Floyd Cheung

H. T. Tsiang

Originally self-published in 1935, H.T. Tsiang's hallucinatory, quasi-experimental novel Hanging on Union Square explores leftist politics in Depression-era New York--an era of union busting and food lines--in an ambitious style that brilliantly blends Gertrude Stein's playful language with the political satire of Carl Sandberg's prose fables. It follows the peripatetic musings of a young man throughout a single day that takes him from a worker's cafeteria to a world of dinner clubs and sexual exploitation in the highest echelons of society, and back again to the streets of Greenwich Village, where starving families rub shoulders with the recently evicted. Each chapter comprises a single hour of the day. Tsiang's style combines satirical allegory with snatches of poetry, newspaper quotations, non-sequiturs and slogans, as well as elements of classical and contemporary Chinese literature. Adventurous and unclassifiable in its combination of avant-garde and proletarian concerns, Hanging on Union Square is a major rediscovery of a uniquely American voice.

An American Epic

The Hanging on Union Square

And China Has Hands

Frank Abe

Greg Robinson

No-No Boy, John Okada's only published novel, centers on a Japanese American who refuses to fight for the country that incarcerated him and his people in World War II and, upon release from federal prison after the war, is cast out by his divided community. In 1957, the novel faced a similar rejection until it was rediscovered and reissued in 1976 to become a celebrated classic of American literature. As a result of Okada's untimely death at age forty-seven, the author's life and other works have remained obscure. This compelling collection offers the first full-length examination of Okada's development as an artist, placing recently discovered writing by Okada alongside essays that reassess his lasting legacy. Meticulously researched biographical details, insight from friends and relatives, and a trove of intimate photographs illuminate Okada's early life in Seattle, military service, and careers as a public librarian and a technical writer in the aerospace industry. This volume is an essential companion to No-No Boy.

The Life and Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy

John Okada

No-No Boy, John Okada�s only published novel, centers on a Japanese American who refuses to fight for the country that incarcerated him and his people in World War II and, upon release from federal prison after the war, is cast out by his divided community. In 1957, the novel faced a similar rejection until it was rediscovered and reissued in 1976 to become a celebrated classic of American literature. As a result of Okada�s untimely death at age forty-seven, the author�s life and other works have remained obscure. This compelling collection offers the first full-length examination of Okada�s development as an artist, placing recently discovered writing by Okada alongside essays that reassess his lasting legacy. Meticulously researched biographical details, insight from friends and relatives, and a trove of intimate photographs illuminate Okada�s early life in Seattle, military service, and careers as a public librarian and a technical writer in the aerospace industry. This volume is an essential companion to No-No Boy.

Keith Lawrence

Rediscovering the writings of early Asian America.

Authority And Identity In Early Asian Amer Lit

Recovered Legacies

Lavina Dhingra

This collection of nine essays by scholars in the fields of postcolonial, Asian American, and other literary studies explains why categorizing the best-selling, award-winning work of Jhumpa Lahiri as either universally great and/or ethnically specific matters, to whom, and how paying attention to these questions can deepen students’, general readers’, and academic scholars’ appreciation for the politics surrounding Lahiri’s works and understanding of the literary texts themselves.

Floyd Cheung

About

Books

Join the club