Amerasia Journal 2.1 (Fall 1973)
Contains an advertisement for Going Back, "a collection of articles, interviews, and poems written and compiled by a group of Chinese Americans who visited the People's Republic of China." Book published by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press.
Table of Contents:
- Interview with Roland Winters by Frank Chin. Roland Winters was a white American actor who played Charlie Chan in six films (from 1947 to 1949). Frank Chin is a California-based fiction writer who would go on to co-edit Aiiieeeee! with Jeffrey Chan and others. The interview is often quite funny and a little edgy. Chin gives Winters a chance to open up and reminisce about his experience playing Charlie Chan; he also lets Winters criticize the casting choice himself. Winters seems somewhat oblivious to any possible harm caused by the Charlie Chan character.
- "Japanese Resistance in America's Concentration Camps: A Re-Evaluation" by Gary Y. Okihiro. Gary Okihiro was a graduate student at UCLA at the time this article was published. He would go on to become an influential historian of Asian American life. Most salient to this essay might be his book Whispered Silences: Japanese Americans and World War II.
- "Curriculum Philosophy for Asian American Studies" by Asian Studies Division, University of California, Berkeley.
- "China or Taiwan: The Political Crisis of the Chinese Intellectual" by Shu Yuan Chang
- "The Visual Panacea: Japanese Americans in the City of Smog" by Don Toshiaki Nakanishi
- Interview with Tommy Chun and Russel Valpariso
Commentaries:
- "The Myth of 'Assimilation in American Life'" by Paul Takagi
- "Confessions of a Misguided Sociologist" by George Kagiwada
Poem:
- "A Picture of My Mother's Family" by Wing Tek Lum
An excerpt:
"Caught at that moment, your mother looks into the lens
while restraining her daughter: her hands in front
encircling the waist. She wears a wan smile,
almost serene. Partly it's because of her face,
Which seems flat, I can discern no part of her nose,
except for the line of a shadow beneath her nostrils.
Her trousers are nearly covered by the spread
of Lucy's dress. I notice that wrinkles have begun
to set in under her eyes: they make her appear
out of focus, like crying. I muse about
Whether her feet were bound. A pastor's daughter,
she died young. My grandfather remarried."
Book Reviews
- Book Review of Asian American Authors, Edited by Kai-Yu Hsu and Helen Palubinskas. Review by Suzi Wong
A skeptical review of this first anthology of Asian American literature:
"On first reading Asian-American authors gives the impression of chop suey -- slices of life, yesterday's dreams (fragmented, but still filling) and the sharp accent of today's voices -- all randomly tossed together. And, like the chop suey invented out of the sojourner's longing for home, this anthology is a distinctly Asian-American product, created to appease another kind of hunger. Since it is one of the first collections of Asian-American literature, Authors is proto-anthology and super-chop suey, containing many different flavors (Chinese, Japanese, and Pilipino [Filipino] American), genres (poetry, short story, biography, excerpts from novels), and generations. Editors Hsu and Palubinksas' decision to make the anthology simply an outline of the range of Asian-American literature may have stemmed from the fact that Authors is a 'representative book in the publisher's 'Multi-Ethnic Literature Series.' However, the ambivalent, somewhat apologetic tone of the editorial commentaries and the dutiful inclusion of pedagogical review questions and glossary make it easy to read 'token' for 'representative.' (169)
- Book review of Japanese Americans by William Petersen. Review by Yuji Ichioka. A critical review of a book by an author who previously published a New York Times piece on the Japanese American community, "Success Story: Japanese American Style," which appeared on January 9, 1966.
An excerpt:
"Peterson's book can be criticized from three perspectives. First, his criteria of success must be questioned, for they hide as much as they reveal. Just to cite example, abstract figures of educational attainment and income do not tell the fate of Nisei who have college degrees but who are still gardeners. [...] the cold statistical data also do not relate their personal story of frustrated ambitions, broken dreams, and suppressed anger, the negative legacy as it were of the success Petersen defines." (172)
- Book Review of Ethnic Enterprises in America: Business and Welfare Among Chinese, Japanese, and Blacks. by Ivan Light. Review by Lowell Chun-Hoon.