Form and Transformation in Asian American Literature

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. The essays in this anthology probe into hotly debated issues as well as understudied topics, including the relations between Asian American and other minority American writings.

Zhou Xiaojing is associate professor of English, University of the Pacific, Stockton, California. Samina Najmi is visiting assistant professor of cultural studies at Babson College, Babson Park, Massachusetts. Other contributors include Tina Y. Chen, Floyd Cheung, Rocío G. Davis, Christopher Douglas, Dominika Ferens, Pallavi Rastogi, Richard Serrano, David Shih, Rajini Srikanth, and Teri Shaffer Yamada.

Introduction: Critical Theories and Methodologies in Asian American Literary Studies / Zhou Xiaojing Winnifred Eaton / Onoto Watanna: Establishing Ethnographic Authority / Dominika Ferens The Seduction of Origins: Sui Sin Far and the Race for Tradition / David Shih Political Resistance, Cultural Appropriation, and the Performance of Manhood in Yung Wing's My Life in China and America / Floyd Cheung Reading Ethnography: The Cold War Social Science of Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter and Brown v. Board of Education / Christopher Douglas Abraham Verghese Doctors Autobiography in His Own Country / Rajini Srikanth Cambodian American Autobiography: Testimonial Discourse / Teri Shaffer Yamada Two Hat Softeners "in the Trade Confession": John Yau and Kimiko Hahn / Zhou Ziaojing Beyond the Length of an Average Penis: Reading Across Traditons in the Poetry of Timonty Liu / Richard Serrano Decolonizing the Bildungsroman: Narratives of War and Womanhood in Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman / Samina Najmi Short Story Cycle and Hawai'i Bildungsroman: Writing Self, Place, and Family in Lois-Ann Yamanaka's Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers / Rocio G. Davis Recasting the Spy, Rewriting the Story: The Politics of Genre in Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee / Tina Y. Chen Telling Twice-Told Tales All Over Again: Literary and Historical Subversion in Bharati Mukherjee's The Holder of the World / Pallavi Rastogi Notes on Contributors Index