saralynnburnett's review against another edition
4.0
This is not easy reading but it was 100% worth the effort. There were so many voices in this unique novel, it gave it prismatic effect, each beam is its own and each trails off sometimes forever and sometimes to rejoin the others later. It's so fractured, even in form: playwriting, graphic novel, etc all within various novellas that alone are one thing but together paint an entire canvass. So what is it about? Revolution, art, history, culture, immigration, San Francisco, the Yellow Power movement, Marx, Mao, Lenin, education, class, 1960s-70s, and so on and so forth. There's some verbal imagery that will stay with me forever (and an actual drawing of a woman as a banana that I won't be forgetting anytime soon). Sprawling, yes. WTF moments, yes. But worth it.
Tip: read the afterward first as it gives history on I-Hotel in San Francisco and some of the goals and processes Yamashita had producing this novel.
Tip: read the afterward first as it gives history on I-Hotel in San Francisco and some of the goals and processes Yamashita had producing this novel.
paulgodfread's review against another edition
4.0
I felt this book was confusing and uneven, though that I think was the point. There are stories contained that were more engaging than others. Overall though, a complicated and multi-angled view of a very specific place and time emerges. Something like cubism, where you are seeing as many sides as possible at once. It is disorienting and there were parts where I wasn't really enjoying the book, but I can see how it works to tell a story in a fairly realistic way. Reality doesn't have clear plot lines and beginnings or ends.
zilfworks's review against another edition
2.0
This one was kind of a slog for me. The prose and structure is very post-modern, shifting form frequently throughout the book - sometimes narrative sometimes not - and not in a fun way (at least for me). Overall, the concept is strong, and following the neighborhood's fortunes over the decades is definitely interesting, but the writing is surprisingly dry, even with all the form shifts, and the execution often left me very cold. It probably took me a year to get through it, because I kept putting it down when my attention wandered.
eunicek82's review against another edition
challenging
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
this book is bonkers. A patchwork of Asian-American voices in myriad styles and forms illustrating all the ways that people fought for rights. I loved the different formats, the intersecting storylines and the clear portrayal of how multi-cultural Asians are.
audaciaray's review against another edition
4.0
A huge book of 10 short novellas about the International Hotel in San Francisco and Asian American activism in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. A truly important book - and it knows it. I got a lot out of this reading experience, and it made me want to read more about this chapter American history. However, because each novella has its own characters, narrative, and style, I often felt myself thinking, "wait, who did what now?" Because its a collection of novellas and they are done in different styles, I didn't find myself getting as deeply immersed in the world of the book as I typically do with good longer works of fiction.
drgus_7's review against another edition
4.0
This book is packed with history and politics. It's best to read it slowly and to meditate on all the information that is given by multiple narrators. I would read it again!
freewaygods's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
mpho3's review against another edition
4.0
Took me forever to read this book, though doing so was very rewarding. Yamashita's ten inter-connected novellas explore a variety of experimental narrative structures as well as diving deep into the experiences of Asian Americans during the Civil Rights era, most typically associated with Negros-cum-Blacks-cum-African-Americans. Problems inherent to hyphenated Americans affect those who populated the real life I Hotel and Yamashita's same name novel.
As Marcela Valdes so nicely summarized in the Washington Post:
"The term 'Asian American' blurs together wildly different linguistic and religious cultures. As one [I Hotel] narrator says, 'Maybe we all look alike, and maybe the laws lump us all together so we got to stick together, even though we're really different and can't understand each other and our folks back in the old countries hated each other's guts.' I Hotel resists this lumping. Its wild narrative architecture springs from a need to delineate separate Chinese, Japanese and Filipino histories, as well as separate aesthetic, political and intellectual positions. It's as if Yamashita wanted to capture the diversity of an entire cultural ecosystem, displaying each distinct species -- idealistic gay Chinese poet, wisecracking Filipino Marxist, Japanese Black Panther strategist -- in all its particular glory, and its particular pain."
As Marcela Valdes so nicely summarized in the Washington Post:
"The term 'Asian American' blurs together wildly different linguistic and religious cultures. As one [I Hotel] narrator says, 'Maybe we all look alike, and maybe the laws lump us all together so we got to stick together, even though we're really different and can't understand each other and our folks back in the old countries hated each other's guts.' I Hotel resists this lumping. Its wild narrative architecture springs from a need to delineate separate Chinese, Japanese and Filipino histories, as well as separate aesthetic, political and intellectual positions. It's as if Yamashita wanted to capture the diversity of an entire cultural ecosystem, displaying each distinct species -- idealistic gay Chinese poet, wisecracking Filipino Marxist, Japanese Black Panther strategist -- in all its particular glory, and its particular pain."