海角大神

During the first week that the film adaptation of Amy Tan鈥檚 鈥淭he Joy Luck Club鈥� hit screens across the United States in 1993, I sat in a Manhattan office being interviewed by the head of a major arts organization. 鈥淚鈥檓 taking my son this weekend to see 鈥楯oy Luck Club,鈥欌�� he chattily informed me. 鈥淚 want him to learn about your Chinese culture.鈥�

Yes, he was white.

No, I鈥檓 not Chinese. My roots are Korean, and my passport makes me American.

As for 鈥淭he Joy Luck Club鈥� being an arbiter of Chinese culture, that, too, was another erroneous assumption. The book鈥檚 author is a California-born American of Chinese descent who made her first trip to China in 1987, well after she began writing what would become a bestseller in 1989 America. To suggest that a Hollywood film based on an American novel could be a teaching tool about China seemed disappointingly myopic, even then.

Americans of Asian descent have been, well, 聽Americans since the late 16th century. Notable historians have argued Columbus wasn鈥檛 the first to reach American shores in 1492, but that聽Chinese explorers arrived in the early 15th century聽and created聽a surviving map that shows America on the route. Those who stayed 鈥� the first Asian immigrants 鈥� were Filipino sailors who landed in California in the 1580s. The first large-scale Asian influx happened in the mid-1800s, when聽Chinese migrants were drawn to the West Coast seeking Gold Rush profits and employment building the transcontinental railroad. The聽1882 Chinese Exclusion Act聽鈥� the first institutionalized race-based聽immigration law聽鈥� severely curtailed immigration from Asian countries until the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act聽finally lifted anti-Asian quotas.

鈥淭he Joy Luck Club鈥� 鈥� by all accounts a modern American classic 鈥� celebrates its 30th print anniversary this year with a new preface added by Ms. Tan. Making publishing history, Joy Luck鈥檚 publishing parent, Penguin Group, simultaneously expands its Penguin Classics with the inclusion of four essential Asian American titles: The Hanging on Union Square: An American Epic (1935) by Chinese American H.T. Tsiang, a surreal overnight journey in which protagonist Mr. Nut confronts politics and capitalism; East Goes West: The Making of an Oriental Yankee (1937) by Korean American Younghill Kang, an immigrant epic that criss-crosses a less-than-welcoming American landscape; No-No Boy (1957) by Japanese American John Okada, about the price of refusing to submit to the U.S. government鈥檚 unsubstantiated, unjust imprisonment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II; and America Is in the Heart (1946) by Filipino American Carlos Bulosan, a vivid semi-autobiographical novel about the immigrant migrant worker experience.

In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Penguin Classics鈥� executive editor John Siciliano said that he 鈥渕ade it his mandate to diversify the Penguin Classics internationally鈥� when he joined the publisher in 2006. Thirteen years in the making, the quartet hit shelves in late May (to coincide with Asian Pacific American Heritage Month), each strikingly repackaged with illuminating introductions and editors鈥� notes by prominent Asian American scholars, editors, and fellow writers 鈥� with matching specific Asian backgrounds.

鈥淔or the contributors, these books have always been classics,鈥� the press announcement acknowledged. 鈥淭he authors of these classics have all endured comparisons to better-known white authors in order to describe their own genius; Younghill Kang has been compared to Whitman and Nabokov, Carlos Bulosan to Steinbeck. Yet each author鈥檚 work is a uniquely powerful touchstone for the immigrant experience in America.鈥�

Reclamation and recognition are clearly the intention of the village gathered to enhance and celebrate the classic foursome. Chinese American New Yorker writer and Vassar professor Hua Hsu recalls his discovery of a first edition of 鈥淭he Hanging on Union Square鈥�: 鈥淎nyone who self-publishes an 鈥楢merican epic鈥� is worth investigating,鈥� he wrote. Hsu turned that initial fascination with Tsiang into his book, 鈥淎 Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific.鈥�

Bestselling Korean American author and Dartmouth associate professor Alexander Chee introduces 鈥淓ast Goes West鈥�: 鈥淏oth Kang鈥檚 work and his existence changed my sense of belonging to this country, and I can see I inhabit a space he made for me.鈥�

Sunyoung Lee, publisher and editor of Kaya Press, which reprinted 鈥淓ast Goes West鈥� in 1997 after it had been out of print for decades, explains in the afterword of the Penguin edition that Kang saw himself as 鈥渢he Korean who could become an American through force of will, the Asian immigrant who could sustain a career as a successful writer.鈥�

Japanese American and National Book Award finalist Karen Tei Yamshita prefaces 鈥淣o-No Boy鈥� with a reminder that in these times of detention centers, border violence, and incarcerations, 鈥淥kada鈥檚 novel challenges us once again with the question of character, asking us, as individuals and as a society, what are we made of.鈥�

And Filipina American author Elaine Castillo, whose own lauded 鈥淎merica Is Not the Heart鈥� references her literary predecessor, 鈥淎merica Is in the Heart,鈥� insisting, 鈥淭o not read it is, to put it simply, to not know America.鈥�

Despite聽a history older than the nation, Asian Americans are continuously perceived as foreign, as 鈥渙ther.鈥� Literature, as arbiter and mirror of experience, records our stories for perpetuity. Thirty-year-old bestseller 鈥淭he Joy Luck Club鈥� perennially provides irrefutable proof Asian American stories warrant shelf space. That Penguin Classics 鈥� their venerable list considered a significant barometer of what comprises the Anglophone literary canon 鈥� has added this Asian American quartet is, undoubtedly, long-awaited, long-deserved recognition.

Terry Hong writes BookDragon, a book blog for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.