cover image Growing Up Asian American: An Anthology

Growing Up Asian American: An Anthology

Maria Hong. William Morrow & Company, $23 (416pp) ISBN 978-0-688-11266-0

An impressive feat of cultural reclamation, this anthology of stories, essays and excerpts from novels and memoirs records the enormously varied responses of Asian-Americans to life and identity in the U.S. Complexity is the keynote of the 32 selections by Amy Tan, Gish Jen, Cynthia Kadohata, Maxine Hong Kingston and others. The sensitive Chinese-American protagonist of Gus Lee's ``Toussaint'' (from his novel China Boy ) copes with local bullies, grief over his mother's death, an abusive stepmother and being one of few Asian-Americans in a predominantly African American San Francisco neighborhood. In ``A Parrot's Beak,'' an ebullient autobiographical odyssey, Indian-American Kartar Dhillon describes life dominated first by her frustrated widowed mother, then by her own authoritarian husband and her eventual decision to strike out on her own with her three children. Several selections deal with the imprisonment of over 120,000 Japanese-Americans during WW II and the shattering impact of this experience on lives and families through successive generations. Writers of Filipino, Korean and multiracial descent are also represented in narratives marked by storytelling power and distinctive voices. (Nov.)