Featuring Asian American Authors: Carlos Bulosan

Carlos Bulosan was born in Binalonan, Pangasinan, in northern Luzon in the Philippines in 1911. He came to the United States in 1930 just as California was restricting Chinese and Japanese immigration. Raised attending English language schools with American teachers Bulosan was fluent in English thus becoming one of the first Asian Americans to document his immigrant experience in the language that would allow for a wide audience.

Bulosan authored several important autobiographical works including The Laughter of My Father (1944) a collection of short stories set during the transition from Spanish to U.S. colonialism, and America is in the Heart (1946), in some respects his autobiography, but more broadly a narrative that incorporates the experiences of the Filipino immigrants in California and the Untied States. Bulosan's earliest publishing efforts were as a poet. In the early thirties he published in local Filipino papers, and then later started his own newspaper, The New Tide, a bimonthly radical literary magazine. This effort brought him into a wider circle of writers including William Saroyan, William Carlos Williams, Sonora Babb, and Richard Wright. His first two books of poetry were Letter from America (1942) and Chorus for America (1942). In all of his writing Bulosan brought the attention of the reader to the working class, the poor, the under represented and the marginalized.

Bulosan also worked as a union organizer and was implicated in the "red scare." He may have been a member of the  Communist Party and did write for some periodicals using the vocabulary of Marxism. Bulosan's manuscripts are still being discovered, edited and published.

For more information about Carlos Bulosan, visit 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 one of the books by Carlos Bulosan in Burling Library:

America is in the Heart: A Personal History, 1946
Burling 3rd Floor PS3503.U5627 Z5

"The Story of a Letter" and "How My Stories Were Written," in Bold Words: A Century of Asian American Writing, 2001
Burling 3rd Floor PS508.A8 B65 2001

"Hymn to a Man Who Failed," Portraits with Cities Falling," and "The Romance of Magno Rubio" and more! in Brown River, White Ocean: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Philippine Literature in English, 1993.

Burling 3rd Floor PR9550.5 .B76 1993

The Cry and the Dedication, 1995
Burling 3rd Floor PR9550.9.B8 C79 1995

On Becoming Filipino: Selected Writings of Carlos Bulosan, 1995
Burling 3rd Floor PR9550.9.B8 A6 1995


Submitted by R. Stuhr

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.

Hornets and E-books

Walter Giersbach 61, avid reader and author is reading Stieg Larsson's Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest (2009). He is also reading the e-book version of Marisha Pessl's suspense novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Viking, 2006.

You can read Walter Giersbach's fiction on the Web:
The Last Person on Earth 
Dreaded Conversation
both at Every Day Fiction

And mentioned earlier on these pages Cruising the Green of Second Avenue, volumes 1 & 2 at Wild Child Publishing.


For more information, visit his blog:

Libraries III--Not Fiction--Libraries created and enriched from trash

BBC World News America has a short news story about Benedito da Silva, who works sorting garbage in Brazil. Silva describes how he began collecting books out of the garbage and taking them home and eventually building his own library collection. He also donates them to his local public library (Luiz Odair de Sousa). Silva tells the BBC that before he began collecting books out of the trash, he could not read. As he began saving the books, he also improved his ability to read. In this short news story, Silva talks about the volume of trash in Brazil and the world and the problems it creates and the carelessness of such waste. He emphasizes the value that he and others provide sorting through all of the trash. Silva calls for others to view their work with the respect it deserves.

Go to BBC World News America to see this story.

submitted by R. Stuhr

Librarians and Libraries in Fiction II: Rex Libris

Turner, James. Rex Libris: I Librarian. San Jose: SLG Publishing, 2007.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

This is the first volume in a comic books series, with the tag: "The World's Favorite Butt-Kicking, Sesquepedalian Librarian!" I have volume one and two on my bookshelves. The second is Book of Monsters and was published in 2009. Each volume is made up of multiple issues, which can be purchases separately from SLG Publishing. Check out the Rex Libris Web site to read about one of the few vector based comic books in the world. Rex Libris has mythical qualities. When he isn't traveling across time and space, he is the Head Librarian at Middleton Public Library. The library, apparently has generous lending policies, because Rex Libris travels to the "farthest reaches of the galaxy" in search of overdue books, all the while fighting the forces of ignorance and darkness. He wears "super thick bottle glasses" and is "armed with an arsenal of high technology weapons." Zombies as well as recalcitrant borrowers figure into the plot line.

Within these pages you will find your blams, pows, zips, and zings (also thaks, thwopks, and schwifs).

Truthfully, I find slogging through a graphic novel, no matter how creative and how much about librarians not really my first choice of reading. But these have great black and white illustrations by Turner, and enough villains, odd creatures, black market weapons, and references to all the intellectuals of times past you could possibly want. Here is a tiny sample from book 1, I, Librarian:

"Find for the first time in print ever, the tumultuous tales of the public library system and its unending battle against the forces of evil. This struggle is not just confined to our terrestrial sphere but extends out into the farthest reaches of the cosmos ... and beyond! The librarian has faced patrons so terrible, so horrific, they they cannot be described here without the risk of driving readers mad. But enough prattle and preamble! Settle back with a cup of coffe and a donut (or other pastry if you prefer), and prepare to enter the secret world of ... Rex Libris 'I, Librarian.'"

Immediately, the reader is thrown into a confrontation between the librarian and a demanding patron:

"Puny Mortal! I am Kurui-No-Oni, Demon Spirit Samurai! I need no card! I take what I wish! Give me the book, lest I squash you like the sniveling little bookworm that you are!"

(Rex:) "Listen Bucko, the branch administrator sez nobody, but nobody, takes out a book here without getting a card and signing for it. And that includes you, Buster. .... And you're going to have to check that sword at the desk."

So that is just the very beginning--imagine where this winding tale can take you. Join Rex and his roommate Simonides (turned into a bird by Circe--a former villain and now cookie baker), on his travels and investigations (when the Montgomery Reading Room is overrun by vandals, they really are Vandals).

More on Rex Libris

Check out Volume 1 from Burling Library:

1st Floor, Smith Memorial PN 6727. T865x R48 2007

Librarians and Libraries in Fiction I: Some Tame Gazelle

Pym, Barbara. Some Tame Gazelle. New York: Dutton, 1983 (first published in England in 1950).

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Writing about the mobile librarian reminded me of another novel I read recently, this one by Barbara Pym. I am a big fan of Barbara Pym. I suppose I read her the way others read Jane Austen. I like to read and reread her books at intervals. I think of them as miniatures or tiny jewels. Almost all of her novels feature unmarried women. Occasionally the women get married, most are involved in the church, and if not with the church, then they  at least share tea with the clergy. They are generally well versed in the greater and lesser English poets. Most of Pym's novels are comedies. In Some Tame Gazelle, Pym writes about two unmarried sisters, one flamboyant, outgoing, and flirtatious, the other quieter and cherishing a long unrequited love from college.

I bring up this novel now, because of the charcter Nicholas Parnell, friend to the quieter sister (but not the cherished love) and chief librarian at the college they both attended. There are quiet a few funny lines related to libraries and librarians, although, maybe they are funny because I spend much of my time in and thinking about libraries

Nicholas Parnell responds to the reverence he receives, when introduced as the Librarian, "I do not approve of this hushed and reverent attitude towards our great Library. After all, it is a place for human beings, isn't it?" (94). He goes on to explain that the Library now has central heating and a Lady's Cloak Room.

Later tells another character, "She ... introduced me to a charming lady who showed great reverence when the Library was mentioned. It is really rather gratifying. I should be delighted to show her round," he added. "She would find every convenience. The next thing will be to have some kind of a restaurant where readers can take luncheon or tea together. Do you know,"--he tapped his walking stick on the ground--"I have had to have notices printed requesting readers not to eat in the Library? One would hardly have thought it possible" (97).

More references to libraries and this time library patrons while discussing  scholarly pamphlets and popular reading tastes at dinner:

"I'm afraid you're hardly a best seller," said Mr. Mold [the Librarian's no. 2 man] jovially. "Nor even as much ordered in the Library as Rochester's poems . .. "

"I am afraid they are rather naughty," Said Dr. Parnell. "We have had to lock them away in a special place, together with other books of a similar nature. All the same, they are quite often asked for by our readers."

"Oh, well, I suppose people have to study them," said Belinda, handing round cigarettes wondering how she could change the subject (p. 117). 

And just one more, Belinda, the quiet sister, describes the Librarian, "Nicholas, is a great connoisseur," said Belinda. "It seems right that a librarian should be, I think. Good wine and old books seem to go together" (115).

Pym writes about expectations, disappointments, small successes, and the routine, often welcomed, of every day life. Her characters are often content with the trajectory of their lives, even when all around them think that they must be wishing for something more.

To dip into a Barbara Pym novel yourself stop by Burling Library.