No-No Boy

<P>"NoNo Boy has the honor of being the very first Japanese American novel, writes novelist Ruth Ozeki in her new foreword to John Okadas classic of Asian American literature.

First published in 1956, NoNo Boy was virtually ignored by a public eager to put World War II and the Japanese internment behind them.

It was not until the mid1970s that a new generation of Japanese American writers and scholars recognized the novels importance and popularized it as one of literatures most powerful testaments to the Asian American experience. </P><P>NoNo Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of the reallife nono boys.

Yamada answered no twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and swear loyalty to the United States.

Unwilling to pledge himself to the country that interned him and his family, Ichiro earns two years in prison and the hostility of his family and community when he returns home to Seattle.

As Ozeki writes, Ichiros obsessive, tormented voice subverts Japanese postwar modelminority stereotypes, showing a fractured community and one mans threnody of guilt, rage, and blame as he tries to negotiate his reentry into a shattered world.</P><P>The first edition of NoNo Boy since 1979 presents this important work to new generations of readers.</P>