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A review by mpho3
I Hotel by Sina Grace, Leland Wong, Karen Tei Yamashita
4.0
Took me forever to read this book, though doing so was very rewarding. Yamashita's ten inter-connected novellas explore a variety of experimental narrative structures as well as diving deep into the experiences of Asian Americans during the Civil Rights era, most typically associated with Negros-cum-Blacks-cum-African-Americans. Problems inherent to hyphenated Americans affect those who populated the real life I Hotel and Yamashita's same name novel.
As Marcela Valdes so nicely summarized in the Washington Post:
"The term 'Asian American' blurs together wildly different linguistic and religious cultures. As one [I Hotel] narrator says, 'Maybe we all look alike, and maybe the laws lump us all together so we got to stick together, even though we're really different and can't understand each other and our folks back in the old countries hated each other's guts.' I Hotel resists this lumping. Its wild narrative architecture springs from a need to delineate separate Chinese, Japanese and Filipino histories, as well as separate aesthetic, political and intellectual positions. It's as if Yamashita wanted to capture the diversity of an entire cultural ecosystem, displaying each distinct species -- idealistic gay Chinese poet, wisecracking Filipino Marxist, Japanese Black Panther strategist -- in all its particular glory, and its particular pain."
As Marcela Valdes so nicely summarized in the Washington Post:
"The term 'Asian American' blurs together wildly different linguistic and religious cultures. As one [I Hotel] narrator says, 'Maybe we all look alike, and maybe the laws lump us all together so we got to stick together, even though we're really different and can't understand each other and our folks back in the old countries hated each other's guts.' I Hotel resists this lumping. Its wild narrative architecture springs from a need to delineate separate Chinese, Japanese and Filipino histories, as well as separate aesthetic, political and intellectual positions. It's as if Yamashita wanted to capture the diversity of an entire cultural ecosystem, displaying each distinct species -- idealistic gay Chinese poet, wisecracking Filipino Marxist, Japanese Black Panther strategist -- in all its particular glory, and its particular pain."