SOURCE: Samarth, Manini. “Affirmations: Speaking the Self into Being.” Parnassus 17, no. 1 (1992): 88-101.

In the following essay, Samarth compares Jen's Typical American with Donald Duk by Frank Chin and Pangs of Love by David Wong Louie. Samarth asserts that Jen's novel presents a more complete picture of the Asian woman's experience than do the works of Chin and Louie.

Calcutta, 1967

A memory: a rush of summer air flirting the leaves into consternation; sunlight boiling off the tarmac; a comma-row of crows deepening telephone wires—black punctuation, visual speech; the roadside littoral of gnarled tree roots in frozen spasms; open manholes breathing fevered stench; traffic snarled in crazy geometry; peeling houses like yellowed postcards, imprints of a better time. On the tatters of this city, heat falls like brocade.

I turn left into a suddenly bicycle-busy street. Coolie hats and black-cloth shoes ease the glare of circulating metal spokes. A...