American Literature, edited by Keith Lawrence
and Floyd Cheung. Philadelphia: Temple Univer-
sity Press, 2005.
Floyd CheungTsukiyama, Gail (?– )
The child of a Japanese father, native to Hawaii,
and a Chinese mother, native to Hong Kong, Tsu-
kiyama has been interested in exploring Asian
and Asian-American themes from a multicultural
perspective. Her novels have often had historical
rather than contemporary settings, and she has
demonstrated an equal appreciation of the exotic
and the grimly mundane aspects of her characters’
lives. Born in San Francisco, Tsukiyama completed
a B.A. and an M.A. in English, with an emphasis
on creative writing, from San Francisco State Uni-
versity, where she has subsequently taught creative
writing. She has reviewed books for the San Fran-
cisco Chronicle and served as the book review edi-
tor for the Waterbridge Review.
Women of Silk (1991), Tsukiyama’s first novel, is
set in China at the beginning of the 20th century.
A story of initiation and maturation, the novel fo-
cuses on a young woman named Pei who becomes
a burden on her impoverished parents. She takes a
job in a silk factory, where the hours are long and
the work is both tedious and physically exhaust-
ing. Still, she not only achieves a level of indepen-
dence through her work, but also finds among her
coworkers a community of friends who become a
sort of surrogate family.
The Samurai’s Garden (1995), set primarily in
Japan, features a male protagonist named Stephen,
an aspiring painter and native of Hong Kong who
is sent by his family to a Japanese coastal town to
recover from tuberculosis. There, a man named
Matsu nurses him physically and emotionally back
to health. Stephen’s recuperation is juxtaposed
with the Japanese invasion of China proper and
the deteriorating international situation.
In Night of Many Dreams (1998), Tsukiyama
chronicles the escape of two sisters, with their
mother and an aunt, from Japanese-occupied
Hong Kong to Macao, as well as their return to
Hong Kong at the end of the war. The novel also
traces their lives over the next two decades as
Hong Kong gradually develops into an economic
dynamo. Interesting for its interplay between con-
tinuity and discontinuity, the narrative relates the
sisters’ steady progress toward maturation, but the
war fragments their experience and complicates
their sense of connection to Hong Kong.
Also set during the Japanese invasion of China,
The Language of Threads (1999) is a sequel to
Women of Silk. The main character, Pei, flees ahead
of the Japanese forces to Hong Kong, where she
finds a temporary sanctuary but feels dislocated.
In Dreaming Water (2002), Tsukiyama focuses
on five women. Cate and her daughter, Hana, are
coping with their grief at the death of Cate’s hus-
band and Hana’s father. Worse yet, Hana is suffer-
ing from a terminal genetic disorder that causes
her to age at an accelerated rate. Laura, one of
Cate’s childhood friends, re-enters her life along
with her two daughters to help Cate and Hana
come to terms with their difficult situation.
Martin KichTuan, Alice (1963– )
Born in Seattle, Washington, Tuan is best known for
her play Last of the Suns (1995). She is the daugh-
ter of Shin-Teh Tuan, a thermodynamics engineer,
and Ada Li-Ching Tuan, a daycare-center owner.
After her family moved to the San Fernando Valley
area when she was five, Tuan attended Chatsworth
High School in Chatsworth, California, and went
on to earn her B.A. in economics from UCLA in- Upon graduation, Tuan lived in Guangzhou,
China, for a year, an experience that inspired her
to earn an M.A. in Teaching English to Speakers
of Other Languages (TESOL) at California State
University, Los Angeles, in 1991. Her thesis was
entitled “The Viability of Soap Operas as a Listen-
ing Comprehension Tool for Adult ESL Learners.”
According to Tuan, teaching English as a second
language served as training for performing and
“building language.” Tuan found herself engaged
in questions about language strategy and the “odd-
ness of the English language, i.e. irregular verbs,
Tuan, Alice 291