Rise of Asian Canadian Literature
Behind the Blurred Contours of Defining a Genre
For many years now, the literary establishment in Canada has been well entrenched with brand name authors such as Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, and Timothy Findley. However, since the 1990s, a number of authors of Asian descent in Canada have published, and in fact, have themselves become mainstream international literary stars.
Many have followed suit, and not surprisingly, as a result of years of being categorized as 'ethnic' literature on the fringes of Canadian literature, these authors have helped establish a new literary framework in Asian Canadian studies. Often salient topics about racism, identity, and migration, the stories that these storytellers offer form an important cultural mosaic of Canada.
1) Wayson Choy
One of Canada's most beloved storytellers, Choy's first novel, The Jade Pony won the Trillium Book Award for best book in 1995 and the City of Vancouver Book Award in 1996 while All That Matters won the Trillium Book Award in 2004 and was shortlisted for the 2005 Giller Prize. Both novels revolve around the Chen family children. The writing for Paper Shadows is a personal journey in which Choy discovers that he was adopted.
2) Sky Lee
Lee's Disappearing Moon Cafe, published in 1990, explores the Wong family over four generations, as they operate in Vancouver's Chinatown. A story of clashing traditions between new and old China, family secrets, and sexual identities, the story moves back and forth between past and present, between Canada and China, and weaves fiction and historical fact into a Chinese Canadian's struggle for identity.
3) Terry Woo
Banana Boys is considered a cult-classic among Asian Canadian youths. Its characters are only edgy and humorous, and outlines some of the stereotypes of Asians in North American society. In using dark humour to explore some of these cultural misconceptions, Woo's characters - Rick, Dave, Mike, Luke and Sheldon - represent the modern Asian Canadian angst. The term "banana" is creatively used as the title of the novel, drawing on he expression that Chinese-Canadians deemed to be "yellow on the outside, white on the inside." This book, in many ways, defines the the Canadian multicultural mosaic.
4) Joy Kogawa
Joy Kogawa's Obasan is the first Canadian novel about Canada's internment of the Japanese during the second world war. The novel appeared at a time when the question of reparation to Japanese Canadians was beginning to receive exposure in the press and is therefore a politically significant text in its own right. It won the 1981 Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Canadian Authors' Association 1982 Book of the Year Award, Obasan is a poignant and original novel, and is not surprisingly a heavily used text in English and Canadian history classes.
5) Madeleine Thien
Thien's first book, Simple Recipes (2001), a collection of short stories, received critical acclaim, of which included the likes of Alice Munroe. Thien's most recent novel in 2007, Certainty, has been published internationally, and is an important work in the migration and transnational studies.
6) Evelyn Lau
Lau is an important left home and spent the next several years living in Vancouver as a homeless person, sleeping mainly in shelters, as well as entering the sex trade. It was during this chaotic period of her life that produced her greatest amount of work in fiction. The diary that she had kept at the time was eventually published in 1989 as Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid. Not only was the book a critical and commercial success, it created a classic for the field of Asian Canadian literarature.
7) Larissa Lai
An English professor at the University of British Columbia, Lai's When A Fox is a Thousand (1995) salt fish girl (2002), deal with topics mythology, genetic engineering, feminism, and the Chinese diaspora.
8) Paul Yee
Although best known as a writer for children and young adults of which include the Bone Collector's Son (2003), Dead Man's Gold and Other Stories (2002), Yee has also written short stories and non-fiction for adult audiences. In particular, Saltwater City has become a classic in Asian Canadian history with often painful first-person recollections combines more than two hundred photographs to form a chronological portrait of Vancouver, Canada from its earliest beginnings to the present.
9) Fred Wah
Wah is a prolific poet and college professor whose diverse ethnic makeup figures significantly in his writings. Born from a Chinese father and an English mother of Swedish heritage, Wah's poetry often question the margins of race and culture. His Diamond Grill Cafe (2003) and Waiting for Saskatchewan (1987) are widely read and discussed among Canadian literary establishment and Asian Canadian scholars.
10) M.G. Vassanji
Although Vassanji was born in Africa and later moved to North America, he is of South Asian heritage. Although the main focus of Vassanji's work is the situation of South Asians in East Africa, his books such as A Book of Secrets, often about memory and community during and after periods migration from Eastern to Western worlds. As a result, his novels examine how the lives of his characters are affected by such movements.
The Establishment Goes Mainstream
However, the Asian Canadian movement is only in its formative incarnation. There has been debate within literary and academic circles whether publishers are promoting new authors simply for their ethnicies rather than actual merit. Nonetheless, the authors that have lasted through the years have shown the resiliency of Asian Canadian talent.
Wayson Choy
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Disappearing Moon Cafe
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Banana Boys
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