Asian American Literary Studies

A recent explosion of publishing activity by a wide range of talented writers has placed Asian American literature in the limelight. As the field of Asian American literary studies gains increasing recognition, however, questions of misreading and appropriation inevitably arise. How is the growing body of Asian American works to be read? What holds them together to constitute a tradition? What distinguishes this tradition from the "mainstream" canon and other "minority" literatures? In the first comprehensive book on Asian American literature since Elaine Kim's ground-breaking 1982 volume, Sau-ling Wong addresses these issues and explores their implications for the multiculturalist agenda. Wong does so by establishing the "intertextuality" of Asian American literature through the study of four motifs--food and eating, the Doppelg,nger figure, mobility, and play--in their multiple sociohistorical contexts. Occurring across ethnic subgroup, gender, class, generational, and historical boundaries, these motifs resonate with each other in distinctly Asian American patterns that universalistic theories cannot uncover. Two rhetorical figures from Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, "Necessity" and "Extravagance," further unify this original, wide-ranging investigation. Authors studied include Carlos Bulosan, Frank Chin, Ashley Sheun Dunn, David Henry Hwang, Lonny Kaneko, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa, David Wong Louie, Darrell Lum, Wing Tek Lum, Toshio Mori, Bharati Mukherjee, Fae Myenne Ng, Bienvenido Santos, Monica Sone, Amy Tan, Yoshiko Uchida, Shawn Wong, Hisaye Yamamoto, and Wakako Yamauchi.

Discusses Asian American literature from various international perspectives. This volume covers a range of interdisciplinary topics in contemporary Asian American Studies across a variety of ethnic groups: Burmese, Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, and Vietnamese.

This book identifies the forces behind the explosive growth in Asian American literature. It charts its emergence and explores both the unique place of Asian Americans in American culture and what that place says about the way Americanness is defined.

With the increasing globalization of culture, American literature has become a significant body of text for classrooms outside of the United States. Bringing together essays from a wide range of scholars in a number of countries, including China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the United States, Crossing Oceans focuses on strategies for critically reading and teaching American literature, especially ethnic American literature, within the Asia Pacific region. This book will be an important tool for scholars and teachers from around the globe who desire fresh perspectives on American literature from a variety of national contexts. The contributors use perspectives dealing with race, feminism, cultural geography, and structures of power as lenses through which to interpret texts and engage students' critical thinking. The collection is 'crossing oceans' through the transnational perspectives of the contributors who come from and/or teach at colleges and universities in both Asia and the United States. Many of the essays reveal how narratives of and about ethnic Americans can be used to redefine and reconfigure not only American literary studies, but also constructions of Asian and American identities.

Form as function in Asian American literature.

This volume traces the formation of the Asian American literary canon and the field of Asian American Studies from 1965-1996. It is intended for an academic audience, ranging from advanced undergraduate students to scholars from a variety of disciplines, interested in the formation of Asian American literary studies from 1965-1996.