SOURCE: Shih, David. Review of Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction, edited by Jessica Hagedorn. Amerasia Journal 21, no. 3 (winter 1995-1996): 210-12.

In the following review of Charlie Chan Is Dead, an anthology of Asian American fiction edited by Hagedorn, Shih asserts that the most compelling aspect of the volume is the inclusion of works by several relatively unknown authors.

One reason may be the cover: an Asian American gangster brandishes a revolver, his keen eyes trained on your own. Another, the sheer size of the book: over five-and-a-half hundred pages. Either way, Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction intimidates upon first glance. How this attitude strikes you “mostly depends on your race, creed, hair color, social and economic class and political proclivities” (90), if I may borrow from Marilyn Chin's narrator in her story, “Moon.” From the outset this...