Under Western Eyes: Personal Essays From Asian America

by Garrett Hongo

Since the phenomenal success of The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston in 1977, Asian American autobiography has grown into an exciting literary genre, as shown by the acclaim David Mura's Turning Japanese has received. In Under Western Eyes, poet and essayist Garrett Hongo has gathered fifteen remarkable voices that explore the personal, political, and cultural challenges of being Asian American. Using personal experience as a way of addressing difficult social and political issues, these contributors look to their own lives to assess how assimilation, generational differences, racism, language, family, and stereotypes affect their identities as Americans. In "Mother Tongue," Amy Tan contrasts the Chinese language her mother used at home with the English language she was taught in school, revealing how she found her writing voice by honoring both tongues. In "The Winged Seed," poet Li-Young Lee writes of his dying father as he questions the nature of exile, shame, and loyalty. In all of these essays, forty percent of which have never been published to date, there is present the courage to examine what has been denied and the gift to articulate what must be revealed. The fifteen contributors range from the well known like Amy Tan and David Mura to emerging new voices like Chang-rae Lee and Debra Kang Dean. Under Western Eyes will feature photographs of all contributors, and as in The Open Boat, Garrett Hongo brilliantly illuminates the cultural context of the genre in his introduction.

334 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1995

Reviews

[emjay · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection of short stories addressing social, political, and personal issues - as told by a series of articulate Asian-American (East and South) writers.