Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140231110 ISBN 13: 9780140231113

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1993

Synopsis

A ground-breaking anthology of Asian American fiction features selections from Meena Alexander, Hisaye Yamamoto, Peter Bacho, Cynthia Kadohata, Amy Tan, and many others.

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Reviews

In her introduction Hagedorn ( Danger and Beauty ) calls Asian American literature "too confining a term" for these wide-ranging works. And indeed while the short stories and novel excerpts, nearly half being published for the first time, provide interesting reading, they seem to lack a cohering premise. Moreover, pieces by well-known writers like Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan are not particularly fresh. The most successful of the works paint sharp portraits of individuals. Gish Jen's Catholic-school girl is eager to work miracles, especially after her mother falls from a bedroom window during a fight with her father. Cynthia Kadohata's domineering grandmother insists on telling inappropriate stories and affects the narrator so forcefully that the girl swears, "Anything she does, I never will." Marilyn Chin's Moon is "a little fat Chinese girl" who is humiliated by two boys who urinate on her, and subsequently by her parents, then wreaks supernatural revenge. Cherylene Lee's narrator tells how her brother came to be a flame diver despite their overprotective parents' disapproval and muses that "Perhaps there is a Chinese gene encoded with a protein for caution."
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A generous and varied sampling: 48 authors writing in a variety of styles, 22 selections previously unpublished and many others published only overseas or by journals or small presses--a substantial, often engrossing volume at a bargain price. Hagedorn has included traditionally structured fiction that directly addresses cultural experience: in ``Immigration Blues,'' by Bienvenido Santos, an ailing widower is approached by a Filipina who needs an American husband; the excerpt from Shawn Wong's novel- in-progress is a frank, cleareyed, often funny look at the cultural and racial subtext when two Asian-Americans have an affair; and several selections are outright family memoir or memoir-like. Some authors shatter myths of the ``model minority'' with stories of family violence, sexual transgression. There's also much experimentation here--usually focused on personal life rather than on culture and history: poetic meditation (notably, ``Afterbirth'' by Kimiko Hahn); a disturbing, self-conscious broken narrative from John Yau; an effective series of vignettes and incantatory passages by R. Zamora Linmark; the use of pidgin by Hawaiian writers Lois- Ann Yamanaka and Darell Lum. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, less aesthetically pleasing but extremely influential, uses fragmentation and exhortation to write of Korean politics (``Melpomene Tragedy''). Best-known contributors include Cynthia Kadohata, Maxine Hong Kingston, Bharati Mukherjee (all with previously published work) and Amy Tan (a touching outtake from The Kitchen God's Wife). If there's bias here, it's a slight tilt toward the Philippines and to writers from the vibrant Bay Area multicultural scene: varying quality but largely inclusive--though surely needing an update soon to include Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian- American voices. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

These stories by 48 Asian American authors writing in English are from India, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Malaysia. Some are established writers (Carlos Bulosan, Diana Chang, Jessica Hagedorn, Gish Jen, Maxine Hong Kingston, David Wong Louie, Bharati Mukherjee, Amy Tan, and Wakako Yamauchi), but most are emerging writers. All express the difficulties, ambiguities, vagaries, and joys of living in America as Asians. Particularly effective are Meena Alexander's "Manhattan Music," Kimiko Hahn's "Afterbirth," Louie's "Pangs of Love," Darrell Lum's "Fourscore and Seven Years Ago" in pidgin, and Shawn Wong's "Eye Contact." Recommended for public libraries.
- Kitty Chen Dean, Nassau Coll., Garden City, N.Y.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

We've enjoyed Hagedorn as a novelist in Dogeaters (1990), and as a poet in Danger and Beauty . Here she struts her stuff as editor of this bountiful anthology of short stories and novel excerpts by 48 Asian American writers. Nearly half of these pieces are published here for the first time, including work by Meena Alexander, Fiona Cheong, Walter Lew, Marianne Villanueva, and John Yau. Asian American literature is rich with the myths, traditions, beliefs, aesthetics, dreams, fears, and humor of a host of diverse cultures, but, as in all literatures, it is ultimately about individuals who, like bright stars, define their galaxies. Hagedorn has selected fiction that gives voice to the sort of themes you might expect--displacement and exile, the quest for home and freedom--but she has also chosen stories that shrewdly dissect domesticity, love affairs, and manifestations of trendiness and insensitivity. A perfect successor to the Asian American anthology The Big Aiiieeeee! (1991), this volume will please readers both familiar with and new to this particular literary universe. Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140231110
• ISBN 13: 9780140231113
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 592
• Editor: Hagedorn Jessica