Famous Asian Americans by Wendy Dunn

First published: 1992; illustrated

Subjects: Actors, athletes, race and ethnicity, scientists, and writers

Type of work: Biography

Time of work: From the 1920’s to the 1990’s

Recommended Ages: 13-18

Locale: The Philippines, New York, China, New Jersey, Minnesota, and California

Principal Personages:

• Jose Aruego, an author-illustrator of children’s books
• Michael Chang, a world champion tennis player
• Connie Chung, a broadcast journalist
• Myung-Whun Chung, the director of Opéra de la Bastille in Paris
• Wendy Lee Gramm, the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission of the federal government
• Daniel K. Inouye, a U.S. senator
• Maxine Hong Kingston, a writer
• June Kuramoto, a musician and songwriter
• Haing Ngor, a doctor and Oscar-winning actor for The Killing Fields (1984)
• Dustin Nguyen, an actor
• Ellison S. Onizuka, an astronaut who died on board the Challenger
• I. M. Pei, a world-renowned architect
• Samuel Ting, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist
• An Wang, an inventor and businessman

Form and Content

This collective biography features Asian Americans who distinguished themselves in the fields of arts, music, literature, sports, media, science, architecture, government, business, and other professions. These brilliant individuals represent six different ethnic groups under the rubric of “Asian American”: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Filipino. Some of them are first-generation Asian Americans—Jose Aruego, Haing Ngor, Dustin Nguyen, June Kuramoto, Samuel Ting, and An Wang—-while the others are of the second or third generation. They come from very different family backgrounds. For example, the father of the famous writer Maxine Hong Kingston was a scholar and schoolteacher in China but after immigrating to the United States went into the laundry business. As a child, Kingston helped with the work in her father’s store. In contrast, the father of renowned architect I. M. Pei was a wealthy banker in China who sent his son to be educated in the United States.

Despite their different backgrounds and professions, the figures in Famous Asian Americans share some characteristics: drive, talent, courage, diligence, persistence, and a belief in themselves. For many of them, success did not come easily. It is these remarkable qualities that enabled them to excel in their fields and realize the American Dream. For example, journalist Connie Chung was always ready to tackle new challenges and scale new heights in her career. She continues to work hard, sometimes seventeen hours a day, and is such an energetic person that her colleague Dan Rather once called her a “nuclear reactor of energy.” The musician and songwriter June Kuramoto seems to speak for all of these individuals when she says that she would like to be remembered as a person who worked hard for what she believed in—someone who “did not give up, kept a positive attitude, and made things happen.”

Rather than a voluminous biography of each individual, Janet Normura Morey and Wendy Dunn provide vignettes that each span slightly more than ten pages. Brief as they are, all fourteen vignettes have a consistent format made up of three components: the individual’s family story, achievement, and remembrances. The family story delineates the subject’s cultural heritage and shows the influence of his or her family. The authors also describe the individual’s major achievements and their significance. The third element of the biography is the individual’s own recollections of past experiences. These three components are not laid out in separate sections but are interwoven skillfully into a smoothly flowing story that captures each individual’s background, personality, and achievements.

Black-and-white photographs from the personal collections of the subjects are interspersed throughout the book, between two and four for each entry. These images show the individuals by themselves, with their families, at work, or at an important moment of their lives and reinforce the reader’s impression of the book’s subjects.

The foreword by Harry H. L. Kitano, a noted scholar of sociology, helps the reader view the experiences of these individuals and value their contributions in the historical context of immigration and racial conflicts. A selected bibliography at the end of the book suggests further readings.

Critical Context

Outstanding minority figures were once underrepresented in juvenile biographies, but, with the concept of multiculturalism, biographies of these figures began to enter the mainstream of juvenile literature. Indian Chiefs (1987), by Russell Freedman; Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman? (1992), by Patricia C. and Fredrick McKissack; and Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary (1993), by Walter Dean Myers, are excellent examples of such works, to name only a few. Morey and Dunn’s Famous Mexican Americans (1989) and Famous Asian Americans are among the best collective biographies of prominent minority people to come out of this trend. The authors present the accomplishments and contributions of contemporary minority heroes to a young audience in a concise yet comprehensive manner. They are recommended as reading materials for multicultural literature courses at the college level and for multicultural education units at the primary and secondary levels.

Famous Asian Americans can be seen as a sequel to Famous Mexican Americans, featuring the same number of individuals and sharing the same format and style with its predecessor. Both books are characterized by a well-crafted treatment of the subjects’ ethnic experiences and aspirations, but the latter is an improvement upon the former. Famous Asian Americans highlights its subjects’ experiences in a vigorous, exciting narrative, unencumbered by facts and dates, animated and enriched by glimpses and insights from the subjects and their family members and assistants.