poems
Burling 3rd Floor PS3563.U68 A35 1989

Male Grief: Notes on Pornography and Addiction: An Essay
Burling 2nd Floor HQ471 .M85 1987

For Mura's essays and poems in anthologies, check the libraries' catalog:

Featuring Asian American Authors: Maxine Hong Kingston

Grinnell College Libraries begins a series of blog entries featuring Asian American Authors.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Maxine Hong Kingston came to literary prominence with her first novel Woman Warrior published in 1976. It is significant for its role in opening the door for ethnic-American literature. Kingston combined autobiography with myth and fable to interpret her own childhood in particular and, more broadly, first generation Chinese American identity. Kingston is notable for her feminist approach and has stirred controversy over her use of Chinese mythology.

From Contemporary Authors:

"Kingston is best known for The Woman Warrior (1976), which chronicles her struggle to confront and synthesize her dual heritage as a first-generation Chinese American woman. A collage of genres and influences, The Woman Warrior combines myth, fantasy, and memoir in formulating a hybrid culture that bridges Chinese and American history as well as competing gender, cultural, and linguistic structures. A National Book Critics Circle Award winner, The Woman Warrior remains, according to a 2008 essay written by Helena Grice, "the most widely read title in American universities today," considered seminal for its unconventional form and language, influence on theories of feminist criticism, and generation of a mainstream audience for ethnic literature. While The Woman Warrior represents Kingston's endeavor to comprehend her mother's alien character, China Men (1980)--also a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award--constitutes her attempt to define her relationship with her silent, angry father. Kingston's later works also delineate the cultural and political conflicts of Asian Americans. However, they more fully represent her activism on behalf of civil rights, pacifism, and social responsibility, abiding concerns for which she was awarded a National Humanities Medal by President Bill Clinton in 1997."

For interviews, biography, and critical reviews go to Literature Resource Center

Books in Burling Library:

The Woman Warrier: Memoir of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
Burling Library 1st Floor CT275.K5764 A33 1976

China Men
Burling 2nd Floor E184.C5 K5 1980

Tripmaster Monkey: His Fakebook
Burling 3rd Floor PS3561.I52 T7 1989

The Fifth Book of Peace
Burling 3rd Floor PS3561.I52 F44 2003

For essays and poems search the library catalog.

Grinnell College is reading Mae M. Ngai

Political Science Major and Spoken Word Artist Que Newbill '11 recommends Mae M Ngai's Impossible subjects: Illegal Aliens and The Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Burling 2nd Floor KF  4800 N485 2004

In her book, Ngai looks at the "historical origins of the "illegal alien" in American law and society and the emergence of illegal immigration as the central problem in U.S. immigration policy in the twentieth century" focussing on the years 1924-1965.
Find more writings on immigration by Mae Ngai in Burling Library


What are you reading? Let us know by emailing bookreview@grinnell.edu

Nobel Prize for Literature Winner: Peruvian Writer Mario Vargas Llosa

Ilan Stavans has written an excellent column for the Chronicle of Higher Education on Vargas Llosa: "Mario Vargas Llosa: Enlightenment over Barbarism." Visit Literature Resource Center to find out more about Vargas Llosa and to find essays and articles by him. Born in 1936, Vargas Llosa is a versatile writer, he was a Peruvian presidential candidate in 1990, and a socially committed writer.

Books available in Burling Library (in Spanish and in English):

Aunt Julia and the Script Writer (1994)
Letters to a Young Novelist (2002)
The Challenge (1997)
Conversation in the Cathedral (1988)
The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (1998)
The Culture of Liberty (1993)
In Praise of the Stepmother (1990)
The Feast of the Goat (2005)
Wellsprings (2008)
The Bad Girl (2007)

This is just a small sampling, for more visit Burling Library.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Harley McIlrath's New Collection of Short Stories: Possum Trot

J. Harley McIlrath. Possum Trot. North Liberty, Iowa: Ice Cube Books, 2010
Reviewed by T. Hatch

In the interest of full disclosure Harley McIlrath is an acquaintance mine.  He is a dealer of books and I am a junkie.  It is also worth mentioning that historically my attitude towards literary criticism has been quite reactionary, i.e. if you have a problem with a work of fiction, shut up and write your own. Anyway...

Naturally when I picked up my copy of Possum Trot I thought it was about a timid alternative to Joseph Stalin. Instead the eponymous story Possum Trot, which differs from the rest of the included stories in its pronounced surreality, seemed like a synthesis of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and William Faulkner albeit in overalls.



Possum Trot is a collection of short stories about rural Iowa, historical memory, and a sense of dark apprehension associated with the not-so-distant past.  These stories are clearly neither nostalgic nor do they uncritically celebrate a less complicated time on the 'ol family farm. There is no reminiscing about hayrides or the authentic taste of homemade ice cream. The stories are about grandpa suppressing his guilt over the death of his young wife by lashing out, years later, at his grandson; about a boy surreptitiously assisting his abusive father's “suicide”; about a man facing rabies shots because a meth cookers' monkey bit him while sitting in a bar.

It is an oversight of mine that I do not spend a little more time reading short stories.  McIlrath's work is evidence of the continued validity of this genre.

From the Book Review:
You can find more information about this book at the publisher's Web site

If you are in Grinnell, come to see McIlrath read from his new book on November 11, 8:00 p.m., JRC 101.