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Asian Heritage in Canada
Authors
Choy, Wayson
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Wayson Choy was born in Vancouver in 1939. At the age of 56,
during the publicity tour for his first novel, The
Jade Peony, Choy discovered that he had been adopted.
This revelation inspired his memoir Paper
Shadows in which he describes his experiences growing
up in the working-class world of Vancouver's old Chinatown.
A graduate of the University of British Columbia, Choy lives
in Toronto where, for many years, he taught English at Humber College, and creative
writing in the Humber
School for Writers. Wayson Choy was named a member of the Order of Canada in August 2005 for his contribution to the arts-writing. |
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Fiction
All That Matters: A Novel
Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2004
9th floor PS8555 .H6658 A64 2004
Publisher's Synopsis
Set in the 1930s and 40s, All That Matters continues the story of the Chen family, this time seen through the eyes of First Son Kiam-Kim, the only child of his father's beautiful, fragile First Wife. Having left behind the lushness of life in their Toishan village, Kiam-Kim, his principled, tireless father, and his indomitable grandmother, Poh-Poh, arrive in Gold Mountain with dreams of a better future. ...
As he grows up, Kiam-Kim's life is broadened as well as complicated by his burgeoning awareness of the world outside Vancouver's Chinatown.
Awards and Honours
2005 Trillium Book Award--English (Winner)
2004 Alcuin Society Award for Excellence in Book Design in Canada--Prose Fiction category (First Prize) ; Designer: CS Richardson
2004 Giller Prize (Nominated) |
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Fiction
The Jade Peony: A Novel
Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1995.
9th floor PS8555
.H6658 J33 1995
New York: Picador USA, 1997.
New York: Picador USA, 1998. (pbk.)
Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1998.
Publisher's Synopsis (Douglas & McIntyre, 1995)
Chinatown, Vancouver, in the late 1930s and '40s provides
the setting for this poignant first novel, told through the
vivid and intense reminiscences of the three younger children
of an immigrant family. They each experience a very different
childhood, depending on age and sex, as they encounter the
complexities of birth and death, love and hate, kinship and
otherness.
Awards and Honours
1995 Trillium
Book Award--English. (Co-Winner. Shared with Margaret
Atwood, Morning in the Burned House)
1996 City
of Vancouver Book Award (Winner)
1998 RUSA Notable
Book (Winner)
2002 Vancouver Public Library's inaugural One
Book, One Vancouver (Winner)
2005 re: Douglas & McIntyre reprint ed., Alcuin Society Award for Excellence in Book Design in Canada--Prose Fiction category (Hon. Mention); Designer: Jessica Sullivan |
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Non-Fiction
Not Yet: A Memoir of Living and Almost Dying
Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2009.
9th floor PS8555 .H6658 Z534 2009
Publisher's Synopsis
Framed by Wayson Choy's two brushes with death, Not Yet is an intimate and insightful study of one man's reasons for living. |
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Non-Fiction
Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood
Toronto: Viking, 1999.
Toronto: Penguin Books, 2000.
9th floor PS8555
.H6658 Z53 2000
Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2005. (Subtitle: A Chinatown Memoir)
9th floor PS8555 .H6658 Z53 2005
New York: Picador USA, 2000. (Subtitle: Memoir
of a Past Lost and Found)
Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin Books, 2000.
New York: Picador USA, 2001. (pbk.)
Publisher's Synopsis (Penguin Books, 2000)
... Paper Shadows is a vivid and moving memoir that reveals
uncanny similarities between the secrets that enrich his award-winning
first novel and the newly discovered secrets of his own Vancouver
Chinatown childhood. From his early experiences with ghosts,
through his youthful encounters with cowboys and bachelor
uncles, to his discovery of deeply held family secrets that
crossed the ocean from mainland China to Gold Mountain in
the form of paper shadows, this is a beautifully wrought portrait
of a child's world from one of Canada's most gifted storytellers.
Awards and Honours
1999 Governor
General's Literary Awards, Nonfiction--English (Nominated)
1999 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction (Nominated)
1999 Drainie-Taylor
Biography Prize (Nominated)
2000 City
of Vancouver Book Award (Nominated)
2000 Edna
Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction (Winner)
2000? Torgi
Literary Awards (for books in alternative formats) (Nominated)
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Criticism and Interpretation
Lee, Tara. "The Decline of the Chinese Matriarch: The Struggle to Reconcile "Old" with "New"." M.A. diss., University of British Columbia, 2002.
Lim, Huai-Yang. "Representations of Class Identity in Chinese Canadian Literature." Ph.D. diss., University of Alberta, 2005.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Morfetas, Elpida. "Transgressing Boundaries and Cultural Haunting in Chinese American and Chinese Canadian 'Talk Stories'." M.A. diss., Carleton University, 2002.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Ty, Eleanor, "'Each Story Brief and Sad and Marvellous': Multiple Voices in Wayson Choy's The Jade Peony," chap. in The Politics of the Visible in Asian North American Narratives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.
9th floor PS8089.5 .A8 T9 2004 |
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