Shawn Wong and No No Boy

Last night we attended a Friends of theUW  Library lecture.  We took my friend Doris from the Archives Committee.  She needed a ride plus we got into the VIP reception.

The lecture was by a UW professor about his efforts at getting John Okada's No-No Boy published as a young man in Berkeley and his subsequent efforts to keep it in print.  I had heard about this novel in one of my classes and we own a copy though we have not read it.  Written in 1957, it's considered an early classic about the Japanese Internment.   The title refers to the loyalty questions posed during the internment.

Anyway topic doesn't so interesting.

Unless you were there.

The best description of the delivery would be stand up comedy.  He had us laughing from beginning until the end.  About his graduate school days searching for Asian American writers.  Their discovery of No-No Boy in a Berkeley bookstore for fifty cents.  Their efforts at getting it published (cars were featured, think creative.)  The University of Washington Press eventually picked it up and has been publishing it ever since.  Not without some rejection first.  Then Penguin decided they would print it even though they did not hold copyright.  The social media campaign, the victory.

Every time he mentioned a meeting at University of Washington Press, he would put up a slide of Putin in his cabinet meeting.  The repeated joke.  And it ended with a photo of RBG.  Believe me, it all made sense.

All done in a stand up format.  Fabulous timing.  That's a big part of that form.  Gotta take a class from this guy.  We laughed and laughed.

What a great time.

Guess I gotta read the book.