Asian American Literature
March 6, 2000
A proliferation of new books reflects the growing API population
Helen Zia, author of the just-released Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, sees proof of her thesis in the book publishing industry.
“One of the themes of my book is that Asian Americans have reached a critical mass,” said Zia, a Chinese American based in Oakland, Calif., “and all the books scheduled to be published are evidence of that.”
More than two dozen Asian American writers, their backgrounds ranging from Vietnamese to Indian, have works just out or due for release over the next couple of months. Anticipated books include Anchee Min’s historical novel Becoming Madame Mao and Elizabeth Kim’s memoir Ten Thousand Sorrows, for which Doubleday paid six figures.
“Doubleday has had good success with other Asian American authors,” said Kim’s editor, Amy Scheibe, citing Jung Chang’s novel Wild Swans and other books. “It’s a market that’s been there a long time and it’s getting more and more recognition.”
No one knows the exact size of the market, but the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, a New York-based organization, has expanded from an original membership of six in 1991 to more than 600. Meanwhile, the number of colleges with Asian American studies departments has grown from 14 to 25 in the past five years.
“It’s all driven by student demand,” said Anita Affeldt, an official with the Association for Asian American Studies. “Young Asian Americans are looking for an equal voice on campus.”
The origins of contemporary Asian American writing date to the mid-1960s, when decades-old immigration quotas were overturned. Among Korean Americans alone, a once-tiny population grew to more than 1 million by 1990.
Commercial and critical recognition began in the mid-1970s with the publication of Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior, a memoir that won the National Book Critics Circle Award. A decade later, Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club became a major best seller. And authors such as Chang-rae Lee and Ha Jin, winner of the 1999 National Book Award for fiction, have received acclaim in recent years.
Such success can be as much a burden as a breakthrough. For years, Asian American writers were expected to follow the model of The Joy Luck Club, a sentimental story of four Chinese immigrant women and their daughters.
“I remember one author called me up and asked if she could interview me,” said Elaine Kim, a professor of Asian American studies at the University of California at Berkeley.
“She said she wanted to write five mother-daughter stories and that her agent told her it would be really popular. She also wanted to have each family come from a different background — Korea, the Philippines — so she could find readers in every community.”
Zia, whose book is being released by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, said some in the industry still have narrow ideas about the market. She said one publisher told her it already had a nonfiction work by a Chinese writer and didn’t want another one. Another publisher said it was already reprinting a historical work from the late 1980s.
“What’s the message in that?” Zia said. “That one book a decade by a Chinese American is enough?”
But Zia and many others are encouraged by the diversity of books coming out. They are both fiction and nonfiction, written by both men and women, and their stories cover everything from the Khmer Rouge (Chanrithy Him’s memoir When Broken Glass Floats) to a Connecticut ladies’ club (David Wong Louie’s novel The Barbarians Are Coming).
“We’re not just telling immigrant stories anymore,” said Quang Bao, managing director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. “We’re also telling love stories and other kinds of stories. One writer is working on a book about an Asian American who was the servant for Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein. There’s an interest in all kinds of literature.”
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