David Wong Louie
David Wong Louie was a prominent Chinese American writer born in 1954 in Rockville Centre, New York, to immigrant parents. He grew up in a largely non-Asian environment, which shaped his awareness of his cultural identity. Louie pursued his education at Vassar College, initially majoring in geology before shifting his focus to writing, eventually earning a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa. His literary career began with short stories published in various esteemed journals and anthologies, gaining significant recognition for his work "Displacement," which highlights the challenges faced by Asian Americans in navigating between their heritage and American society.
In 1991, Louie published "Pangs of Love," a collection of stories that received critical acclaim and addressed themes of alienation and assimilation among Asian Americans. His novel "The Barbarians Are Coming," published in 2000, further explored generational conflict and the pursuit of personal identity. Throughout his career, Louie taught creative writing at several institutions, including UCLA, and his influence extended to a new generation of Asian American authors. Louie passed away in 2018, leaving a legacy that emphasized the universal human experiences found within the Asian American narrative, distinct from cultural stereotypes.
David Wong Louie
- Born: December 20, 1954
- Birthplace: Rockville Center, New York
- Died: September 19, 2018
Writer and novelist
A writer of short stories and novels, Louie is best known for his short fiction collection Pangs of Love (1991) and the novel The Barbarians Are Coming (2000). His works capture the alienation and displacement experienced by many Asian Americans, particularly Chinese American males, struggling to balance their adaptation to American society with the expectations of older generations.
Full name: David Wong Louie
Area of achievement: Literature
Early Life
Born in 1954 in Rockville Centre, a suburban community on New York’s Long Island, writer David Wong Louie was one of four children born to first-generation Chinese immigrants who arrived in the United States after World War II. Louie’s family owned a number of laundries on Long Island. Louie had very few classmates of Asian descent, a fact that made him aware of his Chinese American identity from an early age. While attending high school in East Meadow, New York, Louie took his first writing course and edited the school’s poetry magazine. He graduated from high school in 1973 and began his undergraduate studies at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Although initially a geology major, Louie continued to explore his writing voice and style while at Vassar, enrolling in several advanced writing classes that sparked his literary career in short fiction. After graduating from Vassar in 1977, he was accepted into the prestigious creative writing program at the University of Iowa, from which he graduated with a master of fine arts in 1981. Beginning in 1988, Louie taught creative writing and literature classes at a number of colleges, including Vassar. In 1992, he joined the English department and Asian American studies department of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as an associate professor.
Life’s Work
Louie began his writing career as an author of short stories, publishing short fiction in literary journals such as the Chicago Review, Fiction International, Iowa Review, and Ploughshares. In 1989, his story “Displacement” was selected for inclusion in that year’s Best American Short Stories anthology. Louie’s works have also been included in The Big Aiiieeeee: An Anthology of Chinese and Japanese American Literature (1991), Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction (1993), Imagining America: Stories from the Promised Land (2002), and Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: At Home in the World (2004). In addition, he served as coediter for Dissident Song: A Contemporary Asian American Anthology (1991).
In 1991, Louie collected eleven of his stories in Pangs of Love. The book received critical acclaim in the New York Times and other publications and was awarded the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction by the Los Angeles Times and the John C. Zacharis First Book Award by Ploughshares. The collection includes stories such as his acclaimed “Displacement,” in which Mrs. Chow, a former aristocrat from China, must adapt to American society by feigning her understanding of English while working as a servant for an irascible elderly landlady. “Displacement” and the ten other stories in Pangs of Love explore the alienation experienced by Asian Americans as they wrestle with economic, social, and psychological struggles of immigration and assimilation. Universal themes such as loss and forgiveness are prevalent in Louie’s stories, transcending the boundaries of cultural conflicts often addressed in works of Asian American literature.
In 2000, Louie published his first novel, The Barbarians Are Coming. In the novel, twenty-six-year-old protagonist Sterling Lung endeavors to study French cuisine at the Culinary Institute of America, much to the consternation of his first-generation immigrant Chinese parents, who had hoped he would become a medical doctor. Lung defies the wishes of his parents by pursuing a different career path and choosing to marry his pregnant girlfriend, even after his parents attempt to arrange a marriage to a “picture bride” from Hong Kong. As in Pangs of Love, Louie explores themes related to estrangement and alienation that some Asian Americans experience in the United States. The Barbarians Are Coming won the Association of American Studies’ Book Award in Prose in 2000 as well as the Shirley Collier Prize for outstanding fiction awarded by UCLA. The following year, Louie was awarded the Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction. "Displacement" was included in the collection 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories, part of the prestigious Best American series, in 2015. His final published essay, "Eat, Memory," was included in The Best American Essays 2018.
Louie had one son with his first wife, Diane Hoberman; the two eventually divorced. He married Jacklyn Kim in 1995 and the couple had one daughter. Louie died on September 19, 2018, at his home in California, of throat cancer.
Significance
In his writing, Louie captured the social and emotional struggles of Asian Americans as they grapple with displacement and alienation in adapting to American society. Rather than concentrating on the cultural differences his characters encounter in the United States, Louie strove to convey universal human experiences devoid of stereotypical ethnic trappings, thereby characterizing Asian Americans as unique and flawed individuals. His work influenced a younger generation of Asian American authors, such as Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen, who wrote an introduction for a posthumous collection of some of Louie's work.
Bibliography
"In Memoriam: David Wong Louie, 63, Pioneering Author of Chinese-American Experience." UCLA Newsroom, 27 Sept. 2018, newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/in-memoriam-david-wong-louie-63-pioneering-author-of-chinese-american-experience. Accessed 26 Nov. 2018.
Louie, David Wong. “David Wong Louie.” Interview with Stacey Yukari Hirose. Words Matter: Conversations with Asian American Writers. Ed. King-Kok Cheung. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 2000. 189–214. Print.
Partridge, Jeffrey F. L. “Changing Signifiers and Changing Horizons.” Beyond Literary Chinatown. Seattle: U of Washington P, 2007. 117–36. Print.
Slotnik, Daniel E. "David Wong Louie, Who Probed Ethnic Identity in Fiction, Dies at 63." The New York Times, 27 Sept. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/obituaries/david-wong-louie-dies.html. Accessed 26 Nov. 2018.
Xu, Wenying. “Class and Cuisine in David Wong Louie’s The Barbarians Are Coming.” Eating Identities: Reading Food in Asian American Literature. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 2008. 62–93. Print.