Form And Transformation: In Asian American Literature

by Zhou, Xiaojing; Najmi, Samina

• ISBN13: 9780295985046
• ISBN10: 0295985046
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of Washington Pr

Summary

This critical anthology draws on current theoretical movements to examine the breadth of Asian American literature from the earliest to the most recent writers. Covering fiction, essays, poetry, short stories, ethnography, and autobiography, Form and Transformation in Asian American Literature advances the development of a theoretically informed, historically and culturally specific methodology for studying this increasingly complex field. As the old paradigms of "cultural nationalism" have become inadequate, and new concepts and methodologies of a diasporic discourse are still in the making, this volume provides a theoretical and critical framework for rethinking issues raised by both old and new perspectives

Table of Contents

Introduction: Critical Theories and Methodologies in Asian American Literary Studies	3	(27)
Zhou Xiaojing
Winnifred Eaton/Onoto Watanna: Establishing Ethnographic Authority	30	(18)
Dominika Ferens
The Seduction of Origins: Sui Sin Far and the Race for Tradition	48	(29)
David Shih
Political Resistance, Cultural Appropriation, and the Performance of Manhood in Yung Wing's My Life in China and America	77	(24)
Floyd Cheung
Reading Ethnography: The Cold War Social Science of Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter and Brown v. Board of Education	101	(24)
Christopher Douglas
Abraham Verghese Doctors Autobiography in His Own Country	125	(19)
Rajini Srikanth
Cambodian American Autobiography: Testimonial Discourse	144	(24)
Teri Shaffer Yamada
Two Hat Softeners ``in the Trade Confession'': John Yau and Kimiko Hahn	168	(22)
Zhou Xiaojing
Beyond the Length of an Average Penis: Reading across Traditions in the Poetry of Timothy Liu	190	(19)
Richard Serrano
Decolonizing the Bildungsroman: Narratives of War and Womanhood in Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman	209	(22)
Samina Najmi
Short Story Cycle and Hawai'i Bildungsroman: Writing Self, Place, and Family in Lois-Ann Yamanaka's Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers	231	(18)
Rocio G. Davis
Recasting the Spy, Rewriting the Story: The Politics of Genre in Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee	249	(19)
Tina Y. Chen
Telling Twice-Told Tales All Over Again: Literary and Historical Subversion in Bharati Mukherjee's The Holder of the World	268	(17)
Pallavi Rastogi
Notes on Contributors	285	(4)
Index	289