The first of ten novellas in the National Book Award Finalist I Hotel, following San Francisco's Asian-American community through the civil rights era.
Centered around the International Hotel, a historic low-income residence in San Francisco's Chinatown, the ten novellas of Karen Tei Yamashita's epic are each devoted to a single year in one of America's most transformative decades. This multi-voiced fusion of prose, playwriting, graphic art, and philosophy spins a kaleidoscopic tale of America's struggle for civil rights, all played out among Yamashita's motley cast of students, laborers, artists, revolutionaries, and provocateurs.
In 1968: Eye Hotel, the residents of I-Hotel live through some of the most significant changes of the mid-twentieth century as they try to make sense of their own lives. It's the Year of the Monkey, and as every kid in Chinatown seems to be orphaned, survival means everything from protest gatherings to a late-night quest for the city's best bowl of noodles.
"As original as it is political, as hilarious as it is heartbreaking, I Hotel is the result of a decade of research and writing that included more than 150 personal interviews… [and] will be dog-eared and underlined and assigned to college reading lists for generations."
The Washington Post Book World
"Yamashita incorporates satire and the surreal in prose that is playful yet knowing, fierce yet mournful, in a wildly multicultural landscape… [A] passionate, bighearted novel."
San Francisco Chronicle
"[Yamashita] hasn't gained the broad recognition she richly deserves."
