A Personal Battle: Felix’s Narration in “I-Migrant” Josie Reynolds College

While there were many intense, larger than life moments throughout Karen Tei Yamashita’s novel I Hotel, the true weight of the battle fought by Asian Americans for the I-Hotel is found in the quieter moments. “I-Migrant” may not have as many of the intense protest scenes as other novellas in I Hotel, but it does have Felix, the older, experienced, and somewhat jaded narrator Yamashita employs to show us the more personal conflicts within the struggle to preserve what became a symbol of the Asian American experience in 60s and 70s San Francisco. Karen Tei Yamashita uses the character of Felix as a narrator in the novella “I-Migrant” as a means of juxtaposing the old generation and the new generation’s values towards revolution, showing the divisions it can cause, and conveying the deeply personal nature of the fight to preserve the I-Hotel.

The choice of Felix to narrate the “I-Migrant” novella highlights the changing values as older combattants of this Bay Area culture war are pushed towards the sidelines while younger generations take over. When he sees a bus full of university students pull up to Delano, he laments that “Kids think they know something. They don’t know nothing” (217). His criticism of the students attempts to...