Reading the Literatures of Asian America

by Lim, Shirley

• ISBN13: 9780877229360
• ISBN10: 0877229368
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-10-19
• Publisher: Temple Univ Pr

Summary

With the recent proliferation of critically acclaimed literature by Asian American writers, this groundbreaking collection of essays provides a unique resource for students, scholars, and the general reading public. The homogeneity implied by the term "Asian American" is replaced in this volume with the rich diversity of highly disparate peoples. Languages, religions, races and cultural and national backgrounds. Examining a century of Asian American literature from the late 19th century up through the contemporary experimental drama of Ping Chong, the contributors address the work of writers with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, East Indian, and Pacific Island ancestry. Asian Canadian and Hawaiian literature are also considered. Author note: Shirley Geok-lin Lim is Professor of Asian Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. >P>Amy Ling is Associate Professor of English and Director of Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Foreword	xi
Elaine H. Kim
Introduction	3	(10)
Shirley Geok-lin Lim
Amy Ling
PART I AMBIVALENT IDENTITIES
The Ambivalent American: Asian American Literature on the Cusp	13	(20)
Shirley Geok-lin Lim
Versions of Identity in Post-Activist Asian American Poetry	33	(16)
George Uba
Filipinos in the United States and Their Literature of Exile	49	(30)
Oscar V. Campomanes
Beyond ``Clay Walls'': Korean American Literature	79	(18)
Chung-Hei Yun
Witnessing the Japanese Canadian Experience in World War II: Processual Structure, Symbolism, and Irony in Joy Kogawa's Obasan	97	(14)
Cheng Lok Chua
PART II RACE AND GENDER
Ethnicizing Gender: An Exploration of Sexuality as Sign in Chinese Immigrant Literature	111	(20)
Sau-ling Cynthia Wong
Rebels and Heroines: Subversive Narratives in the Stories of Wakako Yamauchi and Hisaye Yamamoto	131	(20)
Stan Yogi
Facing the Incurable: Patriarchy in Eat a Bowl of Tea	151	(12)
Ruth Y. Hsiao
``Don't Tell'': Imposed Silences in The Color Purple and The Woman Warrior	163	(28)
King-Kok Cheung
Tang Ao in America: Male Subject Positions in China Men	191	(24)
Donald C. Goellnicht
PART III BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES
Sense of Place, History, and the Concept of the ``Local'' in Hawaii's Asian/Pacific American Literatures	215	(24)
Stephen H. Sumida
Momotaro's Exile: John Okada's No-No Boy	239	(20)
Gayle K. Fujita Sato
Blue Dragon, White Tiger: The Bicultural Stance of Vietnamese American Literature	259	(12)
Renny Christopher
From Isolation to Integration: Vietnamese Americans in Tran Dieu Hang's Fiction	271	(14)
Qui-Phiet Tran
South Asia Writes North America: Prose Fictions and Autobiographies from the Indian Diaspora	285	(20)
Craig Tapping
PART IV REPRESENTATIONS AND SELF-REPRESENTATIONS
Creating One's Self: The Eaton Sisters	305	(14)
Amy Ling
The Production of Chinese American Tradition: Displacing American Orientalist Discourse	319	(14)
David Leiwei Li
Clashing Constructs of Reality: Reading Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book as Indigenous Ethnography	333	(16)
Patricia Lin
The Death of Asia on the American Field of Representation	349	(10)
James S. Moy
Ping Chong's Terra In/Cognita: Monsters on Stage	359	(16)
Suzanne R. Westfall
Notes on the Contributors	375