To do so, Rainsford relies on different perspectives
to evoke the spirits of his father and other male
ancestors. As he seeks a connection with his ances-
tors, the narrator employs multiple points of view,
voices, and personas. The narrator either addresses
his grandfather directly or assumes the persona of
his great-grandfather. Sometimes the narrator be-
comes one of his ancestors who helped to build
America by constructing the Pacific Railroad over
the Sierra Nevada. By interacting with his ancestors
to retell the family’s story in the historical context,
Rainsford not only begins to understand the suf-
ferings and oppression of his ancestors, but also
recognizes the connection: “And I knew then that I
was only my father’s son, that he was Grandfather’s
son and Grandfather was Great-Grandfather’s son
and that night we were all the same man” (86).
To Rainsford, the construction of his identity
also depends on the relocation of places. Since the
town of Rainsford, California, in which the narra-
tor’s great-grandfather first settled and after which
the boy was named, does not exist anymore on the
American map, he has no place to claim his iden-
tity. In an attempt to map out his identity, Rains-
ford tries to imagine how they endured loneliness,
hardship, and violence to find a place in America.
Ultimately his vision of Chinese America and his
sense of home are established through his act of
remembering.
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Su-lin YuHongo, Garrett Kaoru (1951– )
Garrett Hongo is best known for his narrative po-
etry, which pieces together family history and the
stories of Japanese Americans to break the silence
surrounding the Japanese internment camps, the
destruction of Hiroshima and its aftermath, and
the historically uneasy relationships between
Anglo and Japanese Americans.
Hongo was born in Hawaii, but his family left
the island to move to Los Angeles when the poet
was six. After graduating from college in 1973,
Hongo spent a year in Japan. On his return, he
entered the University of Michigan’s graduate pro-
gram in Japanese literature but eventually left the
program to work as a poet in residence for the Se-
attle Arts Commission. There he was the founding
director of the theater group called the “Asian Ex-
clusion Act.” Influenced by other Asian-American
writers such as FRANK CHIN, his work became more
focused on forging a common bond among Asian
Americans. In 1976 he produced his own drama,
Nisei Bar & Grill, a play examining the postwar
lives of Korean veterans, which led him to examine
his growing concerns with his own identity.
Hongo’s first volume of poetry, The Buddha
Bandits Down Highway 9 (1978), was written
with Alan Chong Lau and LAW S O N FUSAO INADA.
Hongo’s section of the volume, “Cruising 99,” has
been compared to the breezy rhythms of the beat
poets, as these lines from “Cruising in the Greater
Vehicle/ A Jam Session” illustrate: “I’m just laying
down a bass, man,/ Just a rhythm, a scale, some-
thing to jam on, something to change, find our
range, something to get us going” (26). The repeti-
tions and parallel images in the poem also led to
early comparisons to Walt Whitman.
“Cruising 99” and several other poems from The
Buddha Bandits appear in Yellow Light, published
in 1982, which illustrates Hongo’s movement to-
ward more introspective reflection and his use of
alternate voices and perspectives. The collectionHongo, Garrett Kaoru 109