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/9780195146998.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, American Colonial Literature
This chapter looks at the works of Frank Chin and Gus Lee, who follow a long line of American authors before them by writing about how men use violence both to regenerate themselves, and to become ...
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This chapter looks at the works of Frank Chin and Gus Lee, who follow a long line of American authors before them by writing about how men use violence both to regenerate themselves, and to become representatives of a larger ethnic and national community. It is through violence that Asian Americans are first marked by others as aliens, and then marked by themselves as Americans. Chin and Lee take up this irony in their novels Donald Duk, China Boy, and Honor and Duty, which are Asian American examples of the bildungsroman. For these Chinese American authors, using the bildungsroman both proclaims a public identity for themselves and their subjects, and reenacts exclusionary processes of violence found in traditional representations, this time directed at Chinese American women and African American men. These novels demonstrate that violence is an initiation for immigrants, Asian and otherwise, into the complexities of American inclusion and exclusion.Less
This chapter looks at the works of Frank Chin and Gus Lee, who follow a long line of American authors before them by writing about how men use violence both to regenerate themselves, and to become representatives of a larger ethnic and national community. It is through violence that Asian Americans are first marked by others as aliens, and then marked by themselves as Americans. Chin and Lee take up this irony in their novels Donald Duk, China Boy, and Honor and Duty, which are Asian American examples of the bildungsroman. For these Chinese American authors, using the bildungsroman both proclaims a public identity for themselves and their subjects, and reenacts exclusionary processes of violence found in traditional representations, this time directed at Chinese American women and African American men. These novels demonstrate that violence is an initiation for immigrants, Asian and otherwise, into the complexities of American inclusion and exclusion.
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.
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/9780195332735.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, American, 20th Century Literature
The conclusion briefly elaborates the significance of American Orientalism in the formation of Asian American literature. By reconsidering the complex negotiation with Orientalism in the work of the ...
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The conclusion briefly elaborates the significance of American Orientalism in the formation of Asian American literature. By reconsidering the complex negotiation with Orientalism in the work of the figurehead of the ethnic nationalist movement, Frank Chin, this conclusion suggests the persistence and continuing significance of an Orientalist legacy for Asian American literature.Less
The conclusion briefly elaborates the significance of American Orientalism in the formation of Asian American literature. By reconsidering the complex negotiation with Orientalism in the work of the figurehead of the ethnic nationalist movement, Frank Chin, this conclusion suggests the persistence and continuing significance of an Orientalist legacy for Asian American literature.
Christopher Lee
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804778701
- eISBN:
- 9780804783705
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804778701.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
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 ...
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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. This book argues that the reframing of the field as a critical, rather than identity-based, project nonetheless continues to rely on the logics of identity. Drawing on the writings of philosopher and literary critic Georg Lukacs, it identifies a persistent composite figure that it calls the “idealized critical subject,” which provides coherence to oppositional knowledge projects and political practices. It reframes identity as an aesthetic figure that tries to articulate the subjective conditions for knowledge. Harnessing Theodor Adorno's notion of aesthetic semblance, the book offers an alternative account of identity as a figure akin to modern artwork. Like art, it argues, identity provides access to imagined worlds that in turn wage a critique of ongoing histories and realities of racialization. This book assembles a transnational archive of literary texts by Eileen Chang, Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Chang-rae Lee, Michael Ondaatje, and Jose Garcia Villa, revealing the intersections of subjectivity and representation, and drawing our attention to their limits.Less
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. This book argues that the reframing of the field as a critical, rather than identity-based, project nonetheless continues to rely on the logics of identity. Drawing on the writings of philosopher and literary critic Georg Lukacs, it identifies a persistent composite figure that it calls the “idealized critical subject,” which provides coherence to oppositional knowledge projects and political practices. It reframes identity as an aesthetic figure that tries to articulate the subjective conditions for knowledge. Harnessing Theodor Adorno's notion of aesthetic semblance, the book offers an alternative account of identity as a figure akin to modern artwork. Like art, it argues, identity provides access to imagined worlds that in turn wage a critique of ongoing histories and realities of racialization. This book assembles a transnational archive of literary texts by Eileen Chang, Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Chang-rae Lee, Michael Ondaatje, and Jose Garcia Villa, revealing the intersections of subjectivity and representation, and drawing our attention to their limits.
Crystal Parikh
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230426
- eISBN:
- 9780823235070
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823230426.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This book investigates the theme and tropes of betrayal and treason in Asian American and Chicano/Latino literary and cultural narratives. In considering betrayal from an ethical perspective, one ...
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This book investigates the theme and tropes of betrayal and treason in Asian American and Chicano/Latino literary and cultural narratives. In considering betrayal from an ethical perspective, one grounded in the theories of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, the book argues that the minority subject is obligated in a primary, preontological, and irrecusable relation of responsibility to the Other. Episodes of betrayal and treason allegorize the position of this subject, beholden to the many others who embody the alterity of existence and whose demands upon the subject result in transgressions of intimacy and loyalty. In this first major comparative study of narratives by and about Asian Americans and Latinos, the book considers writings by Frank Chin, Gish Jen, Chang-rae Lee, Eric Liu, Américo Paredes, and Richard Rodriguez, as well as narratives about the persecution of Wen Ho Lee and the rescue and return of Elián González. By addressing the conflicts at the heart of filiality, the public dimensions of language in the constitution of minority “community,” and the mercenary mobilizations of “model minority” status, this book seriously engages the challenges of conducting ethnic and critical race studies based on the uncompromising and unromantic ideas of justice, reciprocity, and ethical society.Less
This book investigates the theme and tropes of betrayal and treason in Asian American and Chicano/Latino literary and cultural narratives. In considering betrayal from an ethical perspective, one grounded in the theories of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, the book argues that the minority subject is obligated in a primary, preontological, and irrecusable relation of responsibility to the Other. Episodes of betrayal and treason allegorize the position of this subject, beholden to the many others who embody the alterity of existence and whose demands upon the subject result in transgressions of intimacy and loyalty. In this first major comparative study of narratives by and about Asian Americans and Latinos, the book considers writings by Frank Chin, Gish Jen, Chang-rae Lee, Eric Liu, Américo Paredes, and Richard Rodriguez, as well as narratives about the persecution of Wen Ho Lee and the rescue and return of Elián González. By addressing the conflicts at the heart of filiality, the public dimensions of language in the constitution of minority “community,” and the mercenary mobilizations of “model minority” status, this book seriously engages the challenges of conducting ethnic and critical race studies based on the uncompromising and unromantic ideas of justice, reciprocity, and ethical society.
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/9780195377361.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This interchapter offers a history of Asian American fiction's engagement with African Americans and their culture as a contribution to the growing scholarship on African‐Asian American cultural ...
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This interchapter offers a history of Asian American fiction's engagement with African Americans and their culture as a contribution to the growing scholarship on African‐Asian American cultural connections. The two groups have a complex relationship: historically more violently abjected, African Americans are mythologically primary, and have been models for the political emergence of racially “in between” Asian Americans. A thread of connection to blackness appears in Asian American texts in unfulfilled plot segments, brief interludes of affiliation or sympathy for shared histories of minoritization, as in early texts by Younghill Kang, Carlos Bulosan, and John Okada. From the mid‐century, Asian American men's texts evince a paradoxical longing for unity with those more viscerally oppressed, in dramas of deeply vexed engagement with black male models of masculinity; Peter Bacho, Frank Chin, and Gus Lee are discussed. Recent fictions disrupt the Asian‐black binary, representing blacks amidst a more fluid, multiethnic social world. Asian American women's fiction shows a minor, steady strand of sympathetic engagement—unburdened by agonistic competition—with African Americans and black female precursors, who become models for emergent expressivity. Contemporary texts (Gish Jen) reveal class difference inhibiting Asian‐black solidarity, but powerful, ongoing influence by the black expressivity saturating American culture.Less
This interchapter offers a history of Asian American fiction's engagement with African Americans and their culture as a contribution to the growing scholarship on African‐Asian American cultural connections. The two groups have a complex relationship: historically more violently abjected, African Americans are mythologically primary, and have been models for the political emergence of racially “in between” Asian Americans. A thread of connection to blackness appears in Asian American texts in unfulfilled plot segments, brief interludes of affiliation or sympathy for shared histories of minoritization, as in early texts by Younghill Kang, Carlos Bulosan, and John Okada. From the mid‐century, Asian American men's texts evince a paradoxical longing for unity with those more viscerally oppressed, in dramas of deeply vexed engagement with black male models of masculinity; Peter Bacho, Frank Chin, and Gus Lee are discussed. Recent fictions disrupt the Asian‐black binary, representing blacks amidst a more fluid, multiethnic social world. Asian American women's fiction shows a minor, steady strand of sympathetic engagement—unburdened by agonistic competition—with African Americans and black female precursors, who become models for emergent expressivity. Contemporary texts (Gish Jen) reveal class difference inhibiting Asian‐black solidarity, but powerful, ongoing influence by the black expressivity saturating American culture.
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804778701
- eISBN:
- 9780804783705
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804778701.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Asian American Studies as a discipline continues to be informed by the political objectives of cultural nationalism, yet critics have repeatedly exposed the nativism, misogyny, and homophobia ...
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Asian American Studies as a discipline continues to be informed by the political objectives of cultural nationalism, yet critics have repeatedly exposed the nativism, misogyny, and homophobia embedded in its constructions of identity. Despite their emphasis on the mimetic capabilities of literature and the possibility of realism, cultural nationalist critics and writers repeatedly sought to align textual content with the historical terrain in which praxis is actualized. In this sense, realism demands a close connection between the temporality of the text and the time of history. Moreover, cultural nationalism assumed an idealized critical subject for whom the history and realities of racism are accessible as knowledge. This chapter examines cultural nationalism and its ironic temporalities by focusing on literary criticism by Bruce Iwasaki and writings by Frank Chin, along with their claims about the agency of the author. It considers how such claims coexist uneasily with the temporal protocols of political discourse and literary representation.Less
Asian American Studies as a discipline continues to be informed by the political objectives of cultural nationalism, yet critics have repeatedly exposed the nativism, misogyny, and homophobia embedded in its constructions of identity. Despite their emphasis on the mimetic capabilities of literature and the possibility of realism, cultural nationalist critics and writers repeatedly sought to align textual content with the historical terrain in which praxis is actualized. In this sense, realism demands a close connection between the temporality of the text and the time of history. Moreover, cultural nationalism assumed an idealized critical subject for whom the history and realities of racism are accessible as knowledge. This chapter examines cultural nationalism and its ironic temporalities by focusing on literary criticism by Bruce Iwasaki and writings by Frank Chin, along with their claims about the agency of the author. It considers how such claims coexist uneasily with the temporal protocols of political discourse and literary representation.
Crystal S. Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617037559
- eISBN:
- 9781621039327
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617037559.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter uses Lee’s film Enter the Dragon (1973) to explore the theme of interethnic male friendship between African American and Chinese men in Frank Chin’s novel, Gunga Din Highway, and two ...
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This chapter uses Lee’s film Enter the Dragon (1973) to explore the theme of interethnic male friendship between African American and Chinese men in Frank Chin’s novel, Gunga Din Highway, and two films released since 2000, Rush Hour 2 and Unleashed. Enter the Dragon engages an Afro-Chinese male friendship within the context of an international martial arts tournament in Hong Kong, providing a transnational backdrop that brings ethnic identity and national association into sharp relief.Less
This chapter uses Lee’s film Enter the Dragon (1973) to explore the theme of interethnic male friendship between African American and Chinese men in Frank Chin’s novel, Gunga Din Highway, and two films released since 2000, Rush Hour 2 and Unleashed. Enter the Dragon engages an Afro-Chinese male friendship within the context of an international martial arts tournament in Hong Kong, providing a transnational backdrop that brings ethnic identity and national association into sharp relief.
Mark Chiang
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814717004
- eISBN:
- 9780814790014
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814717004.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter examines the origins of the Asian American literary field in the writings of Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston—the authors of the book Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American ...
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This chapter examines the origins of the Asian American literary field in the writings of Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston—the authors of the book Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers. These writers subordinate art to politics, and their own self-representation as the “radical” pole of Asian American cultural production. Juxtaposing this subordination with the reading of The Woman Warrior, the chapter argues that the dilemma motivating the narrative is not the anxiety of influence—as in the dominant literary tradition—but the anxiety of representation. Only within and against the writers' relation of representation to the community can they become a representative or an author.Less
This chapter examines the origins of the Asian American literary field in the writings of Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston—the authors of the book Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers. These writers subordinate art to politics, and their own self-representation as the “radical” pole of Asian American cultural production. Juxtaposing this subordination with the reading of The Woman Warrior, the chapter argues that the dilemma motivating the narrative is not the anxiety of influence—as in the dominant literary tradition—but the anxiety of representation. Only within and against the writers' relation of representation to the community can they become a representative or an author.
Crystal S. Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617037559
- eISBN:
- 9781621039327
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617037559.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book explores the cultural and political exchanges between African Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians over the last four decades. To do so, it examines such cultural productions as novels ...
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This book explores the cultural and political exchanges between African Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians over the last four decades. To do so, it examines such cultural productions as novels (Frank Chin’s Gunga Din Highway [1999], Ishmael Reed’s Japanese By Spring [1992], and Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle [1996]); films (Rush Hour 2 [2001], Unleashed [2005], and The Matrix trilogy [1999–2003]); and Japanese animation (Samurai Champloo [2004]), all of which feature cross-cultural conversations. In exploring the ways in which writers and artists use this transferal, the author traces and tests the limits of how Afro-Asian cultural production interrogates conceptions of race, ethnic identity, politics, and transnational exchange. Ultimately, the book reads contemporary black/Asian cultural fusions through the recurrent themes established by the films of Bruce Lee, which were among the first—and certainly most popular—works to use this exchange explicitly. As a result of such films as Enter the Dragon (1973), The Chinese Connection (1972), and The Big Boss (1971), Lee emerges as both a cross-cultural hero and global cultural icon who resonates with the experiences of African American, Asian American, and Asian youth in the 1970s. His films and iconic imagery prefigure themes that reflect cross-cultural negotiations with global culture in post-1990 Afro-Asian cultural production.Less
This book explores the cultural and political exchanges between African Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians over the last four decades. To do so, it examines such cultural productions as novels (Frank Chin’s Gunga Din Highway [1999], Ishmael Reed’s Japanese By Spring [1992], and Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle [1996]); films (Rush Hour 2 [2001], Unleashed [2005], and The Matrix trilogy [1999–2003]); and Japanese animation (Samurai Champloo [2004]), all of which feature cross-cultural conversations. In exploring the ways in which writers and artists use this transferal, the author traces and tests the limits of how Afro-Asian cultural production interrogates conceptions of race, ethnic identity, politics, and transnational exchange. Ultimately, the book reads contemporary black/Asian cultural fusions through the recurrent themes established by the films of Bruce Lee, which were among the first—and certainly most popular—works to use this exchange explicitly. As a result of such films as Enter the Dragon (1973), The Chinese Connection (1972), and The Big Boss (1971), Lee emerges as both a cross-cultural hero and global cultural icon who resonates with the experiences of African American, Asian American, and Asian youth in the 1970s. His films and iconic imagery prefigure themes that reflect cross-cultural negotiations with global culture in post-1990 Afro-Asian cultural production.
Nancy Yunhwa Rao
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040566
- eISBN:
- 9780252099007
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040566.003.0014
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
Drawing from the author’s family history, the epilogue discusses how opera culture could permeate different social classes, accompany dislocation of personal root, and be felt in communities near and ...
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Drawing from the author’s family history, the epilogue discusses how opera culture could permeate different social classes, accompany dislocation of personal root, and be felt in communities near and far. It also traces the impact of Chinatown theaters on the roaring twenties of the United Staete, the use of instruments in jazz, and to the rise of certain branch of American experimental music in the 20th century, as well as the manifestiation in Chinese American cinema and literature.Less
Drawing from the author’s family history, the epilogue discusses how opera culture could permeate different social classes, accompany dislocation of personal root, and be felt in communities near and far. It also traces the impact of Chinatown theaters on the roaring twenties of the United Staete, the use of instruments in jazz, and to the rise of certain branch of American experimental music in the 20th century, as well as the manifestiation in Chinese American cinema and literature.
