Description
Book SynopsisRecovered Legacies: Authority and Identity in Early Asian American Literature employs contemporary and traditional readings of representative works in prose, poetry, and drama to suggest new ways of understanding and appreciating the critically fertile but underexamined body of Asian American writing from the late 1800s to the early 1960s. The essays in this volume engage this corpus-composed of multiple genres from different periods and by authors of different ethnicities-with a strong awareness of historical context and a keen sensitivity to literary form. As a collection, Recovered Legacies re-establishes the rich and diverse literary heritage of Asian America and argues persuasively for the significance of these works to the American literary canon.
Trade Review"The editors have cagily combined groundbreaking scholarship on literary texts that no one knows about, with useful, historically grounded criticism of literary texts that established scholars and those interested in learning about Asian American literature are likely to study. The prose is lucid and accessible, the readings are conversant both with Asian American and American cultural history and with relevant Asian American literary scholarship, and therefore the book should be useful not only to scholars but to teachers and students, as the editors indicate was their goal."-Patricia P. Chu, Associate Professor of English, George Washington University
Table of ContentsPrefaceChronology of Works DiscussedIntroduction - Keith Lawrence and Floyd Cheung1. Early Chinese American Autobiography: Reconsidering the Works of Yan Phou Lee and Yung Wing - Floyd Cheung2. The Self and Generic Convention: Winnifred Eaton's Me, A Book of Remembrance - David Shih3. Diasporic Literature and Identity: Autobiography and the I-Novel in Estu Sugimoto's Daughter of the Samurai - Georgina Dodge4. The Capitalist and Imperialist Critique in H. T. Tsiang's And China Has Hands - Julia H. Lee5. Unacquiring Negrophobia: Younghill Kang and Cosmopolitan Resistance to the Black and White Logic of Naturalization - Stephen Knadler6. Asian American (Im)mobility: Perspectives on the College Plays 1937-1955 - Josephine Lee7. Toyo Suyemoto, Ansel Adams, and the Landscape of Justice - John Streamas8. Wounded Bodies and the Cold War: Freedom, Materialism, and Revolution in Asian American Literature, 1946-1957 - Viet Thanh Nguyen9. Suffering Male Bodies: Representations of Dissent and Displacement in the Internment-Themed Narratives of John Okada and Toshio Mori - Suzanne Arakawa10. Toshio Mori, Richard Kim, and the Masculine Ideal - Keith Lawrence11. Home, Memory, and Narrative in Monica Sone's Nisei Daughter - Warren D. Hoffman12. The "Pre-History" of an "Asian American" Writer: N.V.M. Gonzalez' Allegory of Decolonization - Augusto Espiritu13. Representing Korean American Female Subjects, Negotiating Multiple Americas, and Reading Beyond the Ending in Ronyoung Kim's Clay Walls - Pamela ThomaContributorsIndex
