Nation, Race and History in Asian American Literature : Re-Membering the Body

by Zamora, Maria C.

• ISBN13: 9781433102684
• ISBN10: 1433102684
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-08-01
• Publisher: Peter Lang Pub Inc

Summary

Nation, Race & History in Asian American Literature discusses the ideological processes at work in nationalism, both in its assertion that the nation is natural and self-evident, and in the way it seeks to suppress the irrational and contingent. The book examines the symbolic processes through which the United States constitutes its subjects as citizens, connecting such processes to the global dynamics of empire building and a suppressed history of American imperialism. Through a comparative analysis of David Henry Hwang's M Butterfly, Lois-Ann Yamanaka's Blu's Hanging, and Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters, this book considers the ways in which bodies challenge the categories asserted in nation-building. It examines the body's significance in the dominant imaginings of such concepts as "Asia" and "America," and designates the body as a contested terrain in and of itself. Maria C. Zamora proposes that underwritten by the vast histories of American imperial migrations, there are texts and bodies that challenge and reconstitute the ever-vexed definition of "American." In "re-membering" such bodies, Zamora proclaims our bodies as actual living texts, texts that are constantly bearing, contesting, and transforming meaning. Nation, Race, & History in Asian American Literature will engage scholars interested in cultural and critical theory, citizenship and national identity, race and ethnicity, the body, gender studies, and transnational literature.

Author Biography

Maria (Mia) C. Zamora is Assistant Professor of English and Coordinator of the World Literature Program at Kean University in New Jersey.

Table of Contents

Asian American Literature and its Discontents: The Body, The Nation	p. 1
Artifice in David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly: Sexuality, Race, and the Seduction of Theater	p. 33
The Rope in Lois-Ann Yamanaka's Blu's Hanging: Self-Representation and Survival	p. 53
History and the Politics of Representation: The Collage in Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters	p. 83
Afterword	p. 107
Notes	p. 109
Bibliography	p. 121
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