Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195146998
- eISBN:
- 9780199787890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195146998.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American Colonial Literature
This chapter argues that the way critics have tended to read Asian American literature, as cultural works that demonstrate resistance or accommodation to the racist, sexist, and capitalist ...
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This chapter argues that the way critics have tended to read Asian American literature, as cultural works that demonstrate resistance or accommodation to the racist, sexist, and capitalist exploitation of Asian immigrants and Asian Americans, may be as much a reflection of the critics' professional histories, political priorities, and institutional locations than as what may be found in historically-framed, close readings of the works themselves. Furthermore, the relationship of critics to literature parallels the relationship of Asian American intellectuals generally to Asian America. Instead of resistance or accommodation, the chapter argues for using the same flexible strategies often chosen by authors and characters to navigate their political and ethical situations. These flexible strategies are an outcome of the ideological diversity of Asian American populations, which is often overlooked by Asian American intellectuals intent on uncovering only resistance.Less
This chapter argues that the way critics have tended to read Asian American literature, as cultural works that demonstrate resistance or accommodation to the racist, sexist, and capitalist exploitation of Asian immigrants and Asian Americans, may be as much a reflection of the critics' professional histories, political priorities, and institutional locations than as what may be found in historically-framed, close readings of the works themselves. Furthermore, the relationship of critics to literature parallels the relationship of Asian American intellectuals generally to Asian America. Instead of resistance or accommodation, the chapter argues for using the same flexible strategies often chosen by authors and characters to navigate their political and ethical situations. These flexible strategies are an outcome of the ideological diversity of Asian American populations, which is often overlooked by Asian American intellectuals intent on uncovering only resistance.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195146998
- eISBN:
- 9780199787890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195146998.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, American Colonial Literature
This chapter argues that contemporary Asian American intellectuals, who prefer to see themselves and the objects of their inquiry as bad subjects, are haunted by the specter of the model minority. ...
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This chapter argues that contemporary Asian American intellectuals, who prefer to see themselves and the objects of their inquiry as bad subjects, are haunted by the specter of the model minority. While model minority discourse allows for the inclusion of Asian Americans in American society at the cost of concessions to the legitimacy of American pluralism, the discourse of the bad subject allows for opposition to the hegemony of pluralism and capitalism, but at the cost of an inability to recognize meaningfully ideologically contradictory Asian Americans. The result of such a refusal is the failure of Asian American intellectuals to confront the transformation of Asian American identity into a commodity. The discourse of the bad subject also prevents Asian American intellectuals from seeing how they also practice interpellation, not only hailing those they identify as Asian Americans — who may think of themselves otherwise — but also hailing them to behave in particular ways as Asian Americans.Less
This chapter argues that contemporary Asian American intellectuals, who prefer to see themselves and the objects of their inquiry as bad subjects, are haunted by the specter of the model minority. While model minority discourse allows for the inclusion of Asian Americans in American society at the cost of concessions to the legitimacy of American pluralism, the discourse of the bad subject allows for opposition to the hegemony of pluralism and capitalism, but at the cost of an inability to recognize meaningfully ideologically contradictory Asian Americans. The result of such a refusal is the failure of Asian American intellectuals to confront the transformation of Asian American identity into a commodity. The discourse of the bad subject also prevents Asian American intellectuals from seeing how they also practice interpellation, not only hailing those they identify as Asian Americans — who may think of themselves otherwise — but also hailing them to behave in particular ways as Asian Americans.
Mary Bucholtz
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195327359
- eISBN:
- 9780199870639
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327359.003.0002
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
The chapter considers the different ways in which Southeast Asian American youth may use local varieties of English to negotiate ideologies of race and Asianness in the production of identity. Based ...
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The chapter considers the different ways in which Southeast Asian American youth may use local varieties of English to negotiate ideologies of race and Asianness in the production of identity. Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in an ethnoracially diverse California high school, the chapter shows how two high school girls, both refugees from Laos, navigate conflicting ideologies of Asian immigrant youth as model minorities on the one hand and as dangerous gangsters on the other. Each girl's style was produced linguistically neither in their native language nor in an ethnically distinctive “Asian American English” but through a positive or negative orientation to the linguistic resources of African American Vernacular English and youth slang. The vast diversity of Asian Americans as a panethnic category and the complexity of their identity practices and performances demands richer and more contextually nuanced theorizing of the relationship between language and identity.Less
The chapter considers the different ways in which Southeast Asian American youth may use local varieties of English to negotiate ideologies of race and Asianness in the production of identity. Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in an ethnoracially diverse California high school, the chapter shows how two high school girls, both refugees from Laos, navigate conflicting ideologies of Asian immigrant youth as model minorities on the one hand and as dangerous gangsters on the other. Each girl's style was produced linguistically neither in their native language nor in an ethnically distinctive “Asian American English” but through a positive or negative orientation to the linguistic resources of African American Vernacular English and youth slang. The vast diversity of Asian Americans as a panethnic category and the complexity of their identity practices and performances demands richer and more contextually nuanced theorizing of the relationship between language and identity.
Chong Chon-Smith
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462050
- eISBN:
- 9781626745292
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462050.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter explores Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers and Yardbird Reader 3 and shows how the editors utilize the rhetoric of Black radicalism as a means to conceptualize the racial ...
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This chapter explores Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers and Yardbird Reader 3 and shows how the editors utilize the rhetoric of Black radicalism as a means to conceptualize the racial emasculation of Asian American men from cultural manhood. During the post-civil rights moment of racial realignment, Black radical thought is the counterpoint to forced Asian ethnic assimilation; this Asian-Black sensibility challenges an uncritical complicity with the parable of racial magnetism that suppresses Black revolution. In Aiiieeeee!, the editors employ the vernacular languages, performance styles, and oppositional consciousness of Black masculinity during the formation of the Asian American Writing movement. In Yardbird Reader 3, the personal and professional bonds between Frank Chin and Ishmael Reed are important moments of Afro-Asian bonds in alternative multiethnic publishing. Both anthologies showcase the centrality of Blackness as a conceptual and material basis for Asian American writing to emerge in the post-civil rights era.Less
This chapter explores Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers and Yardbird Reader 3 and shows how the editors utilize the rhetoric of Black radicalism as a means to conceptualize the racial emasculation of Asian American men from cultural manhood. During the post-civil rights moment of racial realignment, Black radical thought is the counterpoint to forced Asian ethnic assimilation; this Asian-Black sensibility challenges an uncritical complicity with the parable of racial magnetism that suppresses Black revolution. In Aiiieeeee!, the editors employ the vernacular languages, performance styles, and oppositional consciousness of Black masculinity during the formation of the Asian American Writing movement. In Yardbird Reader 3, the personal and professional bonds between Frank Chin and Ishmael Reed are important moments of Afro-Asian bonds in alternative multiethnic publishing. Both anthologies showcase the centrality of Blackness as a conceptual and material basis for Asian American writing to emerge in the post-civil rights era.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195146998
- eISBN:
- 9780199787890
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195146998.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American Colonial Literature
This book argues that Asian American intellectuals have idealized Asian America, ignoring its saturation with capitalist practices. The idealization of Asian America means that Asian American ...
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This book argues that Asian American intellectuals have idealized Asian America, ignoring its saturation with capitalist practices. The idealization of Asian America means that Asian American intellectuals can neither grapple with Asian American ideological diversity nor recognize their own involvement with capitalist practices such as “panethnic entrepreneurship”, the selling of race and racial identity. The book's controversial thesis contradicts the widespread view among Asian American intellectuals — a class that includes academics, artists, politicians, and activists — that contemporary Asian America is a place of resistance to capitalist and racist exploitation. Making its case through a wide range of Asian American literature, which remains a critical arena of cultural production for Asian Americans, the book demonstrates that the literature embodies the complexities, conflicts, and potential future options of Asian American culture and politics.Less
This book argues that Asian American intellectuals have idealized Asian America, ignoring its saturation with capitalist practices. The idealization of Asian America means that Asian American intellectuals can neither grapple with Asian American ideological diversity nor recognize their own involvement with capitalist practices such as “panethnic entrepreneurship”, the selling of race and racial identity. The book's controversial thesis contradicts the widespread view among Asian American intellectuals — a class that includes academics, artists, politicians, and activists — that contemporary Asian America is a place of resistance to capitalist and racist exploitation. Making its case through a wide range of Asian American literature, which remains a critical arena of cultural production for Asian Americans, the book demonstrates that the literature embodies the complexities, conflicts, and potential future options of Asian American culture and politics.
Adrienne Lo and Angela Reyes
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195327359
- eISBN:
- 9780199870639
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327359.003.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
Asian Pacific Americans are one of the fastest growing groups in the U.S, yet their linguistic practices remain relatively understudied. In this review, we examine how Asian Pacific Americans have ...
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Asian Pacific Americans are one of the fastest growing groups in the U.S, yet their linguistic practices remain relatively understudied. In this review, we examine how Asian Pacific Americans have experienced erasure (Gal and Irvine 1995) within linguistic anthropology due in part to their racialization. APAs are often situated as non‐English‐speaking foreigners or as linguistically and culturally assimilated to middle‐class white norms. Research has therefore tended to focus on issues related to bilingualism, like heritage language learning and codeswitching, despite the fact that native English speakers are the fastest growing segment of this population. In this review, we discuss how APAs challenge existing paradigms of race, ethnicity and language, briefly examine previous research on APA language practices, and explain the organization of the volume.Less
Asian Pacific Americans are one of the fastest growing groups in the U.S, yet their linguistic practices remain relatively understudied. In this review, we examine how Asian Pacific Americans have experienced erasure (Gal and Irvine 1995) within linguistic anthropology due in part to their racialization. APAs are often situated as non‐English‐speaking foreigners or as linguistically and culturally assimilated to middle‐class white norms. Research has therefore tended to focus on issues related to bilingualism, like heritage language learning and codeswitching, despite the fact that native English speakers are the fastest growing segment of this population. In this review, we discuss how APAs challenge existing paradigms of race, ethnicity and language, briefly examine previous research on APA language practices, and explain the organization of the volume.
Josephine Nock-Hee Park
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195332735
- eISBN:
- 9780199868148
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332735.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, American, 20th Century Literature
The introduction reads figures of transpacific alliance in the Orientalist verse of Walt Whitman and Ernest Fenollosa. Their grand visions of a union between East and West installed a poetics of ...
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The introduction reads figures of transpacific alliance in the Orientalist verse of Walt Whitman and Ernest Fenollosa. Their grand visions of a union between East and West installed a poetics of transpacific accord and fueled modernist innovation. Against this backdrop, the introduction considers the rise of Asian America and sketches a genealogy of theorizing Asian American literature which grapples with a legacy of resistance to an Orientalist past.Less
The introduction reads figures of transpacific alliance in the Orientalist verse of Walt Whitman and Ernest Fenollosa. Their grand visions of a union between East and West installed a poetics of transpacific accord and fueled modernist innovation. Against this backdrop, the introduction considers the rise of Asian America and sketches a genealogy of theorizing Asian American literature which grapples with a legacy of resistance to an Orientalist past.
Angela Reyes
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195327359
- eISBN:
- 9780199870639
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327359.003.0003
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
This chapter examines the ways in which stereotypes of Asian Americans emerge as resources for Asian Americans. Drawing on theories and methods in linguistic anthropology, this chapter reveals how ...
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This chapter examines the ways in which stereotypes of Asian Americans emerge as resources for Asian Americans. Drawing on theories and methods in linguistic anthropology, this chapter reveals how metapragmatic stereotypes are circulating resources that can be creatively recontextualized in interaction. It analyzes video‐recorded interactions among Southeast Asian American teenagers as they reappropriate Asian American stereotypes to: 1) position themselves and others relative to stereotypes; 2) construct stereotyping as an oppressive practice to resist or as an interactional resource to celebrate; and 3) bring about interactional effects from widely circulating stereotypes (e.g., Asian American storeowner) that are different from those from locally circulating typifications (e.g., Asian American minivan driver). This chapter reveals how stereotypes can be creatively recontextualized in interaction, incorporated into people's lives to various effects, and sought out as a means of identifying and imagining oneself, others, and connections between individuals and groups.Less
This chapter examines the ways in which stereotypes of Asian Americans emerge as resources for Asian Americans. Drawing on theories and methods in linguistic anthropology, this chapter reveals how metapragmatic stereotypes are circulating resources that can be creatively recontextualized in interaction. It analyzes video‐recorded interactions among Southeast Asian American teenagers as they reappropriate Asian American stereotypes to: 1) position themselves and others relative to stereotypes; 2) construct stereotyping as an oppressive practice to resist or as an interactional resource to celebrate; and 3) bring about interactional effects from widely circulating stereotypes (e.g., Asian American storeowner) that are different from those from locally circulating typifications (e.g., Asian American minivan driver). This chapter reveals how stereotypes can be creatively recontextualized in interaction, incorporated into people's lives to various effects, and sought out as a means of identifying and imagining oneself, others, and connections between individuals and groups.
Elaine Howard Ecklund
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195305494
- eISBN:
- 9780199785155
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195305494.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
In an age of what many call a declining civil society, it is crucial to ask how changes in the racial, ethnic, and religious composition of the United States will influence how we live together as ...
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In an age of what many call a declining civil society, it is crucial to ask how changes in the racial, ethnic, and religious composition of the United States will influence how we live together as American citizens. Religious communities are among the primary places Americans form civic identities. This book explores how Korean Americans, a growing segment of American evangelicals, use religion to negotiate civic responsibility. It compares Korean Americans in second-generation and multiethnic churches, the most common types of evangelical churches in which Korean Americans participate. The book is based on in-depth interviews with 100 Korean Americans across the country, nine months of ethnography, and a survey of both a second-generation Korean congregation and a multiethnic church with Korean American participants. It is shown that these church types provide Korean Americans with different cultural schema for ethnic identity and civic responsibility. From their congregations, Korean Americans gain different ways of negotiating the image of Asian Americans as “model minorities”. Although scholars stress the conflict inherent in Asian American and African American race relations, some of the Korean Americans in multi-ethnic churches used a religious justification to identify with African Americans as fellow minorities, and thus become more politically active. For scholars, the book reveals the conditions under which organizations constrained by the same institution, in this case American Evangelicalism, provide room for diverse identity constructs among the individuals in these organizations. For everyone else, it argues that the children of non-white immigrants will change the relationship between religion and American civic life.Less
In an age of what many call a declining civil society, it is crucial to ask how changes in the racial, ethnic, and religious composition of the United States will influence how we live together as American citizens. Religious communities are among the primary places Americans form civic identities. This book explores how Korean Americans, a growing segment of American evangelicals, use religion to negotiate civic responsibility. It compares Korean Americans in second-generation and multiethnic churches, the most common types of evangelical churches in which Korean Americans participate. The book is based on in-depth interviews with 100 Korean Americans across the country, nine months of ethnography, and a survey of both a second-generation Korean congregation and a multiethnic church with Korean American participants. It is shown that these church types provide Korean Americans with different cultural schema for ethnic identity and civic responsibility. From their congregations, Korean Americans gain different ways of negotiating the image of Asian Americans as “model minorities”. Although scholars stress the conflict inherent in Asian American and African American race relations, some of the Korean Americans in multi-ethnic churches used a religious justification to identify with African Americans as fellow minorities, and thus become more politically active. For scholars, the book reveals the conditions under which organizations constrained by the same institution, in this case American Evangelicalism, provide room for diverse identity constructs among the individuals in these organizations. For everyone else, it argues that the children of non-white immigrants will change the relationship between religion and American civic life.
Caroline Rody
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195377361
- eISBN:
- 9780199869558
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195377361.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
Several decades after the post‐1965 immigration boom, U.S. fiction now reports that the compelling event of our globalizing, diasporic era is the imaginative encounter with “others.” Part I develops ...
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Several decades after the post‐1965 immigration boom, U.S. fiction now reports that the compelling event of our globalizing, diasporic era is the imaginative encounter with “others.” Part I develops the interethnic literary paradigm with reference to anthropological, postcolonial, and transnational theories of global migration, encounter, and cultural production, and to Bakhtinian dialogics. The interethnic turn in fiction suggests the need for an interethnic critical turn, beyond the poles of ethnic criticism and post‐structuralist critiques of “ethnicity,” to account for the interethnic dynamics in texts retaining profound ethnic investments. This section sketches a history of interethnicity through various American literatures and demonstrate the heightened interethnicity in post‐1980s‐era texts. Part II positions this paradigm within Asian Americanist literary critique: It builds upon the field's recent engagement with difference and coalition to highlight the contested, globalized localities in contemporary Asian American texts. This section discusses the history that made this literature an interethnic avatar, the politics of its hybridity, and its foregrounding of cross‐ethnic literary influence. After a plan of the book's chapters and interchapters, part III offers a survey of trends across a range of contemporary Asian American interethnic texts, with longer readings of Patricia Chao's Mambo Peligroso and Chang‐rae Lee's Aloft.Less
Several decades after the post‐1965 immigration boom, U.S. fiction now reports that the compelling event of our globalizing, diasporic era is the imaginative encounter with “others.” Part I develops the interethnic literary paradigm with reference to anthropological, postcolonial, and transnational theories of global migration, encounter, and cultural production, and to Bakhtinian dialogics. The interethnic turn in fiction suggests the need for an interethnic critical turn, beyond the poles of ethnic criticism and post‐structuralist critiques of “ethnicity,” to account for the interethnic dynamics in texts retaining profound ethnic investments. This section sketches a history of interethnicity through various American literatures and demonstrate the heightened interethnicity in post‐1980s‐era texts. Part II positions this paradigm within Asian Americanist literary critique: It builds upon the field's recent engagement with difference and coalition to highlight the contested, globalized localities in contemporary Asian American texts. This section discusses the history that made this literature an interethnic avatar, the politics of its hybridity, and its foregrounding of cross‐ethnic literary influence. After a plan of the book's chapters and interchapters, part III offers a survey of trends across a range of contemporary Asian American interethnic texts, with longer readings of Patricia Chao's Mambo Peligroso and Chang‐rae Lee's Aloft.
Chong Chon-Smith
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462050
- eISBN:
- 9781626745292
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462050.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter addresses the conductive intersection of live performance by Asian American men in hip-hop music and spoken word and links the possibilities of Asian-Black cultural fusions and internet ...
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This chapter addresses the conductive intersection of live performance by Asian American men in hip-hop music and spoken word and links the possibilities of Asian-Black cultural fusions and internet productions as their main medium of communication. It calls attention to the role of public intellectuals, such as Denizen Kane of I Was Born with Two Tongues, and the role of art, activism, and culture intertwined with Asian American cultural production and Black musical expressions. The Mountain Brothers offer a different perspective on Asian-Black connections in hip-hop because they are an Asian American group signed by street credible Ruff House Records. Significantly, this chapter focuses on little understood, yet highly significant cultural practices taking place in Asian American communities, especially youth and internet cultures. All together, it emphasizes the Asian-Black interface of spoken word and hip-hop as an avant-garde revolutionary practice, as the practitioners claim, one that disrupts the constancy of racial magnetism in matters of social policy and public discourse.Less
This chapter addresses the conductive intersection of live performance by Asian American men in hip-hop music and spoken word and links the possibilities of Asian-Black cultural fusions and internet productions as their main medium of communication. It calls attention to the role of public intellectuals, such as Denizen Kane of I Was Born with Two Tongues, and the role of art, activism, and culture intertwined with Asian American cultural production and Black musical expressions. The Mountain Brothers offer a different perspective on Asian-Black connections in hip-hop because they are an Asian American group signed by street credible Ruff House Records. Significantly, this chapter focuses on little understood, yet highly significant cultural practices taking place in Asian American communities, especially youth and internet cultures. All together, it emphasizes the Asian-Black interface of spoken word and hip-hop as an avant-garde revolutionary practice, as the practitioners claim, one that disrupts the constancy of racial magnetism in matters of social policy and public discourse.
Joseph H. Carens
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198297680
- eISBN:
- 9780191598937
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198297688.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Focuses on the relationship between cultural difference and equal opportunity. Because cultural heritages can affect the motivation and the capacity to take advantage of conventionally valued ...
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Focuses on the relationship between cultural difference and equal opportunity. Because cultural heritages can affect the motivation and the capacity to take advantage of conventionally valued opportunities, some argue that respect for cultural differences requires us to accept social and economic inequalities between groups. The chapter uses the cases of Asian Americans, the Amish, African Americans and women to qualify and challenge this claim. It concludes that the relationship between pluralism and equality is generally complementary, and that this complementariness is enhanced when social institutions minimize inequalities.Less
Focuses on the relationship between cultural difference and equal opportunity. Because cultural heritages can affect the motivation and the capacity to take advantage of conventionally valued opportunities, some argue that respect for cultural differences requires us to accept social and economic inequalities between groups. The chapter uses the cases of Asian Americans, the Amish, African Americans and women to qualify and challenge this claim. It concludes that the relationship between pluralism and equality is generally complementary, and that this complementariness is enhanced when social institutions minimize inequalities.
Gail M. Nomura
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195100471
- eISBN:
- 9780199854059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195100471.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
This chapter questions the meaning of the term “significant”, weighs the criteria used in establishing the “significance” of any group's role in history, and suggests ways one might better envision a ...
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This chapter questions the meaning of the term “significant”, weighs the criteria used in establishing the “significance” of any group's role in history, and suggests ways one might better envision a multicultural history of the U.S. West by understanding Asian-American history. The first step in assessing any group is to know what it is. What one calls “Asian Americans” is not a unified, homogeneous grouping. The complexity of this term “Asian American” is further illustrated by noting the many ethnicities within the larger subcategories, such as Southeast Asian American, or even within a seemingly homogeneous subcategory such as Japanese American. What they share is a common history in the United States of exclusion and discrimination. Assessing these diverse populations is problematic, since there are so many different histories to discuss. However, the chapter suggests ways in which these varied voices help articulate a multicultural history of the U.S. West.Less
This chapter questions the meaning of the term “significant”, weighs the criteria used in establishing the “significance” of any group's role in history, and suggests ways one might better envision a multicultural history of the U.S. West by understanding Asian-American history. The first step in assessing any group is to know what it is. What one calls “Asian Americans” is not a unified, homogeneous grouping. The complexity of this term “Asian American” is further illustrated by noting the many ethnicities within the larger subcategories, such as Southeast Asian American, or even within a seemingly homogeneous subcategory such as Japanese American. What they share is a common history in the United States of exclusion and discrimination. Assessing these diverse populations is problematic, since there are so many different histories to discuss. However, the chapter suggests ways in which these varied voices help articulate a multicultural history of the U.S. West.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195146998
- eISBN:
- 9780199787890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195146998.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, American Colonial Literature
This chapter re-examines the cultural and political legacies of Edith Eaton who wrote under the pen name Sui Sin Far, and her more commercially successful sister Winnifred Eaton who wrote under the ...
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This chapter re-examines the cultural and political legacies of Edith Eaton who wrote under the pen name Sui Sin Far, and her more commercially successful sister Winnifred Eaton who wrote under the pen name Onoto Watanna. These sisters, born of a Chinese mother and English father, were the first Asian American writers, publishing in the late 19th and early 20th century. Edith was identified as Chinese American and was long considered by Asian American critics as the origin of Asian American literature. Winnifred was identified as Japanese and was considered by these critics to be less authentic and less political. Resisting the idealism of Asian American literary criticism allows us to see that the political and ethical choices made by both the Eaton sisters are viable, and that these choices remain as valid options for Asian American intellectuals and other panethnic entrepreneurs today.Less
This chapter re-examines the cultural and political legacies of Edith Eaton who wrote under the pen name Sui Sin Far, and her more commercially successful sister Winnifred Eaton who wrote under the pen name Onoto Watanna. These sisters, born of a Chinese mother and English father, were the first Asian American writers, publishing in the late 19th and early 20th century. Edith was identified as Chinese American and was long considered by Asian American critics as the origin of Asian American literature. Winnifred was identified as Japanese and was considered by these critics to be less authentic and less political. Resisting the idealism of Asian American literary criticism allows us to see that the political and ethical choices made by both the Eaton sisters are viable, and that these choices remain as valid options for Asian American intellectuals and other panethnic entrepreneurs today.
Jong Won Min and Ailee Moon
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- April 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195173727
- eISBN:
- 9780199893218
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195173727.003.0021
- Subject:
- Social Work, Health and Mental Health
This chapter presents central cultural and social issues important to social work practice with Asian American elders, and suggests a set of practice guidelines intended to enhance cross-cultural ...
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This chapter presents central cultural and social issues important to social work practice with Asian American elders, and suggests a set of practice guidelines intended to enhance cross-cultural understanding and culturally sensitive social work practice with these populations. It begins with a review of the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of selected Asian American elderly groups and is followed by discussion of major issues and challenges confronting them. Finally, practice guidelines for communication, assessment, and intervention with Asian American elders are presented.Less
This chapter presents central cultural and social issues important to social work practice with Asian American elders, and suggests a set of practice guidelines intended to enhance cross-cultural understanding and culturally sensitive social work practice with these populations. It begins with a review of the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of selected Asian American elderly groups and is followed by discussion of major issues and challenges confronting them. Finally, practice guidelines for communication, assessment, and intervention with Asian American elders are presented.
Josephine Nock-Hee Park
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195332735
- eISBN:
- 9780199868148
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332735.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, American, 20th Century Literature
This book traces an American literary history of transpacific alliances which spans the 20th century. Increasing material and economic ties between the U.S. and East Asia at the end of the 19th ...
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This book traces an American literary history of transpacific alliances which spans the 20th century. Increasing material and economic ties between the U.S. and East Asia at the end of the 19th century facilitated an imagined spiritual and aesthetic accord that bridged the Pacific, and this study reads the expression and repercussions of these links in American Orientalist and Asian American poetry. After considering both the transcendence and constraints of a structure of alliance between East and West in the introductory chapter, the first half of the study examines two key American instigators of Orientalist poetics, Ezra Pound and Gary Snyder, who imagined an identity between Eastern philosophy and idealized notions of America. Their literary alliances imposed a singular burden on Asian American poets, and the second half of the study considers a range of formal negotiations with this legacy in the poetry of Lawson Fusao Inada, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Myung Mi Kim. In examining avant‐garde Asian American poetry against an American Orientalist past, this book reads the intersection of modernist and minority poetics.Less
This book traces an American literary history of transpacific alliances which spans the 20th century. Increasing material and economic ties between the U.S. and East Asia at the end of the 19th century facilitated an imagined spiritual and aesthetic accord that bridged the Pacific, and this study reads the expression and repercussions of these links in American Orientalist and Asian American poetry. After considering both the transcendence and constraints of a structure of alliance between East and West in the introductory chapter, the first half of the study examines two key American instigators of Orientalist poetics, Ezra Pound and Gary Snyder, who imagined an identity between Eastern philosophy and idealized notions of America. Their literary alliances imposed a singular burden on Asian American poets, and the second half of the study considers a range of formal negotiations with this legacy in the poetry of Lawson Fusao Inada, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Myung Mi Kim. In examining avant‐garde Asian American poetry against an American Orientalist past, this book reads the intersection of modernist and minority poetics.
Steven G. Yao
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199730339
- eISBN:
- 9780199866540
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199730339.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This book undertakes linguistically informed analyses to examine the various transpacific signifying strategies by which different poets of Chinese descent in the United States have ...
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This book undertakes linguistically informed analyses to examine the various transpacific signifying strategies by which different poets of Chinese descent in the United States have sought to employ or represent elements of a particular cultural tradition in their articulations of an ethnic subjectivity, including writings entirely in Chinese. The study maps a new methodology and an expanded textual arena for Asian American literary studies that can be used and further explored by scholars possessing knowledge of other traditions and different linguistic competencies. In assessing both the dynamics and the politics of poetic expression by writers engaging with a specific cultural tradition or heritage, this study develops a general theory of ethnic literary production that clarifies the significance of “Asian American” literature in relation to both other forms of U.S. “minority discourse,” as well as canonical “American” literature more generally. The book discusses a range of works, including Ezra Pound’s Cathay and the Angel Island poems. Additionally, it examines the careers of four contemporary Chinese/American poets: Ha Jin, Li-Young Lee, Marilyn Chin, and John Yau, each of whom bears a distinctive relationship to the linguistic and cultural tradition he or she seeks to represent. Specifically, the book analyzes the range of rhetorical and formal strategies by which these writers have sought to incorporate Chinese culture and especially language in constructing a cultural or ethnic subjectivity.Less
This book undertakes linguistically informed analyses to examine the various transpacific signifying strategies by which different poets of Chinese descent in the United States have sought to employ or represent elements of a particular cultural tradition in their articulations of an ethnic subjectivity, including writings entirely in Chinese. The study maps a new methodology and an expanded textual arena for Asian American literary studies that can be used and further explored by scholars possessing knowledge of other traditions and different linguistic competencies. In assessing both the dynamics and the politics of poetic expression by writers engaging with a specific cultural tradition or heritage, this study develops a general theory of ethnic literary production that clarifies the significance of “Asian American” literature in relation to both other forms of U.S. “minority discourse,” as well as canonical “American” literature more generally. The book discusses a range of works, including Ezra Pound’s Cathay and the Angel Island poems. Additionally, it examines the careers of four contemporary Chinese/American poets: Ha Jin, Li-Young Lee, Marilyn Chin, and John Yau, each of whom bears a distinctive relationship to the linguistic and cultural tradition he or she seeks to represent. Specifically, the book analyzes the range of rhetorical and formal strategies by which these writers have sought to incorporate Chinese culture and especially language in constructing a cultural or ethnic subjectivity.
Caroline Rody
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195377361
- eISBN:
- 9780199869558
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195377361.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This book argues that in the unprecedented globalizing, multi‐diasporic dynamics of our moment, what we have long thought of as “ethnic literature” is becoming “interethnic literature.” While ethnic ...
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This book argues that in the unprecedented globalizing, multi‐diasporic dynamics of our moment, what we have long thought of as “ethnic literature” is becoming “interethnic literature.” While ethnic American literatures still honor particular peoples' histories and traditions, the plots, characters, structures, and literary influences of post‐1980 ethnic fiction are compelled by an urge to encounter with others. Presenting interethnicity as paradigm and critical model, this book takes contemporary Asian American fiction as its case study. The Preface and Chapter 1 theorize interethnicity with reference to anthropological, postcolonial, and transnational theories of human migration and encounter; position this argument within the debates of Asian Americanist critique; and survey interethnic trends and tropes in a wide range of contemporary Asian American fiction. Three chapters present extended readings of interethnic experimentation in contemporary Asian American novels: Chapter 2 discusses the ambivalent relationship of Chang‐rae Lee's Native Speaker to African Americans, as well as to Koreanness, whiteness, and the multicultural, urban masses; Chapter 3 examines Gish Jen's elaboration of a transformational Chinese American identity in the heroine's conversion to Judaism in Mona in the Promised Land; and Chapter 4 argues that Karen Tei Yamashita demonstrates the convergence of interethnic and transnational imaginaries in a U.S.‐Mexico border region novel, Tropic of Orange. Two interchapters develop in‐between subjects: Asian American fiction's encounters with African Americans and their culture, and the cross‐ethnic writing of Jewishness in contemporary fictions by Asian Americans and others. The epilogue treats the historical development of mixed‐race characters in Asian American fiction.Less
This book argues that in the unprecedented globalizing, multi‐diasporic dynamics of our moment, what we have long thought of as “ethnic literature” is becoming “interethnic literature.” While ethnic American literatures still honor particular peoples' histories and traditions, the plots, characters, structures, and literary influences of post‐1980 ethnic fiction are compelled by an urge to encounter with others. Presenting interethnicity as paradigm and critical model, this book takes contemporary Asian American fiction as its case study. The Preface and Chapter 1 theorize interethnicity with reference to anthropological, postcolonial, and transnational theories of human migration and encounter; position this argument within the debates of Asian Americanist critique; and survey interethnic trends and tropes in a wide range of contemporary Asian American fiction. Three chapters present extended readings of interethnic experimentation in contemporary Asian American novels: Chapter 2 discusses the ambivalent relationship of Chang‐rae Lee's Native Speaker to African Americans, as well as to Koreanness, whiteness, and the multicultural, urban masses; Chapter 3 examines Gish Jen's elaboration of a transformational Chinese American identity in the heroine's conversion to Judaism in Mona in the Promised Land; and Chapter 4 argues that Karen Tei Yamashita demonstrates the convergence of interethnic and transnational imaginaries in a U.S.‐Mexico border region novel, Tropic of Orange. Two interchapters develop in‐between subjects: Asian American fiction's encounters with African Americans and their culture, and the cross‐ethnic writing of Jewishness in contemporary fictions by Asian Americans and others. The epilogue treats the historical development of mixed‐race characters in Asian American fiction.
Chong Chon-Smith
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462050
- eISBN:
- 9781626745292
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462050.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This book provides an understanding of the inspiring, contradictory, hostile, resonant, and unarticulated ways in which Asian American and African American cultural formation occurs. Through the ...
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This book provides an understanding of the inspiring, contradictory, hostile, resonant, and unarticulated ways in which Asian American and African American cultural formation occurs. Through the interpretation of labor department documents, popular journalism, and state discourses, the book historicizes the formation of both the construction of black “pathology” and the Asian “model minority.” Beginning with the Moynihan Report and journalistic reports about Asian Americans as “model minority,” black and Asian men were racialized together, as if “racially magnetized.” Through the concept of racial magnetism, the book examines both dominant and emergent representations of Asian and African American masculinities as mediating figures for the contradictions of race, class, and gender in post-civil rights U.S.A. The post-civil rights era names this specific race for U.S. citizenship and class advantage, when massive Asian technocratic immigration and decline of African American industrial labor helped usher in a new period of laissez faire class struggle and racial realignment. While the state abandoned social programs at home and expanded imperial projects overseas, state discourses posited that the post-civil rights moment was a period of imminent racial danger because Black Power and the Asian American Movement challenged the understanding that social equality through civil rights had been achieved. The book studies both the dominant discourses that “pair” African American and Asian American racialized masculinities together, and it examines the African American and Asian American counter-discourses—in literature, film, popular sport, hip-hop music, performance arts, and internet subcultures—that link social movements and cultural production as active critical responses to this dominant formation.Less
This book provides an understanding of the inspiring, contradictory, hostile, resonant, and unarticulated ways in which Asian American and African American cultural formation occurs. Through the interpretation of labor department documents, popular journalism, and state discourses, the book historicizes the formation of both the construction of black “pathology” and the Asian “model minority.” Beginning with the Moynihan Report and journalistic reports about Asian Americans as “model minority,” black and Asian men were racialized together, as if “racially magnetized.” Through the concept of racial magnetism, the book examines both dominant and emergent representations of Asian and African American masculinities as mediating figures for the contradictions of race, class, and gender in post-civil rights U.S.A. The post-civil rights era names this specific race for U.S. citizenship and class advantage, when massive Asian technocratic immigration and decline of African American industrial labor helped usher in a new period of laissez faire class struggle and racial realignment. While the state abandoned social programs at home and expanded imperial projects overseas, state discourses posited that the post-civil rights moment was a period of imminent racial danger because Black Power and the Asian American Movement challenged the understanding that social equality through civil rights had been achieved. The book studies both the dominant discourses that “pair” African American and Asian American racialized masculinities together, and it examines the African American and Asian American counter-discourses—in literature, film, popular sport, hip-hop music, performance arts, and internet subcultures—that link social movements and cultural production as active critical responses to this dominant formation.
Ellen D. Wu
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691157825
- eISBN:
- 9781400848874
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691157825.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This introductory chapter describes the racial order in twentieth-century America—its evolution, consequences, and significance. Japanese and Chinese Americans, the largest ethnic Asian populations, ...
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This introductory chapter describes the racial order in twentieth-century America—its evolution, consequences, and significance. Japanese and Chinese Americans, the largest ethnic Asian populations, and the two that figured most prominently in the public eye between the 1940s and 1960s, are central to this investigation. Their trajectories unfold separately in order to illuminate their distinct histories. Yet Japanese and Chinese Americans also appear in tandem to emphasize the many parallels that account for their concurrent emergence as model minorities. As a mix of cultural, social, and political history, the chapter highlights how the discursive and the material mattered for Japanese American, Chinese American, and ultimately Asian American identity formation from World War II through the “Cold War civil rights” years.Less
This introductory chapter describes the racial order in twentieth-century America—its evolution, consequences, and significance. Japanese and Chinese Americans, the largest ethnic Asian populations, and the two that figured most prominently in the public eye between the 1940s and 1960s, are central to this investigation. Their trajectories unfold separately in order to illuminate their distinct histories. Yet Japanese and Chinese Americans also appear in tandem to emphasize the many parallels that account for their concurrent emergence as model minorities. As a mix of cultural, social, and political history, the chapter highlights how the discursive and the material mattered for Japanese American, Chinese American, and ultimately Asian American identity formation from World War II through the “Cold War civil rights” years.
