07 Jan “The Asian American Canon Breakers” via The New Yorker
This article from The New Yorker talks about the 1974 publication of “Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers” edited by me, Frank Chin, Jeffery Paul Chan, and Lawson Fusao Inada.
Read an excerpt:
“Alongside their own writing, they dug for older works, scouring libraries and used-book stores for predecessors. They felt as though American culture had wrecked their brains, leaving many of their peers awash in self-contempt. In the process of excavation and creation, they were testing out their own theories of what this new identity could mean. Reed called them the Four Horsemen of Asian-American literature. Chin, Chan, Inada, and Wong founded the Combined Asian American Resources Project in order to preserve the literary history that they were piecing together. They soon felt that they had found as much as anyone had.”