Written by multi-talented author Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel (originally published in 2010) combines prose, graphic art (images), elements of plays, and philosophy to tell the story of the American Civil Rights Movement. The book begins in 1968, the year Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Throughout the ensuing ten years which the book is set over, it follows students, laborers, artists, and provocateurs who try not only to advance a agenda which they think is good for America, but discuss current - and oftentimes critique - events like the Vietnam War.
When it was released, I Hotel received mostly positive reviews. The Chicago Tribune, for example, loved the book, saying that "I Hotel, by L.A. born, Santa Cruz writer Karen Tei Yamashita, stands as the single most ambitious and experimental work of fiction I have read in a long, longtime." Kirkus Reviews thought similarly, writing "With delightful plays of voice and structure, this is literary fiction at an adventurous, experimental high point."
According to Donna Seaman, "Yamashita's colossal novel of the dawn of Asian American culture is the literary equivalent of an intricate and vibrant street mural depicting a clamorous and righteous era of protest and creativity." There are multiple references to racism and discrimination in that time period, giving readers an inside look into what cruel world was thriving no less than a hundred years ago.
