Short stories focusing on the lives of second-generation Chinese-American women in Orange County and Los Angeles as they deal with implicit and explicit racism and with objectification by the men in their lives.
Disowned by her family for her revolutionary activities in the Philippines of the 1990s, Hero de Vera travels to Milpitas, California, where she is taken in by her aunt and uncle and given the job of caring for their seven-year-old daughter, Roni. Haunted by her past and disturbed by her life as an American immigrant, Hero finds some solace in her relationship with Roni–and through a passionate affair with makeup artist Rosalyn.
As a KKK-endorsed candidate runs for U.S. president, Korean-American Matt Kim, a divorced, alcoholic would-be novelist, starts to feel increasingly invisible to those around him. His girlfriend tells him that her previous boyfriend, Matt Chung, disappeared–but the photo she shows him looks just like him.
Thelonius “Monk” Ellison is a serious Black novelist whose books barely sell. Depressed by family problems and the rejection of his latest manuscript, he overcomes his tendency to “write white” and produces a parody of ghetto fiction using a pseudonym. To his horror, no one recognizes it as a parody, and it becomes a huge bestseller, forcing Monk into further deceptions.
An illustrated companion book to the author’s documentary film about Asian-Americans in Hollywood films, starting with the silent era and moving through the Golden Age to the actors, writers, and directors of today.
After a mass poisoning at a family birthday party, Gwendolyn lies in a coma at the hospital, looking back at what brought her very wealthy Chinese-Indonesian family to this point. Western stereotypes of Asians are also explored as Gwendolyn and her sister spend time in Berkeley, California, and in Paris.
Three immigrants are struggling to survive in America amidst trauma, abuse, racism, homophobia, addiction, and yet the dark core alternates with light and humorous moments. Absolutely stunning prose from a wildly talented (and absurdly young) poet.
Amy Lee’s Chinese immigrant family in Queens was too poor to keep her older sister, Sylvie, who was sent to relatives in the Netherlands for a time. Now, grown-up Sylvie has returned to the Netherlands for a visit—and disappeared. As Amy begins the search for her sister, she uncovers family secrets, while flashbacks show Sylvie’s experiences a month earlier during her reunion with the family that raised her.
A novel filled with dark magic, luminous stars, brutal studio heads, and a seemingly endless stream of those willing to do almost anything to be a part of making movies. Behind the walls of the Wolfe Studios are those willing to be sacrificed to keep the studio running, and be able to make another film. They will take any part offered as a chance to break through and get noticed. A harrowing, fantastical journey through an alternate pre-code Hollywood, where magic is rampant, contracts with the studios are Faustian, and movie stars literally inhabit the night sky if they are lucky enough to rise. It is also a journey of self-discovery, love found, lost, and found again. And, it is a reminder there is a bit of monster in all of us, which might make our dreams come true.
Eight stories of Korean-American families and the indignities, compromises, and sacrifices they endure as part of the Asian minority in their adopted homeland.
Tommy Orange explores urban Native American identity through a spectrum of character perspectives. Twelve Native American characters who struggle with their own hardships, combined with the memory of a tragic history as a people, hope to find meaning or solace at the Big Oakland Powwow in California.
An academic study of various types of "whitewashing" in American film, ranging from the casting of White actors in Asian roles to the use of White central characters in movies set in Asia.