Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self

"A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist's memoir, in the spirit of Richard Rodriquez's Hunger for Memory and Nathan McCall's Makes Me Wanna Holler--an intimate look at the mythology, experience, and psyche of the Asian American male"-- "Why do so many people find Asian women sexy but Asian men sexless? Alex Tizon's family emigrated from the Philippines when he was four. He quickly learned to be ashamed of his face, his skin color, his height. In movies and on television he saw Asian men as 'servants, villains, or geeks, one-dimensional, powerless, sneaky little men.' His observations of sex and the Asian American male -- as funny as they are fierce -- include the story of his own quest for love during college in the 1980s. It was a tortured tutorial on stereotypes that still make it hard for Asian men to get the girl. And then, a transformation. First, Tizon's growing understanding that shame is universal; that his own just happened to be about race. Next, seismic cultural changes--from Jerry Yang's phenomenal success with Yahoo! Inc., to actor Ken Watanabe's emergence in Hollywood blockbusters, to Jeremy Lin's meteoric NBA rise. Finally, Tizon's deeply original, taboo-bending investigation turns outward, tracking the unheard stories of young Asian men today, in a landscape many still find complex -- but that increasingly makes room for powerful, dynamic Asian American men"--