Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context by Elaine H. Kim (review)

256Rocky Mountain Review The excellence of this useful study that provides the necessary foundation for the understanding and interpretation of these important dramas should make further printings necessary. For that edition a few slight corrections can be suggested. The misreading of the early title of Einsame Menschen as Martin und Martha (24), that has perpetuated itself since Behl/Voigt gave it in their 1957 Chronik (33), has recently been corrected by Machatzke in his edition of Hauptmann's Notiz-Kalender 1889-1891 (Propyläen Verlag, 1982, 280 and footnote, 443) to read Maria und Martha. Hoefert's Gerhart Hauptmann was first published in 1974 and not 1964 (113). The erroneous date is also used in the text (38), but given correctly in the notes (106, n. 32). An enlarged second edition of this study, published 1982, is listed in the bibliography, but citations refer to the first edition. As the pagination of the two editions differs, references to both should perhaps be given. A comma should follow the word Edelmann (44, 6 lines from bottom) to separate the clauses. In note 93 (108) the study cited is in the same series of analyses but lacks the word deutschen. WALTERA. REICHART University of Michigan ELAINE H. KIM. Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982. 363 p. Of the many striking vignettes offered throughout the book, one ofthe more poignant and symbolic is that related by Monica Sone as a response to rumors of FBI investigations following the attack on Pearl Harbor: I gathered together my well-worn Japanese language schoolbooks which I had been saving over a period often years with the thought that they might come in handy when I wanted to teach Japanese to my own children. I threw them into the fire and watched them flame and shrivel into black ashes. . . .It was past midnight when we finally climbed upstairs to bed. Wearily we closed our eyes, filled with an indescribable sense ofguilt for having destroyed the things we loved. (78) With a focus on dramatic excerpts such as the one above, Elaine Kim portrays a broad variety of Asian American experiences by surveying creative writings by Americans of Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, and Korean descent. Her review in chapter 1 of Asian stereotypes (both villainous and benign) presents convincing evidence of the incompleteness of portrayals which have not been derived directly through Asian American eyes. "AngloAmerican literature," Kim writes, "does not tell us about Asians. It tells us about Anglos' opinions ofthemselves, in relation to their opinions of Asians. As such it is useful primarily in that it illustrates how racism impacts on culture" (20). To readers for whom Asian Americans have always seemed to be a "model minority" the stridency of the racial theme as well as the details of its historical background may come as a surprise. One outcome of the racial Book Reviews257 context was the limitation imposed on Asian family life in America by antimiscegenation laws, legal obstacles to naturalization, and restrictions on the immigration of Asian women. The ratio of men to women in Chinese American communities, for example, was reported to have been 19:1 in 1860, 27:1 in 1880, 14:1 in 1910, 7:1 in 1920, and 3:1 in 1940(97). A less quantifiable but equally restrictive dilemma of more recentyears has been the inability of Asian Americans to identify with either whites, Afro-Americans, Hispanics, or even "fellow" Asians whose languages and customs have ceased to be a part of Asian American daily life. When this dilemma is conveyed with the brutal honesty of self-reflection at its most genuine, it seems to this reviewer that Asian American experience transcends itself and leads to sentiments of a more universal nature. Having penetrated whatever artificial sense of identity the surrounding cultures might impose on her, Patricia Mizuhara, for example, establishes the basis for herown personal and literary growth in the excerpt from an untitled poem quoted by Kim: i realized i was only play-acting in a dichotomous world where one had to be either black or white neither of which category i could fit into afraid to...