Reading the Literatures of Asian America
 
 

Shirley Geok-Lin Lim Amy Ling (Editor) bn.com Price: $18.95  Special Order: Ships 3-5 weeks  Format: Hardcover, 384pp. ISBN: 087722935X Publisher: Temple University Press Pub. Date: September 1994

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Synopsis

This collection of essays is "separated into four . . . sections covering Asian American identity, questions of gender and race, issues of ethnic boundaries and borders, and various interpretations of texts, and each section .. . discusses these themes through an investigation of literary forms." (Libr J)

Reviews

    From Jaime L. Harker - American Literature
While certainly offering a wide variety of perspectives, the collection focuses more on Japanese and Chinese American literature than other varieties of Asian American literature--perhaps because Japanese and Chinese American literatures have a more established tradition and are more readily available in English. As more critical endeavors like Lim and Ling's book are published, however, other Asian American literatures should also gain in prominence. {Thisbook} is an essential contribution to the growing field of Asian American literature and provides important theoretical underpinnings for rigorous and informed study.

    From Library Journal
The prosaic title of this book is misleading, fooling the reader into believing that it is just another collection of essays on a particular ethnic literature. This is far from the truth. Although these essays explore the literary themes found in specific Asian American literary works, when read and digested in their totality they reveal themselves to be a well-organized anthology displaying the richness and diversity of Asian American culture and history, thoughts and beliefs. The book is separated into four interrelated sections covering Asian American identity, questions of gender and race, issues of ethnic boundaries and borders, and various interpretations of texts, and each section fully discusses these themes through an investigation of literary forms. A true sign that any genre has risen to the stature of Literature with a capital L is the appearance of literary criticism. This book is a sign that Asian American literature has finally arrived. Recommended for academic libraries.-- Glenn Masuchika, Chaminade Univ. Lib., Honolulu
 

FROM THE BOOK

Table of Contents

 Acknowledgments
 Foreword
 Introduction 3
Pt. I Ambivalent Identities
1 The Ambivalent American: Asian American literature on the Cusp 13
2 Versions of Identity in Post-Activist Asian American Poetry 33
3 Filipinos in the United States and Their Literature of Exile 49
4 Beyond "Clay Walls": Korean American Literature 79
5 Witnessing the Japanese Canadian Experience in World War II: Processual Structure, Symbolism, and Irony in Joy Kogawa's Obasan 97
Pt. II Race and Gender
6 Ethnicizing Gender: An Exploration of Sexuality as Sign in Chinese Immigrant Literature 111
7 Rebels and Heroines: Subversive Narratives in the Stories of Wakako Yamauchi and Hisaye Yamamoto 131
8 Facing the Incurable: Patriarchy in Eat a Bowl of Tea 151
9 "Don't Tell": Imposed Silences in The Color Purple and The Woman Warrior 163
10 Tang Ao in America: Male Subject Positions in China Men 191
Pt. III Borders and Boundaries
11 Sense of Place, History, and the Concept of the "Local" in Hawaii's Asian/Pacific American Literatures 215
12 Momotaro's Exile: John Okada's No-No Boy 239
13 Blue Dragon, White Tiger: The Bicultural Stance of Vietnamese American Literature 259
14 From Isolation to Integration: Vietnamese Americans in Tran Dieu Hang's Fiction 271
15 South Asia Writes North America: Prose Fictions and Autobiographies from the Indian Diaspora 285
Pt. IV Representations and Self-Representations
16 Creating One's Self: The Eaton Sisters 305
17 The Production of Chinese American Tradition: Displacing American Orientalist Discourse 319
18 Clashing Constructs of Reality: Reading Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book as Indigenous Ethnography 333
19 The Death of Asia on the American Field of Representation 349
20 Ping Chong's Terra In/Cognita: Monsters on Stage 359
 Notes on the Contributors 375