Literary Gestures: The Aesthetic in Asian American Writing

by Rocio G Davis (Editor), Sue-Im Lee (Editor)

Overview

Literary Gestures:The Aesthetic in Asian American Writing contests the dominance of materialist and cultural critiques in Asian American literary discourse by re-centering critical attention around issues of aesthetics and literary form. Collapsing the perceived divisions between the "ethnic" and the "aesthetic" in Asian American literary criticism, the eleven original essays in this volume provide theoretically sophisticated and formally sensitive readings of works in prose, poetry, and drama. These contributions bring discussions of genre, canonicity, narrative, and literary value to the fore to show how aesthetic and formal concerns play an important part in the production and consumption of these works. By calling for a more balanced mode of criticism, this collection invites students and scholars to reinvest in the literary, not as a negation of the sociopolitical, but as a complementary strategy in reading and understanding Asian American literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781592133666
Publisher:	Temple University Press
Publication date:	08/31/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	347 KB

About the Author

Rocío G. Davis is Associate Professor of American and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Navarra and author of Transcultural Reinventions: Asian American and Asian Canadian Short-Story Cycles.

Sue-Im Lee is Assistant Professor of English at Temple University.

Contributors: Mita Banerjee, University of Siegen, Germany; Mark Chiang, University of Illinois-Chicago; Patricia P. Chu, George Washington University; Iyko Day, University of California-Berkeley; Donatella Izzo, Universita degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale," Italy; Kimberly M. Jew, Washington & Lee University; Christina Mar, University of California-Riverside; Josephine Nock-Hee Park, University of Pennsylvania; Gita Rajan, Fairfield University; Celestine Woo, Fort Lewis College; and the editors.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The Aesthetic in Asian American Literary Discourse – Sue-Im LeePart I. Asian American Critical Discourse in Academia2. Autonomy and Representation: Aesthetics and the Crisis of Asian American Cultural Politics in the Controversy over Blu's Hanging – Mark Chiang3. Interventing Innocence: Race, 'Resistance,' and the Asian North American Avant-Garde – Iyko DayPart II. Aesthetics and Ethnicity4. The Asian American in a Turtleneck: Fusing the Aesthetic and the Didactic in Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey – Mita Banerjee5. The Language of Ethnicity: John Yau's Poetry and the Ethnic/Aesthetic Divide – Christina Mar6. "A Flame against a Sleeping Lake of Petrol": Form and the Sympathetic Witness in Selvadurai's Funny Boy and Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost – Patricia P. Chu7. Poignant Pleasures: Feminist Ethics as Aesthetics in Jhumpa Lahiri and Anita Rao Badami – Gita RajanPart III. Intertexts: Asian American Writing and Literary Movements8. "A Loose Horse": Asian American Poetry and the Aesthetics of the Ideogram – Josephine Nock-Hee Park9. "A New Rule for the Imagination": Rewriting Modernism in Bone – Donatella IzzoPart IV. Rewriting Form, Reading for New Expression10. Performing Dialogic Subjectivities: The Aesthetic Project of Autobiographical Collaboration in Days and Nights in Calcutta – Rocío G. Davis11. Bicultural World Creation: Laurence Yep, Cynthia Kadohata, and Asian American Fantasy – Celestine Woo12. Dismantling the Realist Character in Velina Hasu Houston's Tea and David Henry Hwang's FOB – Kimberly M. JewNotesNotes on ContributorsIndex

What People are Saying About This

Kandice Chuh

The editors and authors have done an excellent job of offering essays that are individually and collectively on point, consistently illuminating, and thoroughly enjoyable—the volume, with respect to this last point, reflects the pleasures and power of aesthetic investigation of which it speaks.