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

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

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

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

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

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: