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New Books for You to Read
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It’s a case of great minds thinking alike, with the publication of Christina Chiu’s Troublemaker and Other Saints and Don Lee’s Yellow. Check this out: both books are first-time short story collections that weave together the interconnected lives of their Asian American characters, and both authors are notable figures in the literary world. Chiu is one of the original founders of New York City’s Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Lee has been editor of the premiere literary journal Ploughshares for the past 12 years.
For such a stunningly original work, the title Yellow just doesn’t seem to do the book justice. For that matter, neither does the ultra-Chinese goldfish/red background cover art for Troublemaker. So don’t judge these books by their covers because both are captivating reads that take Asian American literature in the direction it needs to go.
 Yellow
Don Lee (W. W. Norton and Company / New York, London)
Lee’s Yellow introduces a handful of characters that are all in some way connected to a fictionalized northern California coastal town, Rosarita Bay. His third or fourth generation Asian American characters represent the new California, no longer boxed in by exoticized definitions. They are individuals that collectively deal with the same issues: heartbreak, racism, loss, identity.
In the opening story, “The Price of Eggs in China,” Lee takes on the intensity of relationships among artists in the fierce competition between poets Marcella Ahn and Caroline Yip, dubbed the Oriental Hair Poets by critics because of their flowing tresses. The description of each poet’s style makes them exact: “But Marcella came away from these barbs unscathed. . . Her poetry was highly erudite, usually beginning with mundane observations about birds or plant life then slipping into long, abstract meditations on entropy and inertia. In contrast, Caroline’s book had been skewered. She wrote about masturbation and Marilyn Monroe, about tampons and moo goo gai pan.”
Lee’s longest story, “Yellow,” follows the early failed boxing career and quick ascent into Boston society of Danny Kim. His personality is driven by an intense fear of racism, which manifests in self-hatred and relentless drive, leaving him stranded and bitterly alone.
Lee’s stories are utterly contemporary, incredibly California, but grounded in the depth of beautiful prose and intriguing storylines. These are people that I see around me, that I know exist.
 Troublemaker and Other Saints
Christina Chiu (G. P. Putnam’s Sons / New York)
Chiu’s Troublemaker and Other Saints bounces from Hong Kong on the eve of the Sino-Britishhandover to New York City ten years ago. Chiu explores the labels whispered at family gatherings and over long-distance phone calls by naming each chapter aptly: Doctor, Troublemaker, Beauty.
Her characters shatter their given labels as they struggle with loneliness, anger and betrayal. Chiu’s stories don’t end neatly, her characters have serious problems and she doesn’t shy away from that. Chiu has anorexics, nymphomaniacs and jewel thieves side-by-side with overworked mothers, domineering grandmothers and drunken uncles.
In the title story “Troublemaker,” a young punk fights back against abuse from his older brother, while being forced to take care of an elderly man. In “Beauty,” an unsatisfied woman answers Asian-fetish personal ads, only to feel more hollow. Sometimes, Chiu’s characters are a little hard to swallow. In “Copycat,” a family tries to deal with the loss of a daughter, who killed herself in what the media called a “Kurt Cobain copycat murder.” In the details about Nirvana, Chiu is trying too hard to find depth in a contemporary moment.
Interestingly, one of Chiu’s strongest characters is also the angry, super-successful, seemingly heartless Asian male prototype. Showing up in quite a few of Troublemaker’s stories, Johnnie is violent and insensitive. Just like Lee’s Danny Kim of “Yellow,” Johnnie finds himself losing out on love and life because he is so inflated with anger, fear and drive. The parallel characters are similar to the angry Asian main character of David Wong Louie’s The Barbarians are Coming. Hmmmm, is something being said here about the Asian male psyche?
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