2010 National Book Award Finalist 2010-2011 Asian/Pacific American Library Association (APALA) Book Award Winner in Adult Fiction 2010 California Book Award Winner
Dazzling and ambitious, this hip, multi-voiced fusion of prose, playwriting, graphic art, and philosophy spins an epic tale of America€s struggle for civil rights as it played out in San Francisco€s Chinatown. Divided into ten novellas, one for each year, I Hotel begins in 1968, when Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, students took to the streets, the Vietnam War raged, and cities burned.
As Karen Yamashita€s motley cast of students, laborers, artists, revolutionaries, and provocateurs make their way through the history of the day, they become caught in a riptide of politics and passion, clashing ideologies and personal turmoil. And by the time the survivors unite to save the International Hotel-epicenter of the Yellow Power Movement-their stories have come to define the very heart of the American experience.