Dec 26, 2009

No-No Boy | Critical Overview

When No-No Boy was published by mainstream publisher Charles E. Tuttle in 1957, it was largely ignored by both the literary establishment and the Japanese American community. The latter had yet to come to grips with the Japanese American experience of internment during World War II and the controversial issues of racial and national identity that are at the core of the novel. At the time of Okada’s death, fourteen years later, some of the fifteen hundred copies printed remained unsold. However, in the 1970s, the novel was rediscovered by a group of Asian American writers,...