Bold Words: A Century of Asian American Writing Book

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction
Pt. 1	Memoir
	Introduction: The Voice That Passes through Me, An Interview with Meena Alexander	3
	How My Stories Were Written	10
	The Grandfather of the Sierra Nevada Mountains	14
	The Faintest Echo of Our Language	21
	From Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian American Memoir of Homelands	29
	From My Own Country: A Doctor's Story of a Town and Its People in the Age of AIDS	38
	From Where the Body Meets Memory	46
	From Ono Ono Girl's Hula	52
	Pa	59
Pt. 2	Poetry
	Introduction: Absorbing and Being Absorbed by Poetry	69
	Untitled	77
	Filling the Gap	78
	Thirty Years Under	80
	Cincinnati	81
	Smokey's Getting Old	83
	Recipe	85
	Why Is Preparing Fish a Political Act?	86
	Yellow Light	87
	The Gift	89
	Urban Love Songs	90
	The Chocolatier	93
	Strawberries	94
	This Room and Everything in It	96
	From "In Search of Evanescence"	98
	Andy Warhol Speaks to His Two Filipino Maids	100
	Not Much Art	101
	Ceylon	103
	The Floral Apron	105
	Kala Gave Me Anykine Advice Especially about Filipinos When I Moved to Pahala	106
	A Conservative View	108
	The Founding of Yuba City	110
	Prints	112
	Reading the Poem about the Yew Tree	113
	News of the World	114
	The Young of Tiananmen	116
	They Don't Think Much about Us in America	117
	Walls	119
	Beetle on a String	120
	Ch'onmun Hak	121
	Zenith	123
	The Bitterness of Bodies We Bear	125
	The Dead	127
	Sister Play	128
	From The Redshifting Web	129
	Projections	130
Pt. 3	Fiction
	Introduction: In That Valley Beautiful Beyond	133
	In the Land of the Free	140
	The Story of a Letter	147
	He Who Has the Laughing Face	151
	Seventeen Syllables	154
	From No-No Boy	164
	From Clay Walls	170
	Melpomene Tragedy	179
	Railroad Standard Time	185
	Batista and Tania Aparecida Djapan	190
	The Valley of the Dead Air	195
	Rated-L	203
	Our Lady of Kalihi	205
	A New Beginning	206
	Kim	213
	Seeds	219
	Fredo Avila	226
	A Difference of Background	236
	Elvis of Manila	243
	From Monkey King	250
	From A Cab Called Reliable	257
	The Goddess of Sleep	260
	From The Necessary Hunger	264
	Western Music	272
	Chagrin	280
	From The Foreign Student	285
	Show and Tell	291
	Mrs. Sen's	299
	The Shylocks	313
Pt. 4	Drama
	Introduction: Asian American Theater Awake at the Millennium	323
	From Eye of the Coconut	333
	From Assimilation	340
	Mask Dance	351
	From Mua He Do Lual Red Fiery Summer	387
	From Three Lives	395
	From Texas	398
	App. 1: Themes and Topics	419
	App. 2: Ethnicity of Authors	423
	Glossary	425
	About the Contributors	427
	About the Editors	435
	Copyrights and Permissions	437
	Index of Authors and Titles	441