Following a string of rejections by American publishers, the Japanese publisher Charles E. Tuttle published an original run of 1,500 copies in 1957, which still had not sold out by the time Okada died in 1971. The initial response within the Japanese community was similar to that faced by the book's protagonist: ostracism for drawing attention to what was still perceived as disloyalty to the country and community.[4]
Found in a used book store by Jeff Chan in 1970, he and fellow Asian-American writers Frank Chin, Lawson Fusao Inada and Shawn Wong reached out to the Okada estate to first try and meet with John Okada, then when they discovered that he had died, to acquire the rights to reissue the book under their Combined Asian-American Resources Project (CARP) label in 1976. CARP sold out two printings of 3,000 copies each before transferring the rights in 1979 to University of Washington Press. University of Washington Press has since sold over 157,000 copies of the book (as of 2019), including its most recent edition in 2014.[5]
Penguin Random House published an edition of the novel in 2019, claiming that it was in the public domain and was never registered for copyright protection, sparking a controversy within the literary community for its failure to consult with the Okada estate and disregarding the struggle Okada and CARP had in attempting to publish the work.[6] It has been asserted that when No-No Boy was first published in 1957, the Copyright Act of 1909 applied, which granted book authors 28 years of protection unless renewed by the copyright holder, which CARP and the Okada estate failed to correctly apply.[7] Both the UW Press and the Penguin editions remain in circulation, although Penguin has since withdrawn any advertising in regards to its printing and has removed mention of the book from its webpage.[8]
