I Hotel (novel)

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I Hotel
"I Hotel" Karen Tei Yamashita Book Cover.png
Author Karen Tei Yamashita
GenreLiterary fiction, historical fiction
Publisher Coffee House Press
Publication date
June 1, 2010
Pages640
ISBN 978-1566892391
Preceded byCircle K Cycles 
Followed byAnime Wong: Fictions of Performance 

I Hotel is a 2010 novel by Japanese American writer Karen Tei Yamashita, published by Coffee House Press. A novel about Asian American movements in the seventies, it is named after the International Hotel, a historic residential hotel in San Francisco that housed predominantly Filipino Americans in the 20th century, which is the setting for several of the book's sections. [1] The book won several awards, including an American Book Award. [2] It was reissued by Coffee House Press for its tenth anniversary in 2019, featuring an introduction by Jessica Hagedorn. [3]

Contents

Content and structure

The novel is divided into 10 linked novellas, each taking place in single consecutive years. The first novella takes place in 1968, the year of the Third World Liberation Front strikes. The tenth and last novella takes place in 1977, the year that the International Hotel was demolished. Centered around the Asian American movement in the sixties and seventies, the novel makes mention of historical events such as the Tet Offensive, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and Henry Kissinger's visit to China in 1971, as well as historical groups like the Black Panther Party and the United Farm Workers.

In the novel's afterword, Yamashita wrote that the novel initially began with conversations with over 150 people involved in or closely related to the Asian American movement, as well as countless hours spent in archives. However, she realized that she was getting caught up in historical research, prompting her to attempt to write it. [1] Altogether, Yamashita spent nearly a decade conceptualizing and writing the novel. Eight years in, she felt a need to physically construct the International Hotel for herself, but plans to learn AutoCAD from her architect husband never materialized. Instead, Yamashita constructed ten pieces of cardboard into cubes, after which she dedicated each one to a year between 1968 and 1977, using each cube's face to record information such as historical events, locations, themes, characters, and other setting details. Through that structure, the novel began to finally emerge. The diagram of her unfolded cubes and their inscribed faces is shown in the first few pages of the book. [4]

Writing about the novel for its tenth anniversary in The Paris Review, Hagedorn called the novel "polyphonic", with similarities to predecessors such as Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar or Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino. [3] SFGate , in a review of the novel, speculated on the real-life bases for several of the characters, such as Mo Akagi representing Richard Aoki, Edmund Yat Min Lee representing Ling-Chi Wang, and Arthur Hama representing Takeo "Edward" Terada.

Critical reception

Kirkus Reviews said "With delightful plays of voice and structure, this is literary fiction at an adventurous, experimental high point." [5] Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, stating that "Though it isn't for everyone, this powerful, deeply felt, and impeccably researched fiction is irresistibly evocative and overwhelming in every sense." [6]

The Nation wrote that "I Hotel’s power is derived precisely from Yamashita’s deliberate embrace of everything all at once, the collapse of the fictional with the historical, her insistence on making visible the threads that tie these stories of American dispossession together." [4] Sadie Stein, in The New York Times, called it "ambitious, sweeping, virtuosic, kaleidoscopic", "certainly the Great San Francisco Novel." [7]

Meanwhile, a critic in The Chicago Tribune called it "the single most ambitious and experimental book I have read in a long, longtime" but lamented that it was "a glorious failure of a book" by fault of its slowness and structure. [8]

Awards

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References

  1. 1 2 Yamashita, Karen Tei (June 1, 2010). I Hotel. Coffee House Press. ISBN   978-1566892391.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  2. ↑ "Winners of the 2011 American Book Awards". Before Columbus Foundation. Archived from the original on January 31, 2012. Retrieved October 28, 2024.
  3. 1 2 Hagedorn, Jessica (October 18, 2019). "A Polyphonic Novel of Midcentury San Francisco". The Paris Review .
  4. 1 2 Lozada, Lucas Iberico (2019-12-04). "'I Hotel' Is the Unheralded Document of a Decade of Asian American Activism". ISSN   0027-8378 . Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  5. ↑ I HOTEL | Kirkus Reviews.
  6. ↑ "I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita". www.publishersweekly.com. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  7. ↑ Stein, Sadie (March 23, 2024). "2 Novels Bestowed by Fate". The New York Times .
  8. ↑ Tribune, Chicago (2010-10-18). ""I Hotel" by Karen Tei Yamashita". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  9. ↑ "Before Columbus Foundation". 2012-01-31. Archived from the original on 2012-01-31. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  10. ↑ "2010-2011 Awards Winners – APALA" . Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  11. ↑ "Association for Asian American Studies Book Award". web.mnstate.edu. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  12. ↑ "Winners of 80th Annual California Book Awards Competition Announced". www.commonwealthclub.org. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  13. ↑ "I Hotel". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
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