Under Western Eyes-P355537/2b

In a rather defensive and awkwardly written introduction, Hongo (Volcano) describes his criteria for inclusion in this collection about growing up Asian in the United States: ``I tried to choose essays written against social silencing, but emerging from deep personal silences dedicated to reflecting upon moral, political, and identity issues.'' As it happens, most of the memoirs here center around family and language: Lillian Ho Wan ponders both the origins of her Western name and the ideogram for her mother's maiden name; Chang-Rae Lee recalls his mother's death from stomach cancer and her fear that he would forget how to speak Korean; Amy Tan remembers how she had to substitute for her mother on the phone due to her mother's broken English. Other highlights include Geraldine Kudaka's rich, emotional portrait of her love affair with a Latino radical; Nguyen Qui Duc's recollection of his return to Vietnam, where people assume he is Korean; and David Low's sweet accounting of his parents work running a restaurant and his own career as a photographer. There are several apt discussions of sexuality here, particularly David Mura's history of his addiction to pornography, but there is also one vulgar misstep: sometime art critic John Yau's mean-spirited recollection of how he and two painting partners ejaculated into a paint can and before painting a female client's walls--leaving behind a photograph of themselves in the act. (Aug.)