Song for Uncle Tom, Tonto, and Mr. Moto

As a poet and Sansei, or third-generation Japanese American, David Mura is part of a generation of multicultural writers who are changing the face of American letters and who have been at the center of debates about race and literary standards. Contending that the boundaries of the traditional Anglo American canon seem narrow and parochial and even evince the tribalism that some claim multiculturalism fosters, Mura calls for the world of American literature to open itself up to the many, varied voices that are "great within us."

Song for Uncle Tom, Tonto, and Mr. Moto includes interviews as well as essays. In conversations with William Walsh, Lee Rossi, and Daniel Kane, Mura discusses the development of his own poetics; the influences on his work of various writers, such as Czeslaw Milosz, C. K. Williams, Aimé Cesaire, and Derek Walcott; and his view of the complicated, growing field of Asian American poetry.

David Mura is a poet, memoirist, essayist, playwright, writer of fiction, performance artist, and literary critic. He is author of The Colors of Desire, After We Lost Our Way, and Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei.