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One of the greatest novels I've read. You have to read it to understand anything about being Asian American and to understand yourself as an Asian American. Published in 1957, 'No-No Boy' was so far ahead of its time in its exploration of the immigrant experience, belonging, generational trauma, internalized racism, interracial solidarity, race relations between minorities in America, intersectionality, war, death, loss, love, hatred, and goodness, that 60 years later it still reads as fearless and radical as if it had been published yesterday. No-No Boy spoke to all these things before we even had words for them, before they even existed in the Asian American cultural consciousness. And it's written so, so beautifully.

My heart physically hurt while reading—like I was endlessly on the verge of tears. I felt like I wanted to lay down and die, and for once I mean that in a good way. Something I jotted down in my notebook while reading: "this is the pain of having gone your entire life without a mirror and looking up to see it was hovering just beyond the veil the whole time."

In his Afterword, Frank Chin writes, in 1976: "To believe that I was the first to write was to believe Asian Americans were less than gutless all their history here... No-No Boy proved I wasn't only the yellow writer in yellow history. The book was so good it freed me to be trivial... Back in 1957 John said things Asian Americans are afraid to think, much less say today. Things that every yellow feels." And this is still true. This book set me free, today.

No-No Boy needs to be taught in schools. Because it's—I can't even express it properly—because it's the existence of history, a real history. There are other canons and we need to find them.