Following the completion of her bachelor’s
degree, Keller attended the University of Califor-
nia, Santa Cruz, where she earned a master’s de-
gree in American literature, focusing largely on
Asian-American literature. While Keller’s inter-
est in reading and writing dates back to her early
childhood and the influence of her father’s love of
books and the stories she was told by her elder sib-
lings, she did not begin to think seriously of writ-
ing fiction until she was a university student. Her
early attempts were primarily works of short fic-
tion that were, in her words, “very whitewashed”
with “no ethnicity, no specific culture” (Keller,
identity theory). As her familiarity with the works
of writers like MAXINE HONG KINGSTON and JADE
SNOW WONG grew, Keller began to consider ways
to connect her own writing more meaningfully to
her investigation of her heritage. The result was
the beginning of her highly acclaimed first novel,
COMFORT WOMAN (1997), a harrowing look at the
life of a Korean woman forced into sexual slavery
during the Japanese occupation of Korea in World
War II. Initially Keller wrote a short story entitled
“Mother Tongue,” which garnered her the presti-
gious Pushcart Prize in 1995, and which eventu-
ally became the second chapter of the novel. When
the novel was published two years later, it won the
1998 American Book Award and was long-listed
for the United Kingdom’s Orange Prize.
In 1999 Keller coedited an anthology of wom-
en’s writing, called Intersecting Circles: Voices of
Hapa Women, and in 2002 she produced her sec-
ond novel, FOX GIRL, which was also long-listed
for the Orange Prize (2003). A second coedited
volume of writing, YOBO: Korean Americans Writ-
ing in Hawai’i, followed in 2003, along with a chil-
dren’s play, When Tiger Smoked His Pipe, cowritten
with her 10-year-old daughter and produced by
Honolulu Theatre for Youth. Keller is now work-
ing on a third novel—a sort of sequel to Comfort
Woman and Fox Girl—and a collection of essays.
Keller regularly participates in Hawaii’s Bamboo
Ridge Press literary study group and credits much
of her success to the sharing of her works in prog-
ress and the feedback she receives at the monthly
gatherings.
Bibliography
Keller, Nora Okja. “Interview: Nora Okja Keller,” by
Robert Birnbaum (29 April 2002). Identity theory.
com. Available online. URL: http://www.identity-
theory.com/people/birnbaum43.html. Accessed
October 1, 2006.
———. “Nora Okja Keller and the Silenced Woman:
An Interview,” by Young-Oak Lee. MELUS 28, no.
4 (Winter 2003): 145–166.
Dana HansenKeltner, Kim Wong (1969– )
Native to the city’s streets that appear with a color-
ful familiarity of accents, smells, and tastes in the
best seller The Dim Sum of All Things (2004) and
Buddha Baby (2005), Kim Wong Keltner lives in
San Francisco with her husband, Rolf, and daughter
Lucy. Currently completing a third novel, Keltner
began her first manuscript amid her various stints
as a teacher, a telephone customer service represen-
tative, and an office manager at the progressive zine
Mother Jones, eventually redirecting her full-time
working hours toward writing. Her two novels fea-
ture the witty and hilarious 20-something Lindsey
Owyang, who, like the author, is an alumna of the
University of California at Berkeley, has worked
in humdrum retail jobs, and is a third-generation
Chinese American whose pau pau (Cantonese for
“grandma”) runs a Chinatown travel agency. As
both texts feature Lindsey as a working urban her-
oine just as savvy about pop music and television
as she is male-curious and down-to-earth, they
may be seen as Chinese American interventions in
the emergent arena of “chick lit.”
In The Dim Sum of All Things, Lindsey’s persona
is from the very start on the borderline between
hybrid and paradoxical. She is a young professional
who lives with her grandmother and has to deal
with “her old Chinese ways”; she also loves to eat
meat but happens to be the receptionist at Ve g a n
Warrior magazine. With more proficiency in iam-
bic pentameter than Cantonese, Lindsey “could not
quote a single Han Dynasty proverb, but she could
recite entire dialogues from numerous Brady Bunch146 Keltner, Kim Wong