ASIAN AMERICA’S LITERATI gathered at a SoHo art gallery last Thursday to pay tribute to Maxine Hong Kingston, whose ground-breaking memoir, The Woman Warrior, turned 30 years old this year. They also gathered to celebrate the 15th birthday of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.

AT THE PARTY: AAWW Executive Director Quang Bao (left). Jessica Hagedorn, poet and acclaimed author of Dog Eaters.

Mei Ng, author of Eating Chinese Food Naked (left). Monique Truong, author of The Book of Salt. Photos by Isabel Chang

Since its inception in 1991, the New York-based workshop has nurtured writers, enlightened readers and helped Asian American lit break out of the anthology AND anthropology ghetto.

Novelist and AAWW board of trustees member Monique Truong explains: “When I was in college, I was very angry. About, you know, everything. But especially about the state of Asian American literature, which in 1986 seemed tiny, like Rhode Island. The height of my rage was when I found a copy of Woman Warrior in the Anthropology section of a book store. I stormed up to a clerk and told him where I had found the book and demanded to know why the %$#@ it was doing in Anthropology. He went and got the manager and probably a restraining order. The manager came over and explained that the book was also cross-referenced in other sections of the bookstore: memoir, non-fiction, etc. I stormed out of there anyway. (I stormed a lot in college.) The argument then and now was a simple one. Anthropology was and is a science. Woman Warrior was and is a kick-ass work of art. I wanted all that craft and imagination, which I so admired, to be acknowledged and celebrated. Anthropology? Hells no!”

And in this post-Amy Tan world, look how far Asian American writers have come. Jhumpa Lahiri has won the Pullitzer Prize for literature, while three of the book world’s most influential posts are held by Asians: Michiko Kakutani is the formidable book critic at the New York Times, Lan Samantha Chang heads the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, while rockstar Salman Rushdie did us proud as president of PEN International.

We can’t wait to see how Asian American writers will transform the literary landscape in AAWA’s next 15 years! •