Assimilating Asians

Chu Patricia P. Chu

Description

One of the central tasks of Asian American literature, argues Patricia P. Chu, has been to construct Asian American identities in the face of existing, and often contradictory, ideas about what it means to be an American. Chu examines the model of the Anglo-American bildungsroman and shows how Asian American writers have adapted it to express their troubled and unstable position in the United States. By aligning themselves with U.S. democratic ideals while also questioning the historical realities of exclusion, internment, and discrimination, Asian American authors, contends Chu, do two kinds of ideological work: they claim Americanness for Asian Americans, and they create accounts of Asian ethnicity that deploy their specific cultures and histories to challenge established notions of Americanness.Chu further demonstrates that Asian American male and female writers engage different strategies in the struggle to adapt, reflecting their particular, gender-based relationships to immigration, work, and cultural representation. While offering fresh perspectives on the well-known writings-both fiction and memoir-of Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, Bharati Mukherjee, Frank Chin, and David Mura, Assimilating Asians also provides new insight into the work of less recognized but nevertheless important writers like Carlos Bulosan, Edith Eaton, Younghill Kang, Milton Murayama, and John Okada. As she explores this expansive range of texts-published over the course of the last century by authors of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and Indian origin or descent-Chu is able to illuminate her argument by linking it to key historical and cultural events.Assimilating Asians makes an important contribution to the fields of Asian American, American, and women's studies. Scholars of Asian American literature and culture, as well as of ethnicity and assimilation, will find particular interest and value in this book.

Sujets

• USA
• Ethnic studies
• États-Unis
• Gender studies

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 29 mars 2000
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822381358
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Assimilating Asians

NEW AMERICANISTS

A series edited by Donald E. Pease

Assimilating Asians Gendered Strategies of Authorship in Asian America

Patricia P. Chu

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS Durham and London 

© Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of American on acid-free paper +

Typeset in Minion by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

‘‘Tripmaster Monkey,Frank Chin, and the Chinese Heroic Tradition,’’

reprinted fromArizona Quarterly. (), by permission of

the Regents of The University of Arizona.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

appear on the last printed page of this book.

  -      

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Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: ‘‘A City of Words’’

ONE. Myths of Americanization

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America in the Heart: Political Desire in Younghill Kang, Carlos Bulosan, Milton Murayama, and John Okada Authoring Subjects: Frank Chin and David Mura Womens’ Plots: Edith Maude Eaton and Bharati Mukherjee

TWO. Constructing Chinese American Ethnicity

‘‘That Was China, That Was Their Fate’’: Ethnicity and Agency inThe Joy Luck Club Tripmaster Monkey,Frank Chin, and the Chinese Heroic Tradition

CODA. ‘‘What We Should Become, What We Were’’

Notes  Bibliography  Index 

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Acknowledgments

In writing this book, I received guidance, solace, inspiration, and stimula- tion from many friends and colleagues. Molly Hite, Mary Jacobus, Dorothy Mermin, Satya Mohanty, Paul Sawyer, and Harry Shaw provided various seeds for thought at the formative stages of my graduate training, and I hope they will see connections between my work and their superb teaching. Srinivas Aravamudan pointed me toward a needed rethinking of ‘‘super- stition,’’ Mark Scroggins provided a trustworthy editorial eye, Gayle Wald encouraged me to address the suppressed topic of Asian women in the early chapters, and K. Scott Wong provided feedback and needed background material on the Chinese American chapters. In addition, Marianne Noble, Terry Rowden, and many of the friends acknowledged below read and com- mented on parts of this book at various stages. Since my arrival at George Washington University, Maxine Clair, Robert Combs, David Hackett, Ronald Johnson, Jim Maddox, Daniel Moshenberg, Faye Moskowitz, Jon Quitslund, Judith Plotz, Ann Romines, Jane Shore, and Chris Sten have provided invaluable mentoring, strategic support, and friendship. With Edward Caress, Donald Lehman, and Linda Salamon, my department chairs have been responsible for leaves that helped to move this work toward completion. Miriam Dow, William Griffith, Linda Kaufman, Phyllis Palmer, and Ruth Wallace provided tips about leave policies at a cru- cial time. Constance Kibler and Lucinda Kilby provided additional help and humor in practical office matters. The book was written with the support of the University Facilitating Fund and the Junior Scholar Fund of George Washington University. Sau-ling Cynthia Wong brought her sharp critical mind and sense of