Making More Waves : New Writing by Asian American Women
- Book Review,
by Elaine Kim
Amazon.com
Hailing by lineage or immigration from Asian posts such as Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Korea, Vietnam, and India, the contributors to Making More Waves are as well known as Lisa See (On Gold Mountain) and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (The Mistress of Spices ), and as new to print as 16-year-old poet Juno Parrenas. The story "Summer of My Korean Soldier" and the essay "Hambun-Hambun" neatly mirror one another, and illustrate an experience shared by all of these writers: the sense of being an outsider. In polished or jagged prose, the authors recount their lives and dig into feminist issues such as violence against women in war and peacetime, sexuality, and the nexus of race, class, and gender. They deftly explore how being Asian in America shapes such concerns and casts up others.
From Library Journal
In this new anthology of writing by Asian American women, Kim, Lilia V. Villanueva, and Asian Women United of California expand considerably on Making Waves (Cornell Univ., 1993) to produce a wonderful collection of fresh new stories, poems, memoirs, and essays. Included are thought-provoking poems about discarded, unwanted babies and the ravages of war by established poets such as Chitra Divakarum (Black Candle, Calyx, 1991) and Kimiko Hahn (Unbearable Heart, Kaya Prod., 1995). Susan Ito, a new writer, movingly expresses the heart of being a "Hambun-Hambun" literally half-and-half: a white and Japanese child/woman in America. A scholarly excerpt from Sumi Cho's Critical Race Feminism (New York Univ., 1997) might be too erudite for the lay reader, but other eloquent reflections such as Nora Okja Cobb Keller's "The Brilliance of Diamonds"?the story of how she got her name?and Hershini Bhana's gripping poem about rape are further examples of the diversity in this book. Recommended for large public and academic libraries.?Janis Williams, Shaker Heights P.L., OhioCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
When Asian Women United of California gathered fiction and nonfiction by Asian American women of many ethnicities in Making Waves (1989), the group had no idea its collection would be adopted by educators, generating enough royalties to fund video documentaries and other projects as well as spadework for this new collection. From nearly a thousand submissions received in response to requests through Asian American Studies programs and community groups and media, an editorial advisory board selected just under four dozen pieces--prose and poetry, fiction and nonfiction, essays, memoirs, and reportage--filled, as the editors' preface suggests, "with surprises that open spaces for speaking about the past in new ways, as well as for dreaming of alternative practices in the present and future." A collection as diverse as the communities whose voices it shares and celebrates. Mary Carroll
Book Description
Asian-American women writers of all ages explore a complex range of identities through poetry, fiction, essays, and memoirs, most of which have never been published. The contributors take on littleexplored topics and expand the limits of ethnic-based identity, resisting stereotypes and breaking silences. Candid and memorable, their essays, stories, and poetry change popular assumptions and engage readers.
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