Jinqi Ling
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804778015
- eISBN:
- 9780804782043
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804778015.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Over the course of the last two decades, novelist Karen Tei Yamashita has reshaped the Asian American literary imagination in profound ways, and this book offers readers a critically engaged ...
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Over the course of the last two decades, novelist Karen Tei Yamashita has reshaped the Asian American literary imagination in profound ways, and this book offers readers a critically engaged examination of her literary corpus. Crafted at the intersection of intellectual history, ethnic studies, literary analysis, and critical theory, the study goes beyond textual investigation to intervene in larger debates over postmodern representation, spatial materialism, historical form, and social and academic activism. Arguing that Yamashita's most important contribution is her incorporation of a North–South vector into the East–West conceptual paradigm, the author highlights the novelist's re-prioritization, through such a geographical realignment, of socio-economic concerns for Asian American literary criticism. In assessing Yamashita's works as such, the author designates her novelistic art as a form of new Asian American literary avant-garde that operates from the peripheries of received histories, aesthetics, and disciplines. Seeking not only to demonstrate the importance of Yamashita's transnational art, the book also sets new terms for ongoing dialogues in Asian American literary and cultural criticism. At the same time, it argues for the continuing relevance of Asian American literature as a self-reflexive and self-renewable critical practice.Less
Over the course of the last two decades, novelist Karen Tei Yamashita has reshaped the Asian American literary imagination in profound ways, and this book offers readers a critically engaged examination of her literary corpus. Crafted at the intersection of intellectual history, ethnic studies, literary analysis, and critical theory, the study goes beyond textual investigation to intervene in larger debates over postmodern representation, spatial materialism, historical form, and social and academic activism. Arguing that Yamashita's most important contribution is her incorporation of a North–South vector into the East–West conceptual paradigm, the author highlights the novelist's re-prioritization, through such a geographical realignment, of socio-economic concerns for Asian American literary criticism. In assessing Yamashita's works as such, the author designates her novelistic art as a form of new Asian American literary avant-garde that operates from the peripheries of received histories, aesthetics, and disciplines. Seeking not only to demonstrate the importance of Yamashita's transnational art, the book also sets new terms for ongoing dialogues in Asian American literary and cultural criticism. At the same time, it argues for the continuing relevance of Asian American literature as a self-reflexive and self-renewable critical practice.
Isabel Carrera SuÁRez
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- June 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199679775
- eISBN:
- 9780191869778
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199679775.003.0027
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This chapter examines the history of multicultural and transnational novels in Canada. Several decades after multiculturalism was established as a political structure and defining feature of the ...
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This chapter examines the history of multicultural and transnational novels in Canada. Several decades after multiculturalism was established as a political structure and defining feature of the Canadian nation, the term is no longer appropriate to designate all writing outside the former Anglo-Protestant norm without evoking a hierarchy that belies Canadian self-definition, as sanctioned by the Multiculturalism Act of 1988. Canadian literature is therefore multicultural in its national dimension while, individually, authors and novels are Canadian. The term ‘transnational’, by contrast, raises altogether different questions, as it aims to transcend the nationalist project underpinning multiculturalism. The chapter first considers Canadian multicultural novels published during the period 1950–1970, a time of nation-building, before discussing the accelerated pace at which Canadian fiction began to evolve and diversify in the 1980s. It also analyses how the rhetoric of Canadianness changed in the 1980s and 1990s, embracing transnationalism and new intersectional theories of post-national and individual indentity.Less
This chapter examines the history of multicultural and transnational novels in Canada. Several decades after multiculturalism was established as a political structure and defining feature of the Canadian nation, the term is no longer appropriate to designate all writing outside the former Anglo-Protestant norm without evoking a hierarchy that belies Canadian self-definition, as sanctioned by the Multiculturalism Act of 1988. Canadian literature is therefore multicultural in its national dimension while, individually, authors and novels are Canadian. The term ‘transnational’, by contrast, raises altogether different questions, as it aims to transcend the nationalist project underpinning multiculturalism. The chapter first considers Canadian multicultural novels published during the period 1950–1970, a time of nation-building, before discussing the accelerated pace at which Canadian fiction began to evolve and diversify in the 1980s. It also analyses how the rhetoric of Canadianness changed in the 1980s and 1990s, embracing transnationalism and new intersectional theories of post-national and individual indentity.
James Meffan
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- June 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199679775
- eISBN:
- 9780191869778
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199679775.003.0032
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This chapter discusses the history of multicultural and transnational novels in New Zealand. A novel set in New Zealand will have to deal with questions about cultural access rights on the one hand ...
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This chapter discusses the history of multicultural and transnational novels in New Zealand. A novel set in New Zealand will have to deal with questions about cultural access rights on the one hand and cultural coverage on the other. The term ‘transnational novel’ gains its relevance from questions about cultural and national identity, questions that have particularly exercised nations formed from colonial history. The chapter considers novels that demonstrate and respond to perceived deficiencies in wider discourses of cultural and national identity by way of comparison between New Zealand and somewhere else. These include Amelia Batistich's Another Mountain, Another Song (1981), Albert Wendt's Sons for the Return Home (1973) and Black Rainbow (1992), James McNeish's Penelope's Island (1990), Stephanie Johnson's The Heart's Wild Surf (2003), and Lloyd Jones's Mister Pip (2006).Less
This chapter discusses the history of multicultural and transnational novels in New Zealand. A novel set in New Zealand will have to deal with questions about cultural access rights on the one hand and cultural coverage on the other. The term ‘transnational novel’ gains its relevance from questions about cultural and national identity, questions that have particularly exercised nations formed from colonial history. The chapter considers novels that demonstrate and respond to perceived deficiencies in wider discourses of cultural and national identity by way of comparison between New Zealand and somewhere else. These include Amelia Batistich's Another Mountain, Another Song (1981), Albert Wendt's Sons for the Return Home (1973) and Black Rainbow (1992), James McNeish's Penelope's Island (1990), Stephanie Johnson's The Heart's Wild Surf (2003), and Lloyd Jones's Mister Pip (2006).
Robyn Morris
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- June 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199679775
- eISBN:
- 9780191869778
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199679775.003.0022
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
In Australia, the issue of multiculturalism has been the subject of considerable debate. This tension has been captured by and reflected in the reception of the strong but constantly evolving ...
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In Australia, the issue of multiculturalism has been the subject of considerable debate. This tension has been captured by and reflected in the reception of the strong but constantly evolving tradition of Australian multicultural writing. The controversy centres on who can speak for whom, claims of the appropriation and commodification of multicultural writing by publishers and academia, and the multicultural novel's relationship to — and place within — Australian literature. The chapter considers the rise of Australian multicultural and contemporary transnational literature since the 1950s and its connection to political and cultural ideologies. In particular, it examines how autobiographical reflections or fictional accounts of the experience of migration have influenced public discourse on issues of citizenship and belonging. A number of such works are cited, including Antigone Kefala's The Island (1984), Christos Tsiolkas's Loaded (1995), and Adib Khan's Spiral Road (2007).Less
In Australia, the issue of multiculturalism has been the subject of considerable debate. This tension has been captured by and reflected in the reception of the strong but constantly evolving tradition of Australian multicultural writing. The controversy centres on who can speak for whom, claims of the appropriation and commodification of multicultural writing by publishers and academia, and the multicultural novel's relationship to — and place within — Australian literature. The chapter considers the rise of Australian multicultural and contemporary transnational literature since the 1950s and its connection to political and cultural ideologies. In particular, it examines how autobiographical reflections or fictional accounts of the experience of migration have influenced public discourse on issues of citizenship and belonging. A number of such works are cited, including Antigone Kefala's The Island (1984), Christos Tsiolkas's Loaded (1995), and Adib Khan's Spiral Road (2007).
