Unlike these English-language memoirs, most of the nonfiction being written today in China, Cambodia and Korea has little to do with revolutions or wars. Since then, China, and the other countries in Asia, have moved on. In the West, they're still reading about a war-torn Asia, a period 20 years ago. That'll change as the years go by. But not if readers in the West go on wanting to read about suffering Asian women.
Publishing is a business like any other and gives the market what it wants.
Some younger Asian writers may well find that the only to way to get published is to write la Amy Tan, appropriating parents' and grandparents' memories of an exotic Asia, rather than telling their own tales. Memoirs, in particular, are soft-core histories and many readers turn to them to learn about different places and eras. One book, in particular, shows the potential pitfalls of memoirs read as history lessons. Her publisher, Doubleday, had planned to market the book to adoption groups and schools as teaching material. But Korean experts soon raised objections, saying that honour killings are rare in Korea and that Kim had dates and places wrong in her account.