Featuring Asian American Authors: Louis Chu

Louis Chu was born in 1915 in China and immigrated to the US when he was seven years old.  He wrote poetry in high school and graduated from Upsala College in New Jersey with a degree in English. He then got his masters degree in sociology from New York University in 1939.  He began writing fiction while he was serving in the U.S. Army Signal Corps.  He only published one novel: Eat a Bowl of Tea.

Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature claims that in Eat a Bowl of Tea, Chu "provides a realistic portrayal of life in New York's Chinatown, portraying well the colloquial speech and the tensions of a world in which all the characters are Chinese."

The book met with a lot of criticism at its time of publication (1961) because it dealt with themes not openly talked about in any literature, much less in ethnic American literature.  These themes include extramarital affairs, prostitution, and impotence.  Because of the book's controversial nature and because of a lack of publicity available for literature written by ethnic Americans, the book received very little acknowledgment.  However, in 1974, Frank Chin, along with Jeffery Paul Chan, and Lawson Fusao Inada included it in Aiiieeeee!!! An Anthology of Asian American Writers. Because of its inclusion in this groundbreaking anthology, the book was republished a few times and is now considered an essential text for Asian American and multicultural literature courses.

For more information about Louis Chu, please see the articles in Literature Resource Center including the full text Asian American Writers. Ed. Deborah L. Madsen and part of the Dictionary of Literary Biography series. Or check out Eat a Bowl of Tea from Burling Library:

Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961)
Burling 3rd Floor PS3553 .H776

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Featuring Asian American Authors: Frank Chin

Frank Chin was born in 1940 to a Chinese immigrant father and a fourth-generation Chinese American mother. He attended University of California at Berkeley and in 1959 he left Berkeley for a fellowship at the Iowa Writer's Workshop.  He ended up graduating with an English degree from University of California at Santa Barbara.  He also worked as a brakeman on the railroad.  He emerged in the literary scene in 1970 when he was published in the anthology 19 Necromancers from Now (1970).   The criticism he received for his controversial work pushed him to respond with his own substantial body of literary history and criticism.

Chin has written plays, novels, short stories and criticism. He has also been the editor of Asian American literature collections. Here is a selection of titles held at the Grinnell College Libraries:

Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers / edited by Frank Chin ... [et al.]
Burling 3rd Floor  PS508.A8 A4 1991

Born in the USA: A Story of Japanese America, 1889-1947 / edited by Frank Chin
Burling 2nd Floor E184.J3 S84 2002 

Bulletproof Buddhists and Other Essays
Burling 2nd Floor E184.C5 C473 1998

Donald Duk: A Novel
Burling 3rd Floor PS3553.H4897 D66x 1991

Gunga Din Highway: a Novel
Burling 3rd Floor  PS3553.H4897 G86 1994

 Submitted by Kelly Musselman '11

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Featuring Asian American Authors: John Okada

John Okada was born in Seattle in 1923.  His family was moved into the internment camps during WWII.  He joined the army and served in army intelligence, broadcasting requests for Japanese soldiers to surrender. He was discharged in 1946 and earned his bachelor's degrees in English and Library Science, and earned his masters from Colombia University in English.  He couldn't find enough time to write while working in libraries, so he worked as a technical writer.  He died of a heart attack in 1971.

No-No Boy is Okada's only published work and it did not become popular until after he had died.  At his death, there were still unsold copies of the 1500 copies in the first edition.  But Jeffry Paul Chan found a copy of No No Boy in a San Francisco bookshop and he and Frank Chin included an excerpt from the book in the first Asian American literature anthology Aiiieeeee!  The entirity of the novel was republished in 1976.

No-No Boy is about a Japanese American man who, when drafted, answered 'No' to two key questions:

--"Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States, on combat duty, wherever ordered?"
--"Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any foreign government, power, or organization?"

The main character doesn't know why he answered "no" but he was put in jail for two years because of it.  No-no Boy begins with Ichiro Yamada's return from prison and the detainment camps at the end of the war and deals with themes centered around family, faith and loyalty. 

For more information about John Okada, please see the articles in Literature Resource Center including the full text   Asian American Writers. Ed. Deborah L. Madsen and part of the Dictionary of Literary Biography series. Or check out  No-No Boy from Burling Library:

No-No Boy (1979)
Burling 3rd Floor PS3565.K33 N6 1979

Submitted by Kelly Musselman '11

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