Anthologies

Charlie Chan is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction edited by Jessica Hagedorn

Here are stories by such renowned writers as Gish Jen, Hisaye Yamamoto, Peter Bacho, Maxine Hong Kingston, Cynthia Kadohata, Bharati Mukherjee, Amy Tan and many others. These are stories about Asian Americans, but finally they are stories about life. $14.95 PB ($12.70 AARW members)

Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America edited by Sunaina Maira and Rajini Srikanth

This American Book Award Winner (1997) is a splendid collection of fiction, poetry, essays and photographs. An anthology that critically explores familiar tensions and the concept of “home” from South Asian American/Canadian writers who depict a diversity of lives from taxi drivers to computer company owners, rock stars to gay couples. $19.95 PB ($16.95 AARW members)

Living in America : Fiction & Poetry by South Asian American Writers edited by Roshini Rustomji-Kerns

Presents works by 37 South Asian authors whose writing helps them work through issues of assimilation and cultural preservation. In these poems and stories the universality of the immigrant experience surfaces repeatedly, regardless of the extent to which the South Asian experience is referred to. $17.95 PB ($15.25 AARW members)

Once Upon A Dream: The Vietnamese American Experience edited by De Tran, Andrew Lam & Hai Dai Nguyen

Twenty years after the fall of Saigon , this collection of words and images helps the American reader understand Vietnamese endurance and resilience in the face of impossible circumstances. From poems written in a re-education gulag to musings from a Harvard dorm room, these are accounts of lives rebuilt out of the ashes of war. These are also touching and remarkable stories of adjustment to the new land and of becoming American. $14.95 PB ($12.70 AARW members)

Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry edited by Walter K. Lew

This anthology represents an overwhelming aesthetic, intellectual and political achievement. In over 500 pages of poetry, among 73 poets, there's not a weak link; not a dispensable poem or a less-than-accomplished or unexciting poet. All modes of poetry, from Buddhist odes to video poetry, appear here, but in edifying unpredictable ways that render them, in the best sense, uncategorizable; well-known writers appear along with new poets. A new generation of Vietnamese American and Korean American poets are presented here for the first time. $22.95 PB ($19.50 AARW members)

The Other Side of Heaven: Post-War Fiction by Vietnamese & American Writers edited by Wayne Karlin, Le Minh Khue and Truong Vu

This anthology is truly a watershed book because it is the first time all three sides in the conflict–North, South and American–have been given voice in a single collection. These 30-plus stories are “a mutual recognition of pain and loss ... the need for reconciliation ... and the need for literature to tell uncompromisingly painful truths.” $17.95 PB ($15.25 AARW members)

The State of Asian America : Activism and Resistance in the 1990s edited by Karin Aguilar-San Juan This groundbreaking collection of essays gives voice to contemporary Asian American activism, offering thoughtful, radical analyses on a range of pressing issues including: the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, the protest against the Broadway musical Miss Saigon, anti-Asian and domestic violence, feminism, neo-conservatism, art and politics, the social construction of race, and the politics of Asian American Studies. $16 PB ($13.60 AARW members)

Unbroken Thread: An Anthology of Plays by Asian American Women edited by Roberta Uno

This volume gathers together six outstanding works by Asian American women playwrights –Genny Lim, Wakako Yamauchi, Momoko Iko, Velina Hasu Houston, Jeannie Barroga, and Elizabeth Wong. Each play addresses the experiences of Asian Americans in this country, repudiating the cultural and sexual stereotypes that have long permeated American society. The collection conveys a vivid sense of the range and texture of Asian American history as seen through women's eyes. $18.95 PB ($16.10 AARW members)