‘I HOTEL’ IS THE UNHERALDED DOCUMENT OF A DECADE OF ASIAN AMERICAN ACTIVISM (2019)

“Protesters in front of the International Hotel in San Francisco, January 1977” by Nancy Wong is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

This article by Lucas Iberico Lozada goes into the background surrounding Karen Tei Yamashita’s 2010 novel I Hotel, which involved a major moment in Asian American activism in the United States surrounding the eviction and demolition of San Francisco’s I Hotel in 1977.

Prior to its destruction for “urban renewal” projects, the hotel had been the home to many older Filipino men who immigrated to the US as migrant laborers, which is what spurred a major activism effort. Here, Lozada provides some really interesting information about how Yamashita went about writing this momentous novel.