Asian American Literature Fans

I had the same kind of wariness about the quality of writing when I picked it up.... The essays are mostly not that "literary," but the overall impression you get is the range of ways that individuals turn to language and storytelling in order to convey their identities and experiences. So, even though they generally have a more straightforward, transparent (confessional?) writing style, there is actually quite a bit of variance still across the essays. And of course there are a handful that are more deliberately writerly. As a whole, it still reads differently from the book-length, single-authored memoirs that are less literarily-focused because there are some seventeen different voices and writing styles in it. I probably would not have read the whole book if any one of the essays went on for 200 pages, though.