Search Now:

Asian American Artists/Actors/ Performing Artists

This bibliography/bookstore page made possible in part by a grant from California Arts Council and friends

Yellow Light: The Flowering of Asian American Culture by Amy Ling (Editor), Unknown, June1999, 384 pages. Ling devised a set of questions on the Asian American experience and posed it to Asian writers, artists, musicians, dancers, filmmakers, and performance artists. Thirty-eight replied and found their way into this compilation, which is divided into two parts: one for writers and one for the rest. Ling (English, of Wisconsin, Madison) interviewed many of them, including Maxine Hong Kingston, David Henry C.Y. Lee, Ping Chong, Christine Choy, and many emerging unknowns. These writers often refer to Asians, such as Margaret Cho, Amy Tan, and Frank Chin, who are not interviewed. Because it is limited to Ling's questionnaire respondents, this compilation is uneven and somewhat odd in its inclusions and exclusions. Nevertheless, many of the interviews are interesting, and the excerpts from the authors' works are excellent. For larger public libraries.

Six Contemporary Chinese Women Artists by Lucy Lim (Editor), Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, Paperback - 102 pages (1991), Chinese Culture Foundation.

Asian Traditions/Modern Expression: Asian American Artists and Abstraction 1940-1970 by Weschler, Jeffery, ed. Hardcover - 224 pages (April 1997) Harry N Abram. "This first survey of Asian American modernists active during the era of Abstract Expressionism reevaluates an entire generation of neglected but important artists. The works of 58 artists, including Isamu Noguchi and Kenzo Okada, reveal the strong tradition in Asian art of abstract techniques and show how East Asian art prefigured or paralleled "modern" stylistic developments in the West. 194 illustrations, 84 in color."

They Painted from Their Hearts : Pioneer Asian American Artists by Mayumi Tsutakawa (Editor), Alan Chong Lau (Editor), Kazuko Nakane (Editor). Paperback (September 1995) University of Washington Press. "Examines the work of 18 Asian Pacific American artists creating in the Pacific Northwest during the period from 1900 to 1960. Essays on art in Seattle, Asian American painters of Washington state, early Asian American photographers, and the legacy of Asian American art accompany color paintings and b&w photos. Includes an immigration chronology, a checklist of the exhibit at the Wing Luke Asian Museum, and a directory of 105 Asian American artists in Washington and Oregon, 1900 to 1975.?

Why Asia? : Contemporary Asian and Asian American Art by Alice Yang, Jonathan Hay (Editor), Mimi Young (Editor), Jonathan Hayes (Editor), Hardcover, New York Unvi Press, April 1998, 192 pages

Finding Family Stories: An Arts Partnership 1995-1998 by Luis Alfaro, Roberto Bedoya, Tomas Benitez, Karin Higa, Kristine M. Kim, Sara Lee, Susana C. Mata, Leonard Simon, Louise Steinman, Traise Yamamoto, Charlotte Hildebrand (Editor). Paperback - 119 pages 1st edition (December 1998) Japanese American National Museum

Views from Asian California, 1920-1965 : An Illustrated History by Michael D. Brown. Paperback special edition (October 1992) Michael Brown.

Pursuing Wild Bamboo : Portraits of Asian American Artists by Zand Gee, Bob Hsiang, Crystal K.D. Huie, Lenny Limjoco. Paperback Ltd edition (December 1992) Kearney st Workshop Press.

Across the Pacific : Contemporary Korean & Korean American Art by Young C. Lee, Elaine Kim, Minne Hone, Laurie Fendrich, jo Goodman. Paperback Ltd edition (October 1993) Queens Museum of Art.

Pacita Abad

Pacita Abad : abstract emotions by Pacita Abad. Out of print.
Pacita Abad, exploring the spirit by Ian Findlay-Brown. Out of print.

Hisako Hibi

Peaceful Painter: Memoirs of an Issei Woman Artist by Hisako Hibi, Ibuki H. Lee. Paperback - 75 pages (October 2004) Heyday Books.

Kim, Krissy, A Process of Reflection: Paintings by Hisako Hibi, Los Angeles: Japanese American National Museum, 1999

Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata's Art of the Internment by Kimi Kodani Hill (Editor), Ruth Asawa, Timothy Anglin Burgard (Introduction), Chiura Obata. Paperback - 168 pages (February 15, 2000) Heyday Books

Other books about Chiura Obata

• Obata's Yosemite : The Art and Letters of Chiura Obata from His Trip to the High Sierra in 1927 by Chiura Obata, et al.Hardcover - 156 pages (September 1993) Yosemite Assn. Also inpaperback.
• Nature Art With Chiura Obata (Naturalist's Apprentice Biographies) by Michael Elsohn Ross, Wendy Smith-Griswold(Illustrator). Library Binding - 48 pages (April 2000) Carolrhoda Books.

Citizen 13660 by Mine Okubo. Paperback - 209 pages Reprint edition (June 1983) University of Washington Press. From an Amazon reader: "Mine Okubo still lives in the Manhattan studio apartment where she has painted for more than 50 years. She is known not just as Citizen 13660 from the internment camps, but as a talented and dedicated artist (see her profiled in the video Persistent Women Artists available on Amazon). This book, a reprint of the 1946 original, uses her deceptively simple style to tell how she was forced to leave behind the life of an American college student to become a Japanese-American detainee, and what her artist's eye observed in the camps."

Video. Persistent Women Artists: Pablita Velarde, Lois Mailou Jones, Mine Okubo

Theater/ Movies/Plays

Performing Asian America : Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stageby Josephine Lee, Michael Omi (Editor), Sucheng Chan (Editor). Hardcover - 256 pages (February 1997) Temple Univ Press. Also in paperback. "In her groundbreaking book, Performing Asian America, Josephine Lee meets a formidable challenge. How does one go about describing and analyzing the cultural production of Asian Americans, a group just beginning to make their complex political and social positions more visible? Lee approaches her specific subject, how Asian American playwrights depict race and ethnicity onstage, from the perspective that theatrical performances and dramatic texts can tell us much about these contemporary dynamics. "

Tokens : The NYC Asian American Experience on Stageby JAlvin Eng (Editor). Paperback - 465 pages (July 2000) Asian American Writers' Workshop. Presents a vibrant portrait of a burgeoning theater scene. The book concludes with "The Verbal Mural," a discussion of the history, current directions, and future prospects for Asian American theater in New York City, gathered from interviews with founders, leading members, and rising stars of the Asian American theater. Through their powerful words and passionate voices, Tokens? chronicles the struggles of Asian American artists to find a place in the off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway theater world. Tokens? includes plays and/or interviews from: Tisa Chang, Daryl Chin, Frank Chin, Ping Chong, Jessica Hagedorn, Wynn Wandman, David Henry Hwang, Aasif Mandvi, Chiori Miyagawa, Han Ong, Peeling The Banana, Ralph B. Pena, Gary San Angel, SLANT, Diana Son, Ellen Stewart, and Muna Tseng.

About Face : Performing Race in Fashion and Theater by Dorinne K. Kondo. Hardcover - 224 pages (August 1997) Routledge. Countervisions : Asian-American Film Criticism by Sandra Liu and Darrell Hanamoto, eds. Paperback - 288 pages (September 2000) Temple Univ Press. Monitored Peril : Asian Americans and the Politics of TV Representation by Darrell Hanamoto. Paperback - 288 pages (August 1994) Univ of Minnesota Press.

Between Worlds : Contemporary Asian-American Plays by Misha Berson (Editor), Laurence Yep, Jessica Hagedorn. Paperback - 196 pages 1st Ed. edition (May 1990) Theatre Communications Group

Asian American Drama : 9 Plays from the Multiethnic Landscape by Brian Nelson (Editor), Dorinne K. Kondo (Introduction), David Henry Hwang. Paperback - 421 pages (January 1998) Applause Theatre Book Pub.

But Still, Like Air, I'll Rise : New Asian American Plays by Velina Hasu Houston (Editor), Roberta Uno. Paperback - 512 pages (June 1997) Temple Univ Press.

Unbroken Thread : An Anthology of Plays by Asian American Women by Roberta Uno (Editor). Paperback - 328 pages (October 1993) Univ. of Massachusetts Press

The Politics of Life : Four Plays by Asian American Women by Velina Hasu Houston (Editor), Wakako Yamauchi (Editor), Genny bitter Lim. Also in hardcover.

Philip Kan Gotanda

Ballad of Yachiyo by Philip Kan Gotanda. Paperback - 84 pages (April 1997) Theatre Communications Group. "If ever there was a script to add to the mix in a book club, this is it. Based on a chapter from his own family's history, Philip Kan Gotanda's play is set among Asian (mainly Japanese) workers at a Hawaiian sugar cane plantation in the early 1900s. The drama uses delicate poetic language to tell the story of a young girl's sexual awakening, and what that comes to mean for her own life, and the position of her family within the era's rigid social system. In some ways Gotanda uses language as lusciously as Tennessee Williams did in his golden age--and to tell a similar story of passions erupting below what seems to be a placid surface."

Fish Head Soup and Other Plays by Philip Kan Gotanda, Michael Omi (Introduction).

David Henry Hwang.

M Butterfly. A play. " A Tony Award-winner for best play, David Henry Hwang's work looks at the life and loves of Rene Gallimard, who learns that his Chinese mistress of twenty years is actually a man and Communist spy. "
Other plays/books by David Henry Hwang:

• Golden Child by David Henry Hwang. A play.
• Asian American Drama : 9 Plays from the Multiethnic Landscape by Brian Nelson (Editor), Dorinne K. Kondo (Introduction), David Henry Hwang.
• Trying to Find Chinatown Paperback - 294 pages (December 15, 1999).

Porcelain and a Language of Their Own : Two Plays by Chay Yew, George C. Wolfe. Paperback - 224 pages (June 1997) Grove Press.

This page grows organically from recommendations. If we don't have a book that you feel should be listed or if you notice that a book is now out-of-print, please let us know, using the form below (don't forget to hit thesubmit button):