World Literature, Fiction Subjects, Peoples & Cultures - Fiction
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Overview
Driven by his dream to write and stage an epic stage production of interwoven Chinese novelsWittman Ah Sing, a Chinese-American hippie in the late '60s.Young Chinese American Wittman Ah Sing, a recent Berkley graduate and student of the sixties, is an absolutely extraordinary fictional creation. He's skinny, hip, six feet tall, an unstoppable playwright, a poet, a genius, and a nut.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
A fifth-generation Californian feels alien to both his Chinese heritage and the American culture that stereotypes him and others of his race . ``The long-awaited novel by the author of China Men and The Woman Warrior is outrageously clever, surrealistically imaginative, mordantly witty and funny--in spots. It is also densely overwritten and tedious,'' argued PW . (June)Library Journal
After graduating from Berkeley in English literature, Wittman Ah Sing searches for his niche in the Bay Area of the 1960s. He is a typical product of this time--pot-smoking, free-loving, draft-dodging, unemployed, anti-big business, long-haired, and sandal-shod. But he is also a Chinese-American fighting Chinese stereotypes--and therein lies the book's strength. Unfortunately, the book's great weakness is Wittman Ah Sing himself--a hippie stereotype difficult to feel for because he does not seem real, certainly less real than some of the characters surrounding him. This first novel by the author of The Woman Warrior is thus not entirely successful, but Kingston's wide popularity makes it an essential purchase for most libraries.-- Kitty Chen Dean, Nassau Coll., Garden City, N.Y.Book Details
Published
December 31, 1989
Publisher
Random House USA Inc
Pages
340
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780394568317