Irrawaddy Tango

"A pepper-tongued, tango-dancing Asian beauty rises from a village girlhood to become the wife of her country's dictator and then a leader of the rebel forces arrayed against him. She is the electric eponymous heroine of a novel that resonates with the fevers and tumults of our era, that opens with a captive lion's roar and moves halfway around the world and through our century - from the turbulent Asian country here called Daya to America and back, from the 1940s to the 1990s." "From our earliest glimpses of the edgy young girl in a busy, gossipy, close-knit river hamlet, we know we are in the presence of a star: energized, funny, dangerously savvy, and on the move from the day when a boy in her compound teaches her the dance that will name her and crucially affect her fate." "It is a fate that carries her, dazzled, to Daya's capital and the talent contest where her performance (in a sun-and-star-spangled dress) of the "Irrawaddy Tango" captures the obsessed attention of the tough, ambitious colonel, Supremo - an adventurer already on the threshold of power - whom, on a wild impulse, she marries. We see her swimming against the fierce currents of our time, maintaining her equally fierce integrity in the face of her dubious celebrity as consort to Daya's hated, absolute, yet precarious head of state, her capture by the Jesu guerrillas in the Punished Provinces, where she is first prisoner, then foot soldier, then a leader...her recapture, rescue, exile, and mysterious return." "Ten years after Wendy Law-Yone's greatly admired The Coffin Tree, she gives us a novel equally powerful - a novel that, like its heroine, shocks and moves us by its fire and color, by its fluctuation of emotional tone from harsh to tender, cruel to comic, to frighteningly quiet. An unfaltering evocation of lives lived on the rim of the volcano."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

When the world thinks of Burma, it is often in relation to Nobel laureate and icon Aung San Suu Kyi. But beyond her is another world, one that complicates the overdetermination of Burma as a pariah state and myths about the “high status” of Southeast Asian women. Highlighting and critiquing this fraught terrain, Tamara C. Ho’s Romancing Human Rights maps “Burmese women” as real and imagined figures across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. More than a recitation of “on the ground” facts, Ho’s groundbreaking scholarship—the first monograph to examine Anglophone literature and dynamics of gender and race in relation to Burma—brings a critical lens to contemporary literature, film, and politics through the use of an innovative feminist/queer methodology. She crosses intellectual boundaries to illustrate how literary and gender analysis can contribute to discourses surrounding and informing human rights—and in the process offers a new voice in the debates about representation, racialization, migration, and spirituality. Romancing Human Rights demonstrates how Burmese women break out of prisons, both real and discursive, by writing themselves into being. Ho assembles an eclectic archive that includes George Orwell, Aung San Suu Kyi, critically acclaimed authors Ma Ma Lay and Wendy Law-Yone, and activist Zoya Phan. Her close readings of literature and politicized performances by women in Burma, the Burmese diaspora, and the United States illuminate their contributions as authors, cultural mediators, and practitioner-citizens. Using flexible, polyglot rhetorical tactics and embodied performances, these authors creatively articulate alter/native epistemologies—regionally situated knowledges and decolonizing viewpoints that interrogate and destabilize competing transnational hegemonies, such as U.S. moral imperialism and Asian militarized dictatorship. Weaving together the fictional and non-fictional, Ho’s gendered analysis makes Romancing Human Rights a unique cultural studies project that bridges postcolonial studies, area studies, and critical race/ethnic studies—a must-read for those with an interest in fields of literature, Asian and Asian American studies, history, politics, religion, and women’s and gender studies.

The Routledge Companion to Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature offers a general introduction as well as a range of critical approaches to this important and expanding field. Divided into three sections, the volume: Introduces "keywords" connecting the theories, themes and methodologies distinctive to Asian American Literature Addresses historical periods, geographies and literary identities Looks at different genre, form and interdisciplinarity With 41 essays from scholars in the field this collection is a comprehensive guide to a significant area of literary study for students and teachers of Ethnic American, Asian diasporic and Pacific Islander Literature. Contributors: Christine Bacareza Balance, Victor Bascara, Leslie Bow, Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson, Tina Chen, Anne Anlin Cheng, Mark Chiang, Patricia P. Chu, Robert Diaz, Pin-chia Feng, Tara Fickle, Donald Goellnicht, Helena Grice, Eric Hayot, Tamara C. Ho, Hsuan L. Hsu, Mark C. Jerng, Laura Hyun Yi Kang, Daniel Y. Kim, Jodi Kim, James Kyung-Jin Lee, Rachel C. Lee, Jinqi Ling, Colleen Lye, Sean Metzger, Susette Min, Susan Y. Najita, Viet Thanh Nguyen, erin Khuê Ninh, Eve Oishi, Josephine Nock-Hee Park, Steven Salaita, Shu-mei Shi, Rajini Srikanth, Brian Kim Stefans, Erin Suzuki, Theresa Tensuan, Cynthia Tolentino, Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, Eleanor Ty, Traise Yamamoto, Timothy Yu.

Understanding multicultural feminist perspectives is vital for clinicians working to effectively help women in therapy. Feminist Reflections on Growth and Transformation: Asian American Women in Therapy provides therapists with valuable insight and research into the identities of Asian and Asian American women, all toward the crucial goal of being more effective when providing therapeutic help. In-depth explorations into the women’s personal experiences and psychological issues provide an empowering multicultural feminist viewpoint that challenges assumptions and stereotypes about their identities while presenting innovative therapeutic approaches. Identity is made up from several factors, such as worldview, beliefs, values, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, age, and religious orientation. Feminist Reflections on Growth and Transformation: Asian American Women in Therapy explores how these common factors impact psychotherapy approaches for women of Asian American backgrounds. This unique text presents the current research, what the data mean for adjusting clinical strategies, and personal accounts from Asian and Asian American women. Each chapter is extensively referenced. Topics in Feminist Reflections on Growth and Transformation: Asian American Women in Therapy include: breaking free of the passive, subservient stereotypes defining gender identity cultural and identity issues emotional parity negotiations in Chinese immigrant women’s marital relationships suicide as a means of agency rather than simply a cry for help the use of feminist and multicultural principles with survivors of domestic violence research on Asian American lesbians’ health integrating multiculturalism and feminism in the treatment of eating disorders innovative therapeutic approach based on Hindu understandings of Shakti approaches to work on body image and eating disorders group counseling with Asian American women training multicultural feminist therapy practitioners Feminist Reflections on Growth and Transformation: Asian American Women in Therapy is an insightful exploration of the culturally sensitive knowledge and skills clinicians need to work more effectively with female clients of Asian ancestry. This stimulating work is important reading for therapists, counselors, psychologists, and others in the mental health and social work fields.

In this age of rapid transition, Asian American studies and American studies in general are being reconfigured to reflect global migrations and the diverse populations of the United States. Asian American literature, in particular, has embodied the crisis of identity that is at the heart of larger academic and political debates surrounding diversity and the inclusion and exclusion of immigrant and refugee groups. These issues underlie the very principles on which literature, culture, and art are produced, preserved, taught, and critiqued. Words Matter is the first collection of interviews with 20th-century Asian American writers. The conversations that have been gathered here—interviews with twenty writers possessing unique backgrounds, perspectives, thematic concerns, and artistic priorities—effectively dispel any easy categorizations of people of Asian descent. These writers comment on their own work and speak frankly about aesthetics, politics, and the challenges they have encountered in pursuing a writing career. They address, among other issues, the expectations attached to the label "Asian American," the burden of representation shouldered by ethnic artists, and the different demands of "mainstream" and ethnic audiences.

Presents critical perspectives on the works of Asian-American writers, including Gish Jen, Cheng-rae Lee, and Maxine Hong Kingston.

This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date reference work on Asian Americans, comprising three volumes that address a broad range of topics on various Asian and Pacific Islander American groups from 1848 to the present day. This three-volume work represents a leading reference resource for Asian American studies that gives students, researchers, librarians, teachers, and other interested readers the ability to easily locate accurate, up-to-date information about Asian ethnic groups, historical and contemporary events, important policies, and notable individuals. Written by leading scholars in their fields of expertise and authorities in diverse professions, the entries devote attention to diverse Asian and Pacific Islander American groups as well as the roles of women, distinct socioeconomic classes, Asian American political and social movements, and race relations involving Asian Americans.