Going waay back into the files of Asian-Am lit – Don Lee’s YELLOW

Let’s go back into the library of Asian-Am lit out there, and take a second peek. Don Lee’s collection of short stories in YELLOW transcends the academic wise-ass prose of political Asian-Am lit and borders as something readable for the average soul, who just needs to pick up something to entertain themselves while taking a bath, taking the subway, or waiting in the emergency ward.

Don’t get me wrong, Don Lee is a true academic. The 3rd-gen Korean-American lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has been the editor of the literary journal Ploughshares at Emerson College in Boston for 17 years. YELLOW is nothing to sneeze at either; it won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Members' Choice Award from the Asian American Writers' Workshop.

Take a peek, YELLOW will keep you mellow, touch your nitty-gritty points, and let you breath in that “I know how that feels” way:

“Set in the fictional California town of Rosarita Bay, YELLOW is a fresh, contemporary vision of what it means to be Asian in America, a post-immigrant examination of identity, race, and love. In this provocative collection, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese Americans flirt across and within racial lines, and end up facing not only fears of being ethnically "yellow" but also the universal terrors of failure and abandonment.

These stories are smart and sexy, wry and evocative…and feature such memorable characters as Duncan Roh, a big-wave surfer trying to transcend his reputation as a womanizer; Patrick and Brian, two mixed-blooded boys deserted by their dad; the competitive "Oriental Hair Poets," Marcella Ahn and Caroline Yip, engaged in a battle of wits for the attention of Dean Kaneshiro; and Danny Kim, a teen boxer who ends up in Boston society as a management consultant—poisoned not so much by racism as by his paranoid fear of it.”

More:
*Don Lee's website @ www.don-lee.com.
*Interview with Don Lee @ www.writersmarket.com.