Asian-American Stories

t a reading by writers included in Jessica Hagedorn's "Charlie Chan is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction," Shawn Wong read an excerpt from his next novel.

It wasn't, as one local poet put it, one of those "grandma-grandpa, how-they-met, how-times-were-hard" kinds of stories that occupy so much of Asian-American literature. It was a contemporary love story - the pivotal moment when the lovers meet at a party where they are the only Asian Americans.

In his story, Wong delineates the tangled tango that threatens to undo the romance even before it starts. When Wong described the intra-racial stereotyping that makes this mating dance even more complicated than most romances, the audience - largely Asian American - broke into laughter that comes from recognition.

To a group that remains largely unseen on television and in movies (aside from an occasional art house film), it is to literature that Asian America has come to find the affirmation gained from seeing their lives and stories represented. And increasingly, books are presenting a more diverse range of images.

Among those contributing to the richness of the current renaissance in Asian-American literature are local writers. They follow the footsteps of earlier generations of Seattle's Asian-American writers who recorded life outside the mainstream long before doing so became fashionable.

"Seattle is an interesting town," said Wong, an assistant

professor at the University of Washington. "It's been home to two or three generations of Asian-American writers. Most general readers think (Asian-American literature) is new, but it goes back even to the turn of the century and that tradition has continued."

REDISCOVERING HERITAGE

In the late 1960s, when Wong was an English major at the University of California at Berkeley, he knew of no Asian-American writers, living or dead. Of the 1,100 English majors, he was the only Asian American.

"I'd been writing for a year and I thought, I'm the only Chinese-American writer I know - and I'm not even very good," Wong said. "How come I'm the only one I know?"

The reading lists for his courses offered little consolation. All the books, said Wong, were by "dead white guys."

Wong eventually decided to become an unofficial Asian-American studies major, long before that option existed at universities. He sought out works by and about Asian America, developing a talent for spotting bamboo or Chinese-character style lettering on the spines of volumes in used-book stores. He also sought out other writers, eventually befriending Frank Chin, Lawson Inada, and Jeffery Paul Chan.

Together they found forgotten classics of Asian-American literature, and in 1974 they co-edited "Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers."

Several of the most powerful voices that were rediscovered - writers whose works now are required reading in Asian-American studies courses throughout the country - came from Seattle.

For a variety of reasons - including a cluster of community publications that encouraged expression, and better relations between the Asian-American community and the mainstream than exist in other cities - the Seattle area long has been a vital center for Asian-American arts. It has produced more significant artists, particularly writers, than would be expected for a community that's small compared with those in San Francisco or New York.

Chin, who lived in Seattle for several years during the mid-1960s, wrote in a 1978 essay that "Seattle has always been a more congenial place for Asian-American ambition and genius to flourish than San Francisco or anyplace else." He added that the city "lives with its Asian-American self and lets its yellow soul show."

WAR STORIES

Among the writers rescued from the historical dustbin was Sui Sin Far, a Chinese-Eurasian woman who lived part of her life here at the turn of the century and wrote primarily about the Chinese community. Another was Monica Sone, whose "Nisei Daughter" (first published in 1953), vividly captured Japanese-American life in Seattle before the Second World War, and the forced relocation of Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Carlos Bulosan, the Philippines-born author whose poetry and 1946 autobiography "America is in the Heart" dealt with the hardships of life as an itinerant laborer, also lived parts of his life in Seattle and died here in 1956.

The authors also discovered John Okada, another forgotten Seattle writer, whose 1957 novel "No-No Boy," about a World War II draft resister, was suppressed by Japanese-American community leaders.

In 1976, Wong and his fellow young turks approached the University of Washington Press about reprinting "No-No Boy." University officials responded that they would publish the book for $5,000.

Deciding they could publish the book themselves for that, Wong and the others formed Combined Asian American Resources Project and had 3,000 copies printed, which they marketed by mail. Advertising only in a Japanese-American community paper, they soon sold all copies. When a story about their marketing success was published, Wong received a call from the head of the University of Washington Press, who asked to meet with him.

"I feared the worst," Wong said. "I had assumed my meeting was with one person, but when I walked in, the room was filled. There were about 25 people there. The entire staff. I thought it was a lynch mob. But he said to me, `The first thing I want to do is apologize. We were wrong. We should have published the book.' "

The University of Washington Press eventually took over the publishing of "No-No Boy" and revived other out-of-print books. Today, the University of Washington Press has the largest list of Asian-American titles in the country. BUILDING THEIR OWN VOICE

The 1970s was also a heady time for Asian-American writers, who not only reclaimed their forgotten past, but also began to forge a fledgling community.

Poet-artist Alan Chong Lau, then a student in the Bay Area, remembers coming of age as a writer at a time when Asian-American writers were trying to define what it meant to be one. Chin, whose controversial "Aiiieeeee" essay argued that an authentic Asian-American voice exists - then tried to define it - was influential.

"It was a pretty exciting time," Lau said. "That's when my voice was forged. I was encouraged by Frank Chin. The fact that I'm Asian American is integrated in what I write."

The rediscovery of the older generation of writers was crucial.

"For me it's important because it means I came from somewhere," Lau said. "I'm not from a void, I was not the first one. There's a continuum, and I'm just one more piece of the flotsam that's going to continue floating beyond me."

David Ishii, whose bookstore in Pioneer Square became the spiritual center for the area's Asian-American writers, remembers carloads of young Asian Americans visiting from Vancouver, B.C., just to listen to lectures by Chin, who often came up to Seattle.

In 1975, the Aiiieeeee gang organized a writers' conference in Oakland. The second one was held in Seattle the following year. Laureen Mar, a short-story writer and poet who then was studying writing at the University of Washington, said the Seattle conference had a profound influence on her development as a writer.

"It really helped to provide a context to the University of Washington workshops I was taking where my work was viewed as exotic," Mar said. "One of my professors told me that my subject matter was automatically interesting, which is not really a compliment, is it? The conference provided a counterbalance for me."

A direct fruit of the '70s activism is the proliferation of works by Asian Americans in the decades that followed. In Seattle, it created a healthy support network that exists today.

"The '60s and '70s fostered a lot of consciousness-raising in terms of looking at identity and developing a sense of the self," Wong said. "That leads directly to creative expression."

SUPPORTING EACH OTHER

In the flood of books since Amy Tan's hugely successful first novel "The Joy Luck Club" helped to open the gates, Seattle writers have been well-represented. In addition to Wong, writers featured in the "Charlie Chan" anthology - the first Asian-American anthology published by a commercial publisher, Penguin - include Mar, Bulosan and Seattle-born novelist Peter Bacho. "The Open Boat: Poems from Asian America," edited by Garrett Hongo, featured the works of Sharon Hashimoto, Lau, and James Masao Mitsui, a high school English teacher. "The Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature" (a sequel to the original "Aiiieeeee!") included Sone, Okada and Lonny Kaneko, a Highline Community College instructor.

Several local writers credit the supportive environment that emerged from the 1970s for their success.

"Most of the support I've ever gotten has been from Asian-American writers and from other people of color," Mar said. "They're out there looking to support you, whereas the mainstream publishing community isn't out there looking to support you. Sometimes I question if I'd have a career if it had not been for the people who liked my writing."

Sharon Hashimoto, a poet who teaches at Highline, said she drew strength from those who had paved the way.

"I've been extremely lucky," she said. "There was a foundation already laid. I wasn't the first one out there. . . . I think it was important for writers to see people of their own background writing, and to see that they could do it."

Ishii said the vitality of Seattle's Asian-American writing community is due to established writers like Mar and Wong who pass their skills and knowledge to other generations and help out other writers.

Lau, who edits a literary supplement for the International Examiner, an Asian community newspaper, and organizes its annual group reading at Elliott Bay Book Co., is also widely viewed as a linchpin of the community.

"It's a very supportive community," Hashimoto said. "We're also smaller than in San Francisco, so maybe it's more tightly knit. When I went to my first reading, everyone knew each other. It felt very comfortable, like visiting with distant relatives."

WIDE RANGE OF BOOKS

The future of Asian-American literature seems nothing but bright. Some local writers foresee more diversification in the works being published, others believe Southeast Asian writers will be the next to emerge and claim the spotlight.

After Tan's "The Joy Luck Club" was published, the expectation was that publishers would be interested only in other familial sagas. But the wide range of books released since then has calmed those fears.

"I don't think the interest in Asian America is going away," Hashimoto said.

Interest, in turn, can lead to understanding.

"We learn about Asian-American values, history and community by reading the works," Wong said. In his own work, for example, what draws readers in is the love story. "But you need to look beyond and understand the values embedded in the story. In attaching themselves to a love story, readers can learn something about Asian-American ethnic identity."