Frederick Su,
An American Sin, A Novel
about an Asian American and
Vietnam (bytewrite LLC, 2001)
Categories: Multicultural/Ethnic American, War, and Western American
Literature with subheadings of the American identity, psychoanalysis,
masculinity, environmental, and novel as allegory.
In this award-winning novel, the author brings to literature the male
perspective of being Asian in mainstream American society, exploring issues
of racism, war, and identity. According to the Vietnam Veterans of America,
there were 85,000 Americans of Asian descent in uniform during the Vietnam
conflict. The antihero protagonist, David Wong, explains to his
psychiatrist, “I killed because I was Asian fighting in an Asian war. How
else could I prove I was American?”
"Of all the books we read in the Spring Semester (2005), I got
the impression that yours made a more
visceral and immediate connection for my students." Mark Pfeiffer,
Instructor, The University of Georgia, Comparative Literature Department.
“This is a fascinating
work that is highly recommended as a thought-provoking contribution to
anyone’s philosophy of life.” Major Andrew Firth, heartlandreviews.com.
"And though this ground (Vietnam) has been trod often in
fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, the perspective of Su’s main character
offers the opportunity for fresh insight.
Su is at his best when writing about the
war. There is a raw honesty in these sections of the book. Wong’s quest had
me turning the pages and wondering, Is he tilting at windmills, or will he
slay a real dragon?" Michael Wilt, Nimble Spirit, The Literary Spirituality
Review.
“I feel for Asian men. I've always thought they've had a hard journey to
take here in America. I hope this story is passed from generation to
generation.” Jeannine Joy Vance, author,
Twins Found in a Box: Adapting to Adoption.
An American Sin won an IPPY
and was a finalist in the PMA Benjamin Franklin Award and the Binghamton
University John Gardner Fiction Book Award.
For more testimonials, reviews, and excerpts, please visit
www.bytewrite.com.
5 ¼ x 8 ¼, 335 pages
Trade paperback, ISBN 0-9711206-0-9, $15.00.
Email fred@bytewrite.com
(Subject: An American Sin) for a complimentary examination copy or if you
have questions. Bookstores can order through Baker & Taylor, Ingram, or, if
time is of the essence, directly from the publisher.
Frederick Su, bytewrite LLC, P.O. Box 2635, Bellingham, WA 98227. Phone:
360/671-4427, leave message. Fred has had fiction and nonfiction published
locally, regionally, and nationally, including short fiction on the website
In Posse Review on the
prestigious Web del Sol. He
is an ex-Marine of the Vietnam era and holds a Ph.D. in physics. He
exchanged his equations for words.
Frederick Su
www.bytewrite.com
bytewrite LLC, publisher of An
American Sin, award-winning novel about an Asian American and Vietnam
I will reply to fred@bytewrite.com within 2 days (unless I'm on
vacation--rare); if you haven't heard from me, please resubmit your message
to bytewrite@nas.com
Phone: 360/671-4427, leave message
P.O. Box 2635
Bellingham, WA 98227
Martha J. Cutter's
new book,
Lost and
Found in Translation: Contemporary Ethnic American Writing and the
Politics of Language Diversity
is being published Oct. 21, 2005 by the University of North Carolina
Press.
Description:
Starting with Salman
Rushdie's assertion that even though something is always lost in
translation, something can always be gained, Martha Cutter examines
the trope of translation in twenty English-language novels and
autobiographies by contemporary ethnic American writers. She argues
that these works advocate a politics of language diversity--a
literary and social agenda that validates the multiplicity of ethnic
cultures and tongues in the United States.
Cutter studies works by Asian American, Native American, African
American, and Mexican American authors. She argues that translation
between cultures, languages, and dialects creates a new language
that, in its diversity, constitutes the true heritage of the United
States. Through the metaphor of translation, Cutter demonstrates,
writers such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Sherman Alexie, Toni Morrison,
and Richard Rodriguez establish a place within American society for
the many languages spoken by multiethnic and multicultural
individuals.
Cutter concludes with an analysis of contemporary debates over
language policy, such as English-only legislation, the recognition
of Ebonics, and the growing acceptance of bilingualism. The focus on
translation by so many multiethnic writers, she contends, offers
hope in our postmodern culture for a new condition in which
creatively fused languages renovate the communications of the
dominant society and create new kinds of identity for multicultural
individuals.
About the
author
Martha
J. Cutter is associate professor of English at Kent State University
and author of Unruly Tongue: Language and Identity in American
Women's Writing, 1850-1930.
Price:
$59.95 cloth: ISBN
0-8078-2977-3
$24.95 paper: ISBN 0-8078-5637-1
For
More Information or to Order, Go to:
http://uncpress.unc.edu/FMPro?-DB=pubtest.fmp&-Format=a-detail.html&-RecID=12775197&-Script=visited&-Find
Added November 2005
Brown Gumshoes
Detective Fiction and the Search for Chicana/o Identity
By Ralph E. Rodriguez
"Rodriguez is a first-rate
literary scholar, well versed in a variety of
methodologies and traditions. He offers informed and
nuanced close readings of a number of key detective
fictions, many of which are being discussed seriously
for the first time in his study. He has assembled an
important subgenre in the field of Chicano literature,
and his book immediately positions him as the expert in
the area.... Intelligent, innovative, provocative: this
is Chicano studies at its very best."
—David Román, Department of
English and Program in American Studies and Ethnicity,
University of Southern California
Popular fiction, with its
capacity for diversion, can mask important cultural
observations within a framework that is often overlooked in
the academic world. Works thought to be merely "escapist"
can often be more seriously mined for revelations regarding
the worlds they portray, especially those of the
disenfranchised. As detective fiction has slowly earned
critical respect, more authors from minority groups have
chosen it as their medium. Chicana/o authors, previously
reluctant to write in an underestimated genre that might
further marginalize them, have only entered the world of
detective fiction in the past two decades.
In this book, the first
comprehensive study of Chicano/a detective fiction, Ralph E.
Rodriguez examines the recent contributions to the genre by
writers such as Rudolfo Anaya, Lucha Corpi, Rolando
Hinojosa, Michael Nava, and Manuel Ramos. Their works reveal
the struggles of Chicanas/os with feminism, homosexuality,
familia, masculinity, mysticism, the nationalist subject,
and U.S.-Mexico border relations. He maintains that their
novels register crucial new discourses of identity,
politics, and cultural citizenship that cannot be understood
apart from the historical instability following the demise
of the nationalist politics of the Chicana/o movement of the
1960s and 1970s. In contrast to that time, when Chicanas/os
sought a unified Chicano identity in order to effect social
change, the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s have seen a
disengagement from these nationalist politics and a new
trend toward a heterogeneous sense of self. The detective
novel and its traditional focus on questions of knowledge
and identity turned out to be the perfect medium in which to
examine this new self.
Ralph E. Rodriguez is Associate
Professor of American Civilization and Race and Ethnic
Studies at Brown University.
CMAS History, Culture, and Society Series
Reveals the history and impact of Native American
nonfiction writing.
THE PEOPLE AND THE WORD: Reading Native Nonfiction
Robert Warrior
University of Minnesota Press | 280 pages | 2005
ISBN 0-8166-4616-3 | hardcover | $59.95
ISBN 0-8166-4617-1 | paperback | $19.95
Indigenous Americas Series
Focusing on
autobiographical writings and critical essays, as
well as communally authored and political documents,
The People and
the Word explores how the Native
tradition of nonfiction has both encompassed and
dissected Native experiences. Warrior begins by
tracing a history of American Indian writing from
the eighteenth century to the late twentieth
century, then considers four particular moments:
Pequot intellectual William Apess’s autobiographical
writings from the 1820s and 1830s; the Osage
Constitution of 1881; narratives from American !
Indian student experiences, including accounts of
boarding school in the late 1880s; and modern Kiowa
writer N. Scott Momaday’s essay “The Man Made of
Words,” penned during the politically charged 1970s.
“A tremendously exciting and long-overdue project in
the intellectual development centered around
American Indian studies.” —K. Tsianina Lomawaima
For more information,
including the table of contents, visit the book’s
webpage:
http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/W/warrior_people.html
For more
information on the Indigenous Americas Series:
http://www.upress.umn.edu/byseries/indigenous.html
Sign up to receive
news on the latest releases from University of
Minnesota Press:
http://www.upress.umn.edu/eform.html
Updated
September 2005
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