Go Home!

by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan (Editor), Viet Nguyen (Foreword by), Alexander Chee (Contribution by), Chang-rae Lee (Contribution by), Marilyn Chin (Contribution by)

Overview

An anthology of Asian diasporic writers musing on the notion of "home"—and the possibilities of outsiderhood and belonging.

“I read this book and see my people—see us—and feel, in our collective outsiderhood, at home.” —Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“To be from nowhere is the state of Asian diaspora, but there is also a wild humor and imagination that comes from being underestimated, rarely counted, hardly seen. Here, we begin to draw the hopeful outlines of a collective history for those so disparate yet often lumped together.” —Jenny Zhang, Sour Heart

Asian diasporic writers imagine “home” in the twenty-first century through an array of fiction, memoir, and poetry. Both urgent and meditative, this anthology moves beyond the model-minority myth and showcases the singular intimacies of individuals figuring out what it means to belong.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936932016
Publisher:	Feminist Press at CUNY, The
Publication date:	03/13/2018
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	1,163,060
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 16.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is the author of the novel Harmless Like You. She is British, Japanese, Chinese, and American—hyphenation and ordering vary depending on the day. She has a BA from Columbia University, an MFA from the UW-Madison, and was an Asian American Writers’ Workshop fellow. Her short work has appeared in Granta, The Guardian, Guernica, Apogee, and the White Review, among other places. She has received residencies from the Gladstone Library and Hedgebrook.

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer is a New York Times best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other honors include the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, a Gold Medal in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award from the Asian/Pacific American Librarian Association. His other books are Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction) and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. His newest book is a short story collection, The Refugees, published in February 2017 from Grove Press.

Table of Contents

“Editor’s Note” (Rowan Hisayo Buchanan — London, UK)

“Foreword” (Viet Thanh Nguyen — Los Angeles, CA; teaches at University of Southern California)

“Release” (Alexander Chee — Hanover, NH; teaches at Dartmouth College)

“Things that Remind Me of Home” (Kimiko Hahn — New York, NY; teaches at Queens College)

“Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying” (Alice Sola Kim — New York, NY)

“Ramadan Red White and Blue” (Mohja Kahf — Fayetteville, AR; teaches at University of Arkansas)

“My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears” (Mohja Kahf)

“The Place Where I Live Is Different Because I Live There” (Wendy Xu — New York, NY)

“Sit Bones” (Sharlene Teo — London, UK)

“Magritte” (Wo Chan — Brooklyn, NY)

“what do i make of my face / except” (Wo Chan)

“Aama, 1978-2015” (Muna Gurung — Kathmandu, Nepal)

“Delicately, I Beg of You” (Muhammad Amirul bin Muhamad — Singapore)

“The Words Honey and Moon” (Jennifer Tseng — Brookline, MA)

“Post Trauma / Costero / Pygmy Right Whale / ???????? / Kalapani” (Rajiv Mohabir — Honolulu, HI)

“The Unintended” (Gina Apostol — New York, NY)

“Meet a Muslim” (Fariha Roisin — Montreal, Canada)

“Elegy” (Esme Weijun Wang — San Francisco, CA)

“Cul-de-Sac” (Chaya Babu — Brooklyn, NY)

“Esmeralda” (Mia Alvar — New York, NY)

“Love Poems for the Border Patrol” (Amitava Kumar — Poughkeepsie, NY; teaches at Vassar College)

“Blue Tears” (Karissa Chen — New York, NY)

“Tigress” (Rowan Hisayo Buchanan)

“The Stained Veil” (Gaiutra Bahadur — New York, NY)

“I’m Charlie Tuna” (Jason Koo — Brooklyn, NY; teaches at Quinnipiac University)

“Bon Chul Koo and the Hall of Fame” (Jason Koo)

“Chicken & Stars” (T Kira Madden — New York, NY)

“For Mitsuye Yamada on her 90th Birthday” (Marilyn Chin — San Diego, CA; teaches at San Diego State University)

“The Faintest Echo of Our Language” (Chang-Rae Lee — Stanford, CA; teaches at Stanford University)

Editorial Reviews

01/29/2018
In the introduction, editor Buchanan points to the xenophobic political rhetoric of recent years as motivation for this anthology of Asian-American writers who “complicate and expand the idea of home.” Contributors include Alexander Chee, Kimiko Hahn, Chang-Rae Lee, Wo Chan, and Muhammad Amirul bin Muhamad. The fiction writers and poets largely do better with the prompt than the nonfiction writers, whose work can be either didactic or sentimental. Standouts include Alice Sola Kim’s story “Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying,” about three Korean adoptee girls who summon a mother through a spell, and Chaya Babu’s “Cul-de-Sac,” a sprawling essay that expertly weaves together landscape, class, and race to explain the context for the author’s girlhood. Marilyn Chin’s poem “For Mitsuye Yamada on Her 90th Birthday,” is an ecstatic romp through decades of cultural and political history, including lines like “I binged on duck noodles on Clement Street after sucking down a bong/ Wrote ten-thousand letters for Amnesty International high on shrooms.” This powerful collection will push readers to do as Buchanan recommends in her introduction: to seek out the “ever-increasing ways in which we can be homed and un-homed.” (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

“Language allows for many homes, and perhaps the writers—and readers of the anthology too—will succeed in returning home, or finding a home, through these words.” —NPR.org

"Effectively dismantling all sorts of stereotypes, Buchanan's anthology gives voice to notions of identity, belonging and displacement that are much more vast, complex and textually rich than mere geography." —Shelf Awareness

“This powerful collection will push readers." —Publishers Weekly

“Messy, generous, and often electrifying.” —Foreword Reviews

"Readers, no matter their background, will find much to enjoy and contemplate here." —Booklist

“Go home, whatever, whoever, however, wherever that might be, and take this book with you.” —8asians

"Bold and devastating. . . the very definition of reclamation." —The International Examiner

“Revolutionary for all the iterations of “home” it shows through fiction, poetry, and memoir, sure to provoke a full range of emotions to swoon and clutch in my chest.” —Literary Hub

“It reads like a loud urgent chorus about belonging and rejection—being here and there and nowhere at once.” —Largehearted Boy

“Go Home! is particularly timely now, but the quality and the variety of the writing included means that the anthology will be just as engrossing and important a read in years to come.” —BUST Magazine

“A can’t-miss collection.” —Book Riot

“The notion of home has always been elusive. But as evidenced in these stories, poems, and testaments, perhaps home is not so much a place, but a feeling one embodies. I read this book and see my people—see us—and feel, in our collective outsiderhood, at home.” —Ocean Vuong, author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“There is a whole range of expression in this book, delving deeply into the manifold experiences of being a perpetual alien. To be from nowhere is the state of Asian diaspora, but there is also a wild humor and imagination that comes from being underestimated, rarely counted, hardly seen. Here, we begin to draw the hopeful outlines of a collective history for those so disparate yet often lumped together.” —Jenny Zhang, author of Sour Heart

“Go Home! is a bold, eclectic chorus that provides an invigorating antidote to the xenophobia of our times.” —Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being

“This anthology displays the colors of the liminal—half-tones and undertones mixing the wry, the irreverent, the outraged, the lyric, and the longing. A composite portrait of the Asian diasporic experience today.” —Monica Youn, author of Blackacre: Poems

"Hats off to Rowan Hisayo Buchanan for putting together such a rich and diverse anthology. In these dark times, we need these voices and stories more than ever." —Jessica Hagedorn, author of Dogeaters

“In this new and daring collection, I find myself reliving moments of heartbreak that can only come from living in between two cultures—but also feeling profound relief in discovering I am not alone in these private burdens and joys. Go Home! should be celebrated, as reading it is a homecoming in itself.” —Yumi Sakugawa, author of There Is No Right Way to Meditate: And Other Lessons

From the Publisher

03/01/2018
Rising like a lotus flower from the muck, this beautiful work was inspired by an ugly episode. Buchanan (Harmless Like You) and a friend were in New York when a man shouted at them to "Go Home!" This caused Buchanan, who has lived in multiple countries and has both Asian and European ancestors, to contemplate the meaning of home and thus motivated this collection of 31 poems and short stories by 24 authors. Entries include both fictional and autobiographical works, which offer interpretations of home and belonging from the perspective of the Asian diaspora. A wide variety of experiences are represented: a young Singaporean woman exiled in London; an Indian American daughter growing up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in New York; a Nepali mother's life in Singapore; a Chinese soldier in Taiwan in the years following the Chinese Civil War; and many more. VERDICT A touching and riveting work perfectly suited to this era of tension between globalization and nativism. Highly recommended for those interested in immigrant experiences, creative writing, or works that address feelings of alienation.—Joshua Wallace, Tarleton State Univ. Lib. Stephenville, TX

Library Journal

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