Mobile Homes: Spatial and Cultural Negotiation in Asian American Literature

by Huang; Su-ching

• ISBN13: 9780415975872
• ISBN10: 0415975875
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-01-13
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The history and significance of Asian migration in North America are distinctive from those European immigrants and their descendants. European Americans in general have enjoyed more geographical, cultural, and socio-economic mobility than Asian Americans. Physical mobility for the former group is closely linked to status but often signals economic and cultural barriers for the latter. Sauling Wong contends, traveling for mainstream Americans usually signifies liberation and expansion, but for Asian Americans, oppression and exploitation. Some Asian American texts featuring migration and border crossing may contest the above mentioned peripatetic traditions. In many cases Asian travelers are able to turn their experience of forced mobility to talk about movements between geographical borders as well as those across class, ethnic, gender, and gastronomic lines. The writers discussed in the book include Chiang Yee, Hualing Nieh, David Wong Louie, Fae Myenne Ng, John Okada, and Toshio Mori. Theirpublication dates span from the 1940s up to 2000.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction
The Politics of Mobility: Asian Migration, American Expansion, Transnationalism	1	(14)
Mutual Authentication of ``the Silent Traveller'' and the American Landscape: Chiang Yee's American Travelogues	15	(24)
Female Nomadology: Re-reading Ethnic Schizophrenia in Hualing Nieh's Mulberry and Peach	39	(18)
``We Just Cooked Chinese Food!'': Gastronomic Mobility and Model Minority Discourse in David Wong Louie's Novel The Barbarians Are Coming	57	(20)
Transnationality, Heterogeneity, and Spatial Negotiation in Asian American Fiction	77	(28)
Notes	105	(10)
Works Cited	115	(8)
Index	123