Fixer Chao by
When William Narciso Paulinha, a Filipino street hustler, meets Shem C, a disreputable, social-climbing writer embittered by his lack of success, the Feng Shui scam of the century is born.
American Born Chinese by
Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of young Chinese Americans trying to participate in the popular culture.
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author's manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend.
Insomnia and the Aunt by
An ambient novel composed of black and white photographs, postcards, Google reverse searches, letters, appendices, an index to an imaginary novel, reruns, and footnotes. Structured like everybody's scrapbook, and blending fiction with nonfictional events, this is about identities taken and given up, and about the passions of an immigrant life, rebroadcast as furniture.
Lucky Fish by
LUCKY FISH travels along a lush current—a confluence of leaping vocabulary and startling formal variety, with upwelling gratitude at its source: for love, motherhood, "new hope," and the fluid and rich possibilities of words themselves. With an exuberant appetite for "my morning song, my scurry-step, my dew," anchored in complicated human situations, this astounding young poet's third collection of poems is her strongest yet.
Orientalism by
Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author discusses Orientalism, defined as the West's patronizing representations of "The East"—the societies and peoples who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East.
The Thing about Luck by
Just when twelve-year-old Summer thinks nothing else can possibly go wrong in a year of bad luck, an emergency takes her parents to Japan, leaving Summer to care for her little brother while helping her grandmother cook and do laundry for harvest workers.
Umbilical Hospital by
UMBILICAL HOSPITAL is a poetic ekphrasis of Leslie Thornton's Sheep Machine, part of her Binocular Series. Filmed in Saas-Fee, it shows a flock of sheep grazing next to the structural support of cable car system. Leslie Thornton views her video installation as film paintings.
We Gon' Be Alright by
In these provocative, powerful essays acclaimed writer/journalist Jeff Chang (Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, Who We Be) takes an incisive and wide-ranging look at the recent tragedies and widespread protests that have shaken the country.
The Obvious Earth by
Telling the bees -- Against heaven -- A short history of percussion -- In defense of swimming -- Bulk -- A short history of percussion -- Guide -- Ships keep moving -- A short history of percussion -- On staying -- Food processing -- A short history of percussion.
The Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty by
The author is a Chinese-American whose father named her after Marilyn Monroe. "And there I was, a wayward pink baby/ named after some tragic white woman/ swollen with gin and Nembutal." With drawings by R.W. Scholes.
The Columbia Guide to Asian American Literature Since 1945 by
Guiyou Huang traces the history of Asian American literature from the end of World War II to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Huang covers six genres: anthology, autobiography/memoir, drama, fiction, poetry, and short fiction; reviews major historical developments and social movements; explains key literary terms; and offers a narrative, A-to-Z guide of major Asian American writers and their works, plus their critical reception.
Asian American Literature by
The focus of this book is on contemporary writing, from the 1970s onwards, although it also traces over a hundred years of Asian American literary production in prose, poetry, drama and criticism. The main body of the book comprises five periodized chapters that highlight important events in a nation-state that has historically rendered Asian Americans invisible. Of particular importance to the writers selected for case studies are questions of racial identity, cultural history and literary value with respect to dominant American ideologies.
Historical Dictionary of Asian American Literature and Theater by
The Historical Dictionary of Asian American Literature and Theater covers the history, traced year by year from 1887 to the present, in a chronology, and the introduction provides a good overview. The most important section is the dictionary, with over 600 substantial and cross-referenced entries on authors, books, and genres as well as more general ones describing the historical background, cultural features, techniques and major theatres and clubs.
An Interethnic Companion to Asian American Literature by
This book is a survey of literature by North American writers of Asian descent, in terms of both national origins (Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, South Asian, Vietnamese) and shared concerns. It introduces readers to the distinctive literary history of each group of writers and discusses issues that connect or divide these different groups.
Form and Transformation in Asian American Literature by
This critical anthology draws on current theoretical movements to examine the breadth of Asian American literature from the earliest to the most recent writers. Covering fiction, essays, poetry, short stories, ethnography, and autobiography, Form and Transformation in Asian American Literature advances the development of a theoretically informed, historically and culturally specific methodology for studying this increasingly complex field.
Cities of Others: Reimagining Urban Spaces in Asian American Literature by
Asian American literature abounds with complex depictions of American cities as spaces that reinforce racial segregation and prevent interactions across boundaries of race, culture, class, and gender. However, in Cities of Others, Xiaojing Zhou uncovers a much different narrative, providing the most comprehensive examination to date of how Asian American writers - both celebrated and overlooked - depict urban settings. Zhou goes beyond examining popular portrayals of Chinatowns by paying equal attention to life in other parts of the city.
Consumption and Identity in Asian American Coming-of-Age Novels by
This interdisciplinary study examines the theme of consumption in Asian American literature, connection representations of cooking and eating with ethnic identity formation. Using four discrete modes of identification--historic pride, consumerism, mourning, and fusion--Jennifer Ho examines how Asian American adolescents challenge and revise their cultural legacies and experiment with alternative ethnic affiliations through their relationships to food.
The Americas of Asian American Literature: Gendered Fictions of Nation and Transnation by
Drawing on a wide array of literary, historical, and theoretical sources, Rachel Lee addresses current debates on the relationship among Asian American ethnic identity, national belonging, globalization, and gender. Lee argues that scholars have traditionally placed undue emphasis on ethnic-based political commitments--whether these are construed as national or global--in their readings of Asian American texts. This has constrained the intelligibility of stories that are focused less on ethnicity than on kinship, family dynamics, eroticism, and gender roles.
Immigrant Subjectivities in Asian American and Asian Diaspora Literatures by
Offers a new way of reading Asian American and Asian Diaspora literatures, thereby addressing an overlapping lacuna in ethnic, postcolonial, and area studies: the construction of immigrant subjectivities.
Racial Asymmetries: Asian American Fictional Worlds by
Challenging the tidy links among authorial position, narrative perspective, and fictional content, Stephen Hong Sohn argues that Asian American authors have never been limited to writing about Asian American characters or contexts. Racial Asymmetries specifically examines the importance of first person narration in Asian American fiction published in the postrace era, focusing on those cultural productions in which the author's ethnoracial makeup does not directly overlap with that of the storytelling perspective.
Tell This Silence: Asian American Women Writers and the Politics of Speech by
Tell This Silence by Patti Duncan explores multiple meanings of speech and silence in Asian American women's writings in order to explore relationships among race, gender, sexuality, and national identity. Duncan argues that contemporary definitions of U.S. feminism must be expanded to recognize the ways in which Asian American women have resisted and continue to challenge the various forms of oppression in their lives.
Writing the Ghetto: Class, Authorship, and the Asian American Ethnic Enclave by
In the United States, perhaps no minority group is considered as'model'or successful as the Asian American community. Rather than living in ominous'ghettoes,'Asian Americans are described as residing in positive-sounding'ethnic enclaves.'Writing the Ghetto helps clarify the hidden or unspoken class inequalities faced by Asian Americans, while insightfully analyzing the effect such notions have had on their literary voices.Yoonmee Chang examines the class structure of Chinatowns, Koreatowns, Little Tokyos, and Little Indias, arguing that ghettoization in these spaces is disguised.
The Semblance of Identity: Aesthetic Mediation in Asian American Literature by
The history of Asian American literature reveals the ongoing attempt to work through the fraught relationship between identity politics and literary representation. This relationship is especially evident in literary works which claim that their content represents the socio-historical world. The Semblance of Identityargues that the reframing of the field as a critical, rather than identity-based, project nonetheless continues to rely on the logics of identity.
Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier by
This book argues that the invention of Asian American identities serves as an index to the historical formation of modern America. By tracing constructions of "Asian American" to an interpenetrating dynamic between Asia and America, the author obtains a deeper understanding of key issues in American culture, history, and society.
Asian American Society: An Encyclopedia by
Asian American Society: An Encyclopedia provides a thorough introduction to the wide–ranging and fast–developing field of Asian American studies. Published with the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS), two volumes of the four-volume encyclopedia feature more than 300 A-to-Z articles authored by AAAS members and experts in the field who examine the social, cultural, psychological, economic, and political dimensions of the Asian American experience.
Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture by
The sheer diversity of the Asian American populace makes them an ambiguous racial category. Indeed, the 2010 U.S. Census lists twenty-four Asian-ethnic groups, lumping together under one heading people with dramatically different historical backgrounds and cultures. In Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture, Jennifer Ann Ho shines a light on the hybrid and indeterminate aspects of race, revealing ambiguity to be paramount to a more nuanced understanding both of race and of what it means to be Asian American.
Asian American Studies Now by
Asian American Studies Now truly represents the enormous changes occurring in Asian American communities and the world, changes that require a reconsideration of how the interdisciplinary field of Asian American studies is defined and taught. This comprehensive anthology, arranged in four parts and featuring a stellar group of contributors, summarizes and defines the current shape of this rapidly changing field, addressing topics such as transnationalism, U.S. imperialism, multiracial identity, racism, immigration, citizenship, social justice, and pedagogy.
Queering Contemporary Asian American Art by
This book takes Asian American differences as its point of departure, and brings together artists and scholars to challenge normative assumptions, essentialisms, and methodologies within Asian American art and visual culture. Artist interviews, artworks, and critical essays explore contemporary currents and experiences within Asian American art, including the multiple axes of race and identity; queer bodies and forms; kinship and affect; and digital identities and performances.
Contemporary Directions in Asian American Dance by
The contributors to this volume address such topics as the role of the 1960s Asian American movement in creating Japanese American taiko groups, and the experience of internment during World War II influencing butoh dance in Canada.