I began to create a structure for the project. I found my research was scattered, scattered across political affinities, ethnicities, artistic pursuits—difficult to coalesce into any one storyline or historic chronology. The people I spoke with had definitely been in the movement, but often times had no idea what others had been doing. Their ideas and lives often intersected, but their ideologies were cast in diverse directions. Their choices took different trajectories, but everyone was there, really there. Thus the structure I chose for the book is based on such multiple perspectives, divided into ten novellas or ten “hotels.” Multiple novellas allowed me to tell parallel stories, to experiment with various resonant narrative voices, and to honor the complex architecture of a time, a movement, a hotel, and its people. While the book has become inevitably big, it yet seems to me to be a small offering, a rendering to be continued and completed by others.
Author’s Acknowledgments
In the way of institutional support to accomplish research for this project, I would like to acknowledge: faculty research grants awarded by the Committee on Research and the Institute for Humanities Research at UC Santa Cruz; Amerasia Journal at UCLA and Russell Leong and Mary Kao; Asian American Studies Collection at UC Irvine and Dan Tsang; Asian American Studies Collection at UC Santa Barbara and Gary Colmenar; Asian American Studies Department at San Francisco State University and Malcolm Collier and Marlon Hom; Asian American Studies Library at UCLA and Marjorie Lee; The Car Show, KFPK Pacifica Radio, and John Retsek; Chonk Moonhunter Productions and Curtis Choy; City Lights Books and Paul Yamazaki; Eastwind Bookstore and Harvey Dong; Ethnic Studies Library at UC Berkeley and Wei Chi Poon; Filipino American National Historical Society and Fred and Dorothy Cordova; Fine Arts Gallery at San Francisco State University and Mark Johnson; Freedom Archives and Claude Marks; Hokubai Mainichi Archives and J.K. Yamamoto; Hon-Kun Yuen Archives and Eddie Yuen; Japanese American National Library and Karl Matsushita; Kearny Street Workshop and Nancy Hom; Manilatown Heritage Foundation and Emil de Guzman; McHenry Library at UC Santa Cruz and Frank Gravier, Martha Ramirez, and Beth Remak-Honnef; National Japanese American Historical Society and Francis Wong and Peter Yamamoto; Philip Vera Cruz Audio Archive and Sid Valledor; San Francisco State University Special Collections and Helene Whitson; Steve Louie Archives and Steve Louie; Urban Voice and Boku Kodama; Yuri Kochiyama Archives and Yuri Kochiyama. Also, I’d like to recognize the work of Sudarat Musikawong, who worked for the project as a research assistant through UCSC, creating a database and copying many hours of audiotapes from the H. K. Yuen audio archives. Also, a special nod and thanks to Warren Furutani and Jessica Hagedorn for shared material, to Sina Grace and Leland Wong for their graphic renderings, to Linda Koutsky for art design, to Anitra Budd, Allan Kornblum, and Kristin Thiel for editing, and to Claire Light, Molly Mikolowski, and Patricia Wakida for grant and publicity consulting support. Many thanks to the remarkable staff at Coffee House Press and the staff in Literature and Humanities at UC Santa Cruz for their careful and meticulous work, to Lourdes Echazabel-Martinez and Ronaldo Lopes de Oliveira for translations, to Jane Tomi Boltz and Fred Courtright for their legal expertise, to Craig Gilmore and the Facebook Fan Club for making me feel famous, and to Micah Perks for being my colleague in the crime of fiction. For Richard Sakai, there are no words to express my humble heart. And finally, a wave to Amy Ling, in the heavens, whose prodding gave rise to an article about an unwritten book; now that book is written.
Along the way, generous readers have agreed to read and comment on early drafts of some or all “hotels”: George Abe, Shoshana Arai, Anjali Arondekar, Chris Connery, Eddie Fung, Emil de Guzman, Estella Herbal, Alex Hing, Ted Hopes, Makoto Horiuchi, Ruth Hsu, Betty Kano, John and Mary Kao, Allan Kornblum, Lelia Krache, Russell Leong, Jinqi Ling, Zack Linmark, Steve Louie, Roshni Rustomji-Kerns, Stephen Sohn, Andy Chih-ming Wang, Rob Wilson, Paul Yamazaki, Judy Yung. I mention their names to thank them for their critical contributions, care, and time. Many more people have joined this journey, but I have decided not to name names. I have been humbled by so many stories, some revealed with bravura, others insinuated obliquely, but much also silenced from pain, fear, or loss. If this fictional representation seems larger than life, perhaps it is because the work and lives of these activists have been largely invisible. In part, I came to know a kind of collective invisibility of folks in the movement who, in this labor for social-political change and revolution, gave up their youth, personal aspirations, and predictable family and social lives. My thanks and gratitude for the stories recuperated from this great labor cannot be conveyed except through this fiction, but it’s still entirely my fault.
—Karen Tei Yamashita
KAREN TEI YAMASHITA, the author of four previous books and an American Book Award and Janet Heidinger Kafka Award recipient, has been heralded as a “big talent” by the Los Angeles Times, extolled by the New York Times for her “mordant wit,” and praised by Newsday for “wrestl[ing] with profound philosophical and social issues” while delivering an “immensely entertaining story.” A California native who has also lived in Brazil and Japan, she is Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of California-Santa Cruz, where she received the Chancellor’s Award for Diversity in 2009.
Also available by Karen Tei Yamashita
The Illustrators
LELAND WONG’S prints and photography have been widely published and exhibited both nationally and in the California region. During the 1970s he became involved with the Kearny Street Workshop and remains active in San Francisco’s Asian American community as an artist, screen printer, and photographer.
Illustrations for all chapter frontispieces and karate poses (pages 267, 270, 273, and 276).
SINA GRACE is the author of Cedric Hollows in Dial M for Magic, and the comic book series Books with Pictures. He also provided illustrations for Amber Benson’s Among the Ghosts, a children’s book for Simon and Schuster. He lives in Los Angeles.
Illustrations for “Chiquita Banana” (pages 262–264) and “War & Peace” (pages 244–250).
Permissions Acknowledgments
Anonymous: [#35 “Leaving behind my writing brush and removing my sword, / I came to America”] and [“Ox”] from Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants of Angel Island, 1910–1940, translated by Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung. Copyright © 1980 by the History of Chinese Detained on Island Project. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Washington Press.
Frank Chin, excerpts from Act I from “Chickencoop Chinaman” from Chickencoop Chinaman & The Year of the Dragon. Copyright © 1973, 1974 by Frank Chin. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Washington Press.
Kahlil Gibran, “On Friendship” from The Prophet. Copyright 1923 by Kahlil Gibran, renewed 1951 by Administrators C.T. A. of Kahlil Gibran Estate and Mary G. Gibran. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
V.I. Lenin, excerpts from What Is to Be Done? Reprinted with the permission of Foreign Languages Press.
“Si hablo del hambre . . .” (“If I speak of hunger . . .”), translated by Lourdes Echazabel-Martinez. Reprinted by permission of the translator.
Mao Tse-tung, excerpt from “Changsha,” translated by Willis Barnstone, from The Poems of Mao Tse-tung (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). Translation copyright © 1972 by Willis Barnstone. Reprinted with the permission of the translator.
Paul Valéry, excerpt from “The Graveyard by the Seal,” translated by C. Day Lewis, from Selected Writings of Paul Valéry. Copyright 1950 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Funder Acknowledgments
Publication of this book has been made possible in part by a major donation from Richard and Amber Sakai. Support for this title was also received from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Coffee House Press receives major general operating support from the Bush Foundation, from Target, the McKnight Foundation, and fr
om the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature and from the National Endowment for the Arts. We have received project support from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Coffee House also receives support from: three anonymous donors; Abraham Associates; Around Town Literary Media Guides; Bill Berkson; the James L. and Nancy J. Bildner Foundation; E. Thomas Binger and Rebecca Rand Fund; the Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation; the Buuck Family Foundation; Dorsey & Whitney, LLP; Fredrikson & Byron, P.A.; Jennifer Haugh; Anselm Hollo and Jane Dalrymple-Hollo; Jeffrey Hom; Stephen and Isabel Keating; Robert and Margaret Kinney; the Kenneth Koch Literary Estate; Allan & Cinda Kornblum; the Lenfestey Family Foundation; Ethan J. Litman; Mary McDermid; Sjur Midness and Briar Andresen; Schwegman, Lundberg, Woessner, P.A.; John Sjoberg; Mary Strand and Thomas Fraser; Jeffrey Sugerman; Stu Wilson and Mel Barker; the Archie D. & Bertha H. Walker Foundation; the Woessner Freeman Family Foundation in memory of David Hilton; and many other generous individual donors.
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Good books are brewing at www.coffeehousepress.org
Coffee House Press
THE COFFEE HOUSES of seventeenth-century England were places of fellowship where ideas could be freely exchanged. In the cafés of Paris in the early years of the twentieth century, the surrealist, cubist, and dada art movements began. The coffee houses of 1950s America provided refuge and tremendous literary energy. Today, coffee house culture abounds at corner shops and online.
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