ASIAN AMERICAN NOVELS
(Updated to reflect the 100 most recent valid responses.)

Which of the following is the best Asian American novel?
China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston | 7%
No-No Boy by John Okada | 1%
The Foreign Student by Susan Choi | 8%
China Boy by Gus Lee | 4% American Knees by Shawn Wong | 3%
Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston | 7%
Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan | 8%
Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee | 15%
Other | 47%

Who's your favorite Asian American writer?
Gus Lee | 13%
Amy Tan | 8%
Susan Choi | 8%
Maxine Hong Kingston | 11%
Chang-Rae Lee | 14%
Other | 46%

What best explains the remarkable disparity between the numbers of published AA female and male authors?
More AA females write than do AA males | 17%
American publishers have a fetish for Asian female authors | 32%
American publishers have an aversion toward strong AA male voices | 14%
Americans have a fetish for Asian female-white male themed books | 37%
More comments on the Joy Luck Club.

1) "Marriage is all about love"

True, but looking at JLC, all the marriages to WMs, though sometimes rough, eventually succeeded. All the marriages with AMs, whether in China or the USA, failed. love=good. Therefore, it reinforces the theme: all WMs are good, all AMs are bad.

2) About the movie vs. the book.

Refering to the movie is also fine, because it is based on the book. I'm not sure where you got the idea that white women make up the majority of the moviegoers, but in my experience, Asians are the majority of the JLC audience.

3) "Mother-daughter stories usually focus on one mother and daughter. Tan used four instead of one"

Just because there are four mother-daughter couples, that makes it better than one? Four, two, ten, one, or whatever the number, it's still the same mother-daughter theme that's been around for ages.

4) (the rest of the letter)

My gripe with JLC is how just AMs are specifically targeted. BTW, this is not only my opinion; almost every AMs I know felt this way. I don't have anything against a film that encourages AFs and Asians in general, but the fact that all AMs are targeted, and all WMs are lauded, suggests Amy Tan has some major issues.

Another example, the movie Thelma & Louise (1991). It's a feminist film where men take a back seat, and are portrayed as mostly bad. But if the film had black male actors who played all the bad roles as abusers and swindlers, and all the WMs played good or neutral roles, I'd think the author had some major issues as well. Not only that, but this twisted version of Thelma & Louise would draw major protests of racism.

If JLC just had one AM major character play a positive role, I really think it would make a considerable difference. tulux999, assuming you are an AF, I can understand the need for role models, and how JLC is an inspiration to AFs. When I saw the movie several years ago in my early college days with my AF friends, they all loved it. As I said before, I don't mean to bash on a role model for AFs, but the storyline against AMs is susceptible, and many AMs I know feel this way.
yes! (aka B. Lee)    Friday, April 26, 2002 at 19:24:45 (PDT)
Amy Tan is part of a tired mother-daughter theme in Asian American fiction that has been described as such:
1. the recognition by the daughter that her voice is not entirely her own

2. the importance of trying to really see one’s mother in spite of the blindness and skewed vision that growing up together causes

3. the amazement/humility about the strength of our mothers &
the need to recite one’s matrilineage, find a ritual to both get back there and preserve it

4. and still, the anger and despair about the pain and silence borne and handed on from mother to daughter.

Yes, there is a desire for As Am women to read good books about their experiences, but it's a FACT: The "white feminist reading public appears to have an unusually keen appetite for mother-daughter stories by and about people of color.”

So why am in such a snit about crappy As Am feminist fiction? The following are quotes by Sau-ling Wong re: Amy Tan, a scholar who says it better than I ever could:

"It enables Orientalism to emerge in a form palatable to middle-class American readers of the 1980s"

"Allows the mainstream American feminism to construct themselves in a flattering, because depoliticized, manner—an outcome unlikely to be delivered by mother-daughter stories penned by writers from Euro-American traditions"

“The Americanized daughter, who needs to be enlightened on things Chinese, serves as a convenient, unobtrusive stand-in for the mainstream reading public"

“The harrowing accounts of arranged marriages, sadistic mothers-in-law, sexual humiliation, floods and famines, bombings and dead babies, government corruption, technolgocial backwardness, and other assorted bane for the Third World woman are meant to bolster, not undermine, the incontrovertible desirability attuned to the Western-ized woman’s station."

Basically, then, Asia is a realm where we "come to terms" with our identity and quite frankly, ask for redemption and forgiveness from our poor suffering mothers for wearing a non-Asian man, who by the way, represents all the evilness and sexism of the Old Country. Aren't we glad we don't live in a primitive, exotic backwards China? The problem with writers like Amy Tan is that she only perpetuates stereotypes about Americans of Asian descent in the U.S., giving the mainstream what they WANT to hear about China and about ethnicity and intergenerational conflict as an inevitable "problem" that has to be "solved" before the last page. Please, let us at least acknowledge the ideological realities of the marketplace that would rather have these sappy, cliche narratives of assimilating into the mainstream via their embarrasin', immigrant mother.
Candolph Lee
Candolph Lee    Friday, April 26, 2002 at 10:07:48 (PDT)
tulux999

it's interesting that AF tend to emphasize the "love" aspect of interracial relationships. AM tend to emphasize the "white fetish" aspect instead. i hear what you're saying, and you can certainly view it that way, but we're approaching a deadlock. as an AM, i feel angry that you are dismissing some very widespread and legitimate complaints by AMales. Plus, you are ignoring the commerical realities of the marketplace that influence how AM are perceived in the mainstream. Of course, other ethnicities have their "bad men," that's not the point. when Asian Americans are so few and far between in the literary marketplace, do we really want the few chances to put our images out there to be like Amy Tan's??? Whether she likes it or not, Tan has a responsibility to portray As Ams in a realistic, non-one-sided way, especially since she "banks" on the whole Orientalist, Asian thing for her popularity. And finally, the mother-daughter theme is still cliche, whether it's one mother-daughter or four (your argument is weak there). Your insistence in not seeing this as an issue is part of the problem. This is an issue. This is our issue. And it's not going to go away despite its "universal appeal" and that many people liked it. You make some good points, like not being concerned about what white AF's think etc, but I think you're not really listening. It's easy to say get over your personal hang-ups, but I've found AF's to be hypocritical if AM's were to portray AF's in a negative light, and if they extoll Asain MALE-White female relationships in their book, like Chang-rae Lee. I think a lot of AF would be upset if the only As Am movies and books out there showed AM's with white girlfriends and wives and protrayed AF's as materialistic princesses not worth dating/marrying. Oh, but I guess we shoudl just focus on the LOVE of the relationship, right?
curryhouse    Friday, April 26, 2002 at 10:04:32 (PDT)
AM,

I'm an equal opportunity ridiculer. So there no argument there.

But on a more devious note Amy Tan's JLC is one of the best "in" for AM to use on whitewashed AF.

A good majority of AF that grow up in White neighborhoods identify with at least one of the characters in the book.

I don't know how many times I pulled this line on dates and conversations with whitewashed AF.

"Wow, you like JCL also. I thought the condom scene was one of the funniest. I could never do that in front of my mom . So, what character did you like in the movie?"

Once the girl spits out an answer, you basically have the beginnings of a profile. You have a better idea of what her anxieties are, and help re-affirm the fact that you would do nothing like any of the AM in JCL, since you are aware of the storyline. Try to give her the warm fuzzy feeling people get on cold winter morning in front of the fire place while sipping on hot coco reading a good book.

As the AM score with the whitewashed AF. You will just change her opinion of AM from within, literally.

So JCL is really one of AM best weapon in scoring with whitewash AF.
AC Dropout    Friday, April 26, 2002 at 09:45:08 (PDT)
yes,

The profile of the these author's mate are consistent, because it stem from their understanding of white American culture. It is this understanding of white culture that has propelled their literary work to popularity among white Americans. If the author presented asian issues from an asian point of view, or more precisely pro-asian point of view. The work would not recieve such acceptance among the general populace.
AC Dropout    Friday, April 26, 2002 at 09:23:35 (PDT)

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