For many Asian Americans, the era of the Vietnam war and the civil
rights movement in the United States was an era of increased awareness
of racial and cultural identity built on their need to clarify and establish
their uniquely American identity. The new awareness that it was possible
and desirable to be both American and nonwhite resulted in Asian
American literary efforts to assert an ethnic American identity and to
challenge old myths and stereotypes. Young writers attempted to "claim
America," for Asian Americans by demonstrating Asian roots in Amer-
ican society and culture. In some cases, this meant rejecting the ethnic
community as subject matter, since some writers felt that it limited them
and only perpetuated the relegation of Asian Americans to marginal
status. They turned their interest away from community portraiture and
towards questions of individual Asian American identity within the
context of the larger society.

In the early 1970s, four young Californians who had been writers
and college literature teachers presented a manifesto for a new direction
in Asian American culture. Taking as a symbol of their effort Kwan Kung,
Chinese god of art and war, Frank Chin, Jeffery Paul Chan, Lawson
Fusao Inada, and Shawn Hsu Wong edited an anthology of Asian Amer-
ican literature that, they asserted, expressed the genuine spirit of Asian
American history and culture and not the old stereotypes that had held
sway for so long. The anthology features selections from the works of
Louis Chu, John Okada, Carlos Bulosan, Hisaye Yamamoto, and others
and newer works by the editors and other younger writers. The editors
argued that the volume of published Asian American writing had been
small not because of lack of Asian American creativity, productivity, and

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