Stephen Hong Sohn
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479800070
- eISBN:
- 9781479800551
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479800070.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Challenging the tidy links among authorial position, narrative perspective, and fictional content, this book argues that Asian American authors have never been limited to writing about Asian American ...
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Challenging the tidy links among authorial position, narrative perspective, and fictional content, this book argues that Asian American authors have never been limited to writing about Asian American characters or contexts. The book 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 individual author's ethnoracial makeup does not directly overlap with that of the storytelling perspective. Through rigorous analysis of novels and short fiction, such as Sesshu Foster's Atomik Aztex, Sabina Murray's A Carnivore's Inquiry, and Sigrid Nunez's The Last of Her Kind, the book reveals how the construction of narrative perspective allows the Asian American writer a flexible aesthetic canvas upon which to engage issues of oppression and inequity, power and subjectivity, and the complicated construction of racial identity. Speaking to concerns running through postcolonial studies and American literature at large, the book employs an interdisciplinary approach to reveal the unbounded nature of fictional worlds.Less
Challenging the tidy links among authorial position, narrative perspective, and fictional content, this book argues that Asian American authors have never been limited to writing about Asian American characters or contexts. The book 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 individual author's ethnoracial makeup does not directly overlap with that of the storytelling perspective. Through rigorous analysis of novels and short fiction, such as Sesshu Foster's Atomik Aztex, Sabina Murray's A Carnivore's Inquiry, and Sigrid Nunez's The Last of Her Kind, the book reveals how the construction of narrative perspective allows the Asian American writer a flexible aesthetic canvas upon which to engage issues of oppression and inequity, power and subjectivity, and the complicated construction of racial identity. Speaking to concerns running through postcolonial studies and American literature at large, the book employs an interdisciplinary approach to reveal the unbounded nature of fictional worlds.
Stephen Hong Sohn
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479800070
- eISBN:
- 9781479800551
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479800070.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This concluding chapter argues that Asian American fiction boasts a long and rich lineage, and its body of texts contains a multitude of unforgettable characters and compelling themes. Within this ...
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This concluding chapter argues that Asian American fiction boasts a long and rich lineage, and its body of texts contains a multitude of unforgettable characters and compelling themes. Within this impressive archive, writers often produce narratives imbued with autobiographical and autoethnographic valences. And yet the parallels among author, narrative perspective, and fictional world can still result in certain presumptions about the kinds of stories Asian American writers can tell. For instance, a well-known writer such as Amy Tan might be presumed to create narrative perspectives centered only on Chinese or Chinese American characters, which in turn illuminate only Asian American social contexts. The book analyzes these simplifications and to unravel the bind among author, narrative perspective, and fictional world by exploring a large and equally important literary archive.Less
This concluding chapter argues that Asian American fiction boasts a long and rich lineage, and its body of texts contains a multitude of unforgettable characters and compelling themes. Within this impressive archive, writers often produce narratives imbued with autobiographical and autoethnographic valences. And yet the parallels among author, narrative perspective, and fictional world can still result in certain presumptions about the kinds of stories Asian American writers can tell. For instance, a well-known writer such as Amy Tan might be presumed to create narrative perspectives centered only on Chinese or Chinese American characters, which in turn illuminate only Asian American social contexts. The book analyzes these simplifications and to unravel the bind among author, narrative perspective, and fictional world by exploring a large and equally important literary archive.
Phillipa Kafka
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853237365
- eISBN:
- 9781846312540
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853237365.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter draws upon Asian American fiction to explore the concept of syncresis. It discusses authors such as M. Evelina Galang (Her Wild American Self), R. A. Sasaki (The Loom and Other Stories), ...
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This chapter draws upon Asian American fiction to explore the concept of syncresis. It discusses authors such as M. Evelina Galang (Her Wild American Self), R. A. Sasaki (The Loom and Other Stories), Gish Jen (Typical American), and Wang Ping (American Visa), who take as their subject matter the generational and cross-cultural differences found in immigrant families from Chinese, Japanese, and Filipina ancestry. The characters in these stories face not only the prejudices and stereotypes typically encountered by first-through third-generation Asian Americans, but also the problems of assimilation into mainstream US society, with the losses from their own ethnic inheritance weighted against the gains from acknowledging their ‘double consciousness’.Less
This chapter draws upon Asian American fiction to explore the concept of syncresis. It discusses authors such as M. Evelina Galang (Her Wild American Self), R. A. Sasaki (The Loom and Other Stories), Gish Jen (Typical American), and Wang Ping (American Visa), who take as their subject matter the generational and cross-cultural differences found in immigrant families from Chinese, Japanese, and Filipina ancestry. The characters in these stories face not only the prejudices and stereotypes typically encountered by first-through third-generation Asian Americans, but also the problems of assimilation into mainstream US society, with the losses from their own ethnic inheritance weighted against the gains from acknowledging their ‘double consciousness’.
