Literary Diversity and the American Book Award
June 8, 2000
Last week, I was honored in Chicago by the Before Columbus Foundation as a recipient of the American Book Award.
Why?
For the kind of stuff you’re reading now—more specifically for the compilation of my columns in book form, Amok: Essays from an Asian American Perspective.
The American Book Award is a little different from the other awards out there. It’s not the Pulitzer. Or the Nobel. Or the National Book Award.
In other words, it’s not about in-bred elitist circles prone to self-congratulation. No—for that we have our queen contests.
The American Book Award is different. Since 1980, the Before Columbus Foundation has banged the drum for a more accurate sense of America’s literary voices. If you were to look at other sources, you’d come away thinking America’s literary scene was more like a doilied tray of white-bread tea sandwiches. Not a pupu platter.
It’s messier than that.
The American Book Awards are truly American, a reflection of our country’s new multi-cultural blend of concerns. You want diversity, you want inclusiveness? (There, let’s get all the PC words out there in the open). Where else will you find a roster of literary winners that include writers who are Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and folks affectionately referred to as “crackers”? The American Book Awards celebrates them all.
The “cracker” term is most instructive. Some would say “diversity” is just code for “ethnic,” and write off the awards as a bunch of PC hooey. But then one discovers the unique talent of Janisse Ray, a naturalist and environmental activist from Baxley, Georgia who lives on a farm and wrote a beautiful book called Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. Whites are part of the new multi-cultural America, don’t you know?
So are Asian Americans.
At this year’s awards, besides myself, there were three other Asian Americans, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto’s Why She Left Us, Lifetime Achievement winner Frank Chin, the original “Chickencoop Chinaman,” and Lois Yamanaka.
Yamanaka alone is a test of the integrity of the awards.
You think it’s sooooo PC? Try Yamanaka for size. I had never met her before, but only knew about her through the comments of readers and writers, mostly Asian who had violent reactions to her book, Blu’s Hanging. The criticism centered on the depiction of Filipino men. Let’s say by their actions, especially toward women, these characters made WWF wrestlers seem quaint.
When her book came out, my Asian American writer brothers wanted to muzzle Lois. I stayed out of the dogfight. I didn’t read the book. But when I met her last week, she had the heart of an islander, greeting people with kukui leis, and talking openly about being an Asian American writer.
The warmth of the artist will no doubt help me approach her words from a different perspective. But it also made me realize even more that diversity extends to content. Diversity of expression is about having more, not less.
Remarks by less charitable fellow writers had biased me against Lois. But in art, you don’t win any debates by quieting the disturbing voice. Lois’ recognition shows the American Book Awards are hardly incubators of the politically correct.
Which I knew already since they awarded me.
Said one Foundation member to me at the ceremony, “Filipino kids will see that you won. They’re going to discover they have a voice too. They’re going to want to write.”
I hope they do. I nearly stopped. After my undergraduate years at Harvard I was accepted to St. Louis’ Washington University writing program in its first year. It wanted to be like the famed Iowa writers program. But in St. Louis. I called it Iowa with an arch.
They also had Stanley Elkin, a Jewish satirical novelist I had idolized.
After my first batch of short stories, he asked me one question: “Why do all your stories have Filipinos in them?”
This was almost enough to throw my Olivetti Lettera 45 out the window.
Fortunately, there was a visiting professor who asked me another question. It was Ishmael Reed. Of my stories, he asked, “Why don’t you put MORE Filipinos in them?”
He was right. And I’ve spent most of my life putting Filipinos and Asian Americans in everywhere I leave a mark. We’re here. We belong. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
(Amok: Essays from an Asian American Perspective is available through amazon.com, and 1-800-AUTHORS).
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