Charlie Chan is a fictional Honolulu police detective created by author Earl Derr Biggers for a series of mystery novels. Biggers loosely based Chan on Hawaiian detective Chang Apana. The benevolent and heroic Chan was conceived as an alternative to Yellow Peril stereotypes and villains like Fu Manchu. Many stories feature Chan traveling the world beyond Hawaii as he investigates mysteries and solves crimes.
John Okada was a Japanese American novelist known for his critically acclaimed novel No-No Boy.
Toshio Mori was an American author, best known for being one of the earliest Japanese–American writers to publish a book of fiction. He participated in drawing the UFO Robo Grendizer, the Japanese series TV in the years 1975–1977.
Qiu Miaojin, also romanized as Chiu Miao-chin, was a Taiwanese novelist. She is best known for her 1994 novel Notes of a Crocodile. Qiu's works are "frequently cited as classics", and her unapologetically lesbian sensibility has had a profound and lasting influence on LGBT literature in Taiwan.
Jeffery Paul Chan was an American author and scholar. He was a professor of Asian American studies and English at San Francisco State University for 38 years until his retirement in 2005.
Chinaman is a term referring to a Chinese man or person, a Mainland Chinese national or, in some cases, a person native to geographical East Asia or of perceived East Asian race. While the term has no negative connotations in older dictionaries and the usage of such compound terms as Englishman, Scotsman, Frenchman, Dutchman, Irishman, and Welshman are sometimes cited as unobjectionable parallels, the term is noted as having pejorative overtones by modern dictionaries. Its derogatory connotations evolved from its use in pejorative contexts regarding Chinese people and other Asians as well as its grammatical incorrectness which resembles stereotypical characterizations of Chinese accents in English-speaking associated with discrimination. The usage of the term Chinaman is strongly discouraged by Asian American organizations.
American Knees is a novel written by Shawn Wong. The novel was first published in 1995 by Simon & Schuster, and later republished by the University of Washington Press in 2005. Conceived as a cultural response to Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club, Wong's book depicts the love life of an East Asian American man with three women.
Shawn K. Wong is a Chinese American author and scholar. He has served as the Professor of English, Director of the University Honors Program (2003–06), Chair of the Department of English (1997–2002), and Director of the Creative Writing Program (1995–97) at the University of Washington, where he has been on the faculty since 1984 and teaches courses covering critical theory, Asian American studies, which he is considered a pioneer in, and fiction writing. Wong received his undergraduate degree in English at the University of California Berkeley (1971) and a master's degree in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University (1974).
Nellie Wong is an American poet and activist for feminist and socialist causes. Wong is also an active member of the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women.
The American Place Theatre was founded in 1963 by Wynn Handman, Sidney Lanier, and Michael Tolan at St. Clement's Church, 423 West 46th Street in Hell's Kitchen, New York City, and was incorporated as a not-for-profit theatre in that year. Tennessee Williams and Myrna Loy were two of the original board members.
Lawson Fusao Inada is a Japanese American poet. He was the fifth poet laureate of the state of Oregon.
The Year of the Dragon is a play written by Chinese American playwright Frank Chin. It is one of the first plays by an Asian American playwright to be produced on a mainstream New York stage. It premiered in 1974 at the American Place Theatre, and starred Randall Duk Kim, who had played the lead in Chin's earlier play, The Chickencoop Chinaman. The rest of the cast included Pat Suzuki, Tina Chen, Conrad Yama, Lilah Kan, Doug Higgins, and Keenan Shimizu.
Chinese American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of Chinese descent. The genre began in the 19th century and flowered in the 20th with such authors as Sui Sin Far, Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Amy Tan.
Asian American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of Asian descent.
Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers is a 1974 anthology by Frank Chin, Jeffery Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong, members of the Combined Asian American Resources Project (C.A.R.P.). It helped establish East Asian American literature as a field by recovering and collecting representative selections from Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino Americans from the past fifty years—many of whom had been mostly forgotten. This anthology included selections from Carlos Bulosan, Diana Chang, Louis Chu, Momoko Iko, Wallace Lin, Toshio Mori, John Okada, Oscar Peñaranda, Sam Tagatac, Hisaye Yamamoto, Wakako Yamauchi, many of whom are now staples in East Asian American literature courses. Because of this anthology and the work of C.A.R.P., many of these authors have been republished. At that time, however, they received little attention from publishers and critics because they did not subscribe to popular stereotypes but depicted what Elaine H. Kim calls the "unstereotyped aspects of Asian American experience". The "aiiieeeee!" of the title comes from a stereotypical expression used by East Asian characters in old movies, radio and television shows, comic books, etc. These same stereotypes affected the anthology itself: when the editors tried to find a publisher, they had to turn to a historically African-American press because, as Chin states:
The blacks were the first to take us seriously and sustained the spirit of many Asian American writers.... [I]t wasn't surprising to us that Howard University Press understood us and set out to publish our book with their first list. They liked our English we spoke [sic] and didn't accuse us of unwholesome literary devices.
The Chinaman Pacific and Frisco R.R. Co. is a 1988 short-story collection by Frank Chin that collects many of the short stories he had published in the 1970s. It won the American Book Award. The collection deals with Chinese-American history by recalling the work of early Chinese immigrants in such jobs as "coolie, railworker and launderer".
The Chickencoop Chinaman is a 1972 play by Frank Chin. It was the first play written by an Asian American to have a major New York production.
The Iron Moonhunter is a short children's picture book published in 1977, written and illustrated by the activist Kathleen Chang. The book purportedly retells a Chinese-American myth set in the Sierra Nevada mountains during the construction of the First transcontinental railroad, starting in the fall of 1866.
Momoko Iko (1940–2020) was a Japanese-American playwright, best known for her 1972 play Gold Watch. She was also a founding member of the Asian Liberation Organization and the Pacific Asian American Women Writers West.
