Description
Book SynopsisWinner, Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize presented by the New England American Studies AssociationAcross the twentieth century, national controversies involving Asian Americans have drawn attention to such seemingly unremarkable activities as eating rice, greeting customers, and studying for exams. While public debates about Asian Americans have invoked quotidian practices to support inconsistent claims about racial difference, diverse aesthetic projects have tested these claims by experimenting with the relationships among habit, body, and identity. In The Racial Mundane, Ju Yon Kim argues that the ambiguous relationship between behavioral tendencies and the body has sustained paradoxical characterizations of Asian Americans as ideal and impossible Americans. The body's uncertain attachment to its routine motions promises alternately to materialize racial distinctions and to dissolve them. Kim's study focuses on works of theater, fiction, and film that explore the interface between racializ
Trade Review"A beautifully written and original discussion of Asian American performance and the politics of the everyday. The Racial Mundaneillustrateshow Asian Americans, whether historically marginalized or celebrated as model minorities, have come into the public eye, and will surely open up important new dialogues on Asian American culture and racial representation." -- Josephine Lee,author of Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage
"Impressive and compelling,The Racial Mundanedefamiliarizes everyday behaviors in order to expose the racial formation of Asian Americans. In this beautifully rendered, standout book, Ju Yon Kimbreaks new ground, opening the theoretical framework of race and performance in original and exciting ways." -- Shannon Steen,author of Racial Geometries of The Black Atlantic, Asian Pacific, and American Theatre
"Kims methodology throughout reminds us that scholarship is its own practice and the 'theoretical elasticity'demonstrated in these studies highlights the complexity of Asian American cultural works and their unfolding critical praxis." * American Literature *
Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Ambiguous Habits and the Paradox of Asian American Racial Formation 1 1. Trying on The Yellow Jacket at the Limits of Our Town: The Routines of Race and Nation 25 2. Everyday Rituals and the Performance of Community 71 3. Making Change: Interracial Conflict, Cross-Racial Performance 123 4. Homework Becomes You: The Model Minority and Its Doubles 173 Afterword: The Everyday Asian American Online 231 Notes 251 Index 277 About the Author 287
