Literature as we know it from high school desks covers everything from Shakespeare to the Victorian Romantics. We learn about European and American modernists and postmodernists, but the word is almost never applied to authors of Asian origin. That's why we've selected 12 of the ones you should read here.
With theirs rich culture and stories of Chinese railroad workers in the 19th century, Filipino migrant workers in the 1930s and beyond, immigrants fleeing the Chinese Communist regime, and those born outside their home country observing Eastern values from a distance, should be included to reading lists long ago.
The words of these twelve authors, who will share with you stories of personal struggle for survival, civil unrest, culture shock and assimilation, prejudice, exclusion and the gaps between tradition and modern way of life, will enrich not only your reading list, but also your awareness.
1. Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart
A partially autobiographical novel published in 1946 one of the first to address the topic of Asian-American relations. Bulosan recounts his life, which begins on a farm in the Philippines and continues to the United States, where he suffers prejudice and abuse as a migrant worker.
2. Maxine Hong Kingston, Warrior
The prose is about female initiation, mainly about a girl, a storyteller, who gradually shakes off rigid upbringing, traditional patriarchal etiquette and constricting rules of life, which have survived five millennia and are now, in a new homeland, on the American west coast, a relic and an obstacle.
3. Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
Tana's best-selling novel with a film adaptation, is also the best-known in Bržkone. A story based on a Chinese game Mahjong, delves into the mother-daughter relationship through four different Chinese-American families living in San Francisco. Like a novel Warrior woman, which also explores the preservation of immigrant identity and the transmission of family stories between generations.
4. Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
Lahira's collection of short stories Interpreter of troubles she won Pulitzer Prize for Fictionin 2000. Her first novel The Namesake explores similar themes such as the conflicting feelings of loneliness and dissatisfaction with one's cultural background. The story follows a Bengali couple who move to the United States and their American-born son, Gogol. The Namesake perfectly captures the fact that the gulf between accepting the past and embracing the future is deep and dangerous.
5. David Henry Hwang, FOB
Hwang, who is best known for his award-winning acting M. Butterfly, in part FOB highlights the tensions between American-born Asians (“ABC's” – American Born Chinese) and those who recently immigrated ("FOB's" – Fresh off the Boat). Through the only three characters, the author questions how much of one's own identity is passed down from ancestors and how much is formed through the environment.
6. Lan Samantha Chang, Hunger: A Novella and Stories
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Chang's debut novel is a collection of five short stories that explore a world of unfulfilled dreams, success and ambition, and acceptance. Through beautiful prose, the story highlights the raw emotions of immigrant families, from a Chinese couple who move to Iowa and leave behind every trace of their culture, to a father who projects his dreams onto his daughters with a devastating compulsion.
7. Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Forest
Murakami's novel about loneliness, growing up, the search for hope and love is sad. It could well "happen" today or tomorrow, when there is even more searching for the impossible and the lost. Searching for lost time and lost Japan? The Norwegian Forest was released in 1987 when Haruki Murakami was 38 years old. They only sold in Japan several million copies, and Murakami became a hero in the eyes of young Japanese.
8. Gish Jen, Typical American
The darkly witty novel follows Lai Fu Chang, a careless and impulsive Chinese immigrant who comes to the United States in 1947 to pursue a Ph.D. He soon starts a family in New York with his sister and her boyfriend, inadvertently threatening them with financial ruin while he hunts the american dream.
9. VV Ganeshananthan, Love Marriage
Ganeshananthan's 2008 debut focuses on the generations and their marriages in a fractured Sri Lankan family, including agreed laws and marriages out of love. America's first generation is torn between the traditions of its ancestors and the expectations of modern society as it learns about its extensive family history. Will the past define the present?
10. Ha Jin, Waiting
Ha Jin, a writer and poet, left his native China in 1985 and moved to the United States, where he still lives today as a professor of English at Boston University. Waiting (1999), his second novel, is a story about love and the bonds that tradition and political order can represent for an individual. The book is published banned in China, because certain descriptions are supposed to reflect the repressiveness of the system there.
11. Chang-Rae Lee, Native Speaker
Lee's first novel, published in 1995, is about Korean-American an industrial spy torn between his Korean roots and his American identity. The story shows his successes and failures both at work and in marriage, as well as in his role as a father. Because of his strict upbringing he hides his feelings – a trait that benefits him as a spy, but less so in his marriage and relationship with his son.
12. Tao Lin, Taipei
Lin's postmodernist works are rarely shown a fully assimilated race, but his semi-autobiographical novel includes just that. Set in the present, the story follows Paul as he travels from New York to Taipei, Taiwan to confront his family roots. Like Lin's other works, e.g. Eeeee Eeeee, it is also a meditation on doubting the truth and what it means to be alive today.
