In his introduction to The Flower Drum Song, Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang states that Asian-American literature has long been marginalized in mainstream society. Perhaps, but this novel, originally published in 1957, might be considered a groundbreaking work of popular Asian-American literature; one that is a page-turner even today. This bittersweet tale follows an array of eccentric Chinese characters in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Wang Ta, for example, opts to study medicine rather than join the ranks of the employed, and ends up entangled with a number of equally unconventional young women. His younger brother, Wang San, longs to become a ‘normal’ American teenager; he plays basketball and makes sandwiches using Chinese food, all to the consternation of his old-fashioned, rather stubborn father, Master Wang, who misses China and tries to maintain his Confucian principles in the US. Charming, sexy, poignant, cynical, The Flower Drum Song is an astute depiction of the cultural gap between generations and between Chinese and Western society. An instant bestseller, the book was made into a successful musical and feature film in the 1960s.
Penguin Books

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Chief editor: Steven Crane
February 2006 issue



Guanzhou Chief editor: Christopher Cottrell
February 2006 issue