ABSTRACT
I n the preface to their groundbreaking collection Aiiieeeee! AnAnthology of Asian American Writers (1974), Frank Chin, Jeffery Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Hsu Wong note that "Asian Americans are not one people but several-Chinese Americans, japanese Americans, and Filipino Americans." The "Asian-American sensibility" that the volume seeks to represent depends on being"American born and raised"; it features writers who, the editors claim, "got their China and japan from the radio, off the silver screen, from television, out of comic books, from the pushers of white American culture that pictured the yellow man as something that when wounded, sad, or angry, or swearing, or wondering whined, shouted, or screamed 'aiiieeeee!'" Taking aim at the stereotype of Asian-Americans as the model minority, the editors lament that "seven generations of suppression under legislative racism and euphemized white racist love have left today's Asian Americans in a state of self-contempt, self-rejection, and disintegration." As of 1974, they maintain, fewer than "ten works of fiction and poetry have been published by American-born Chinese, japanese, and Filipino writers," not because "in six generations of Asian Americans there was no impulse to literary or artistic self-expression" but because mainstream American publishers were only interested in publishing works written by AsianAmericans that were "actively inoffensive to white sensibilities."
