Exit, Miss Saigon: An American Memoir

A profound memoir of coming to terms with a lost racial identity David Mura was well into his twenties when he began to explore his Asian American identity. His Japanese American parents had been incarcerated in internment camps during World War II, and in response to their traumatic experience, they abandoned their Japanese roots to try to assimilate into white, middle-class America. As a result, Mura was raised to consider himself as a white person, and his journey toward understanding and accepting his Asianness was a fraught road―one that left many fractured relationships in its wake. In Exit, Miss Saigon, Mura writes with frank openness about his personal experiences and the irrevocable ways they are rooted in the internalized, systemic racism that permeates American culture. Starting out as a young poet in Minneapolis working toward a PhD, Mura avoided reading “minority literature,” yearning instead to be like famed poets in their ivory towers―Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman, artists tortured by their families and personal demons rather than by politics or race.