No-No Boy, (1957)

First published in 1957, No-No Boy was virtually ignored by a public eager to put World War II & the Japanese internment behind them. It was not until the mid-1970s that a new generation of Japanese—American writers & scholars recognized the novel’s importance & popularized it as one of literature’s most powerful testaments to the Asian American experience.

No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of the real-life “no-no boys.” Yamada answered “no” twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces & swear loyalty to the United States. Unwilling to pledge himself to the country that interned him & his family, Ichiro earns two years in prison & the hostility of his family & community when he returns home to Seattle. 

As Ozeki writes, Ichiro’s “obsessive, tormented” voice subverts Japanese postwar “model-minority” stereotypes, showing a fractured community & one man’s “threnody of guilt, rage, & blame as he tries to negotiate his reentry into a shattered world.”

The first edition of No-No Boy since 1979 presents this important work to new generations of readers.

Replaces ISBN 9780295955254