Asian-American Literature: Identity, Stereotypes, and Big Aiiieeeee!

The Rise of Asian-American Literature

In the past couple of decades, literature from cultural groups in the United States — such as African-Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans — has increasingly become more common. It is only recently that Asian-American writers have gained wider popular recognition. With expected population changes, this literature will undoubtedly become more widespread. According to the U.S. Census, Asian is the fastest-growing racial group in the United States. Since 1980, the Asian population has almost tripled, and it is expected to increase by 213% over the next 50 years. It will be essential for Asian non-fiction and fiction works to be read by students and adults alike in order to better understand this growing segment of the American population.

Writers such as Frank Chin, Jeffery Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong, who first co-edited Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Chinese-American and Japanese-American Literature in the 1970s, believe that most literature and film about Asian-Americans to date is stereotyped and mythical at best, and bigoted at worst. Chan, who was hired to create the first university department for Asian-American studies in the United States, also edited follow-up volumes of this work, including The Big Aiiieeeee! in 1991.

Big Aiiieeeee! and the Challenge to Stereotypes

Chan and his co-editors of The Big Aiiieeeee! argue that popular writers such as Amy Tan are entirely erroneous in their depiction of Asian-Americans, and that such works have thoroughly biased the way Anglo-Americans perceive Asian cultures. These authors, Chan contends, paint Asian-American men in a particularly unflattering light: "At worst, the Asian-American [male] is contemptible, because he is womanly, effeminate, devoid of all the traditionally masculine qualities of originality, daring, physical courage, and creativity."

Although Chan's approach and comments are controversial — especially among feminists who object to the sexist framing evident in some of the works chosen for the Aiiieeeee! volumes — he is widely regarded as someone who has presented a fundamentally different perspective on Asian life in America. His primary goal was to introduce, in his own words, "a native-born Asian-American literary language and sensibility that was not Oriental or Western European, but a native development of American culture."

When reading The Big Aiiieeeee!, one quickly becomes immersed in the often distressing experience that Asian-Americans have faced since coming to the United States. One of the most powerful works included is an excerpt from the novel No-No Boy by John Okada, which was rediscovered by the editors while compiling their anthology. It clearly illustrates how Asian-Americans — in this case Japanese-Americans — are torn between the worlds of the past and the present.

Identity and Conflict in No-No Boy

The main character, Ichiro, is placed in a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" position. If he fought for the United States, he would be a hypocrite: how could he support a country that did not support his own people? If he refused to fight, he was scorned by those same people on whose behalf he had taken his stand. This impossible double bind captures the profound alienation at the heart of the Japanese-American wartime experience.

Another telling entry is drawn from Louis Chu's novel Eat a Bowl of Tea, which depicts the isolated, bachelor-dominated culture of New York's post-World War II Chinatown. Chan explains that the "bachelor society" was a community of old men trapped by racist immigration laws to live out their days in San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston, and New York City. With their allegiances tied to wives and families barred from entering the United States, these men found refuge in the back rooms of barbershops and restaurants, at the local tong, and in the camaraderie and rivalries played out over games of mah jong.