Esther Mikyung Ghymn (Essay Date 1995)

SOURCE: Ghymn, Esther Mikyung. Introduction to Images of Asian American Women by Asian American Women Writers, pp. 1-10. New York, N.Y.: Peter Lang, 1995.

In the following introduction to her book about Asian American women authors, Ghymn reviews the history of Asian American women's writing in English, touching on issues of race and gender as they are addressed in the works of such authors as Mitsuye Yamada, Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, and Hisaye Yamamoto.

The purpose of this study is to examine the images of Asian American women as presented by twelve prominent Asian American women writers. Almost all the well-known Asian American women writers are from the West, and they have recreated their own cultural roots in their images of Asian American women, images which now form a crucial part of Asian American literature. This...