Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self

A ruthlessly honest personal story and a devastating critique of contemporary American culture. – Seattle Times

A searingly honest self-exploration * of the experience and psyche of the Asian American male, including Tizon’s stunning final article, My Family’s Slave

Shame, Alex Tizon tells us, is universal–his own happened to be about race. To counteract the steady diet of American television and movies that taught Tizon to be ashamed of his face, his skin color, his height, he turned outward. ( I had to educate myself on my own worth. It was a sloppy, piecemeal education, but I had to do it because no one else was going to do it for me. ) Tizon illuminates his youthful search for Asian men who had no place in his American history books or classrooms. And he tracks what he experienced as seismic change: the rise of powerful, dynamic Asian men like Yahoo! cofounder Jerry Yang, actor Ken Watanabe, and NBA starter Jeremy Lin.
Included in this new edition of Big Little Man is Alex Tizon’s My Family’s Slave –2017’s best-read digital article. Published only weeks after Tizon’s death in 2017, it delivers a provocative, haunting, and ultimately redemptive coda.

* New York Times

Alex Tizon writes with acumen and courage, and the result is a book at once illuminating and, yes, liberating. – Peter Ho Davies, author of The Fortunes