ABSTRACT
Asian Americans publish a lot of autobiographies. No matter how one defines “Asian American” and no matter how one defines “autobiography,” there are plenty out there. In Asian American Literature: An Annotated Bibliography, there are at least 50 books that are unambiguously autobiographies. This number does not include nonfiction works containing biographies or oral histories of Asian Americans, non—book length or unpublished autobiographical works, or the numerous autobiographical novels by Asian American authors. In proportion to the total number of Asian American literary works, 50 is a sizable number, enough for us to talk about an Asian American autobiographical tradition.
