Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Kandice Chuh is Professor of English, Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is coeditor of Orientations: Mapping Studies in the Asian Diaspora, published by Duke University Press.
"Kandice Chuh argues that in the current study of Asian Americans, the critique of social inequality must overcome the impossible insistence on a uniform ethnic subject. She performs a daring deconstruction of the recurrence to ideas of authenticity and identity, discusses the pitfalls of essentialized concepts of 'activism' and 'community,' and encourages us to put the case of Asian Americans towards a more general critique of racialized U.S. society. Her intervention challenges us to think differently, to ‘imagine otherwise.’"-Lisa Lowe, author of<i> Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics</i> <i>“Imagine Otherwise</i> is a provocative work. It questions the terms in which Asian American studies have been understood and offers a set of exciting theoretical alternatives, each of which is substantiated by close readings of literary texts. Our understanding of Asian American subjectivity is significantly enhanced in the process.”-David Palumbo-Liu, author of <i>Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier</i>
Drawing on the insights of poststructuralist theory, postcolonial studies, and investigations of transnationalism, Imagine Otherwise conceives of Asian American literature and U.S. legal discourse as theoretical texts to be examined for the normative claims about race, gender, and sexuality that they put forth. Reading government and legal documents, novels including Carlos Bulosan's America Is in the Heart, John Okada's No-No Boy, Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life, Ronyoung Kim's Clay Walls, and Lois Ann Yamanaka's Blu's Hanging, and the short stories "Immigration Blues" by Bienvenido Santos and "High-Heeled Shoes" by Hisaye Yamamoto, Chuh works through Filipino American and Korean American identity formation and Japanese American internment during World War II as she negotiates the complex and sometimes tense differences that constitute 'Asian America' and Asian American studies.
Introduction: On Asian Americanist Critique 1
1. Against Uniform Subjectivity: Remembering "Filipino America” 31
2. Nikkei Internment: Determined Identities/Undecidable Meanings 58
3. "One Hundred Percent Korean”: On Space and Subjectivity 85
4. (Dis)Owning America 112
Conclusion: When Difference Meets Itself 147
Notes 153
Works Cited 187
Index 211
"Kandice Chuh argues that in the current study of Asian Americans, the critique of social inequality must overcome the impossible insistence on a uniform ethnic subject. She performs a daring deconstruction of the recurrence to ideas of authenticity and identity, discusses the pitfalls of essentialized concepts of 'activism' and 'community,' and encourages us to put the case of Asian Americans towards a more general critique of racialized U.S. society. Her intervention challenges us to think differently, to ‘imagine otherwise.’"-Lisa Lowe, author of<i> Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics</i> <i>“Imagine Otherwise</i> is a provocative work. It questions the terms in which Asian American studies have been understood and offers a set of exciting theoretical alternatives, each of which is substantiated by close readings of literary texts. Our understanding of Asian American subjectivity is significantly enhanced in the process.”-David Palumbo-Liu, author of <i>Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier</i>
Drawing on the insights of poststructuralist theory, postcolonial studies, and investigations of transnationalism, Imagine Otherwise conceives of Asian American literature and U.S. legal discourse as theoretical texts to be examined for the normative claims about race, gender, and sexuality that they put forth. Reading government and legal documents, novels including Carlos Bulosan's America Is in the Heart, John Okada's No-No Boy, Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life, Ronyoung Kim's Clay Walls, and Lois Ann Yamanaka's Blu's Hanging, and the short stories "Immigration Blues" by Bienvenido Santos and "High-Heeled Shoes" by Hisaye Yamamoto, Chuh works through Filipino American and Korean American identity formation and Japanese American internment during World War II as she negotiates the complex and sometimes tense differences that constitute 'Asian America' and Asian American studies.
Introduction: On Asian Americanist Critique 1
1. Against Uniform Subjectivity: Remembering "Filipino America” 31
2. Nikkei Internment: Determined Identities/Undecidable Meanings 58
3. "One Hundred Percent Korean”: On Space and Subjectivity 85
4. (Dis)Owning America 112
Conclusion: When Difference Meets Itself 147
Notes 153
Works Cited 187
Index 211
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Kandice Chuh is Professor of English, Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is coeditor of Orientations: Mapping Studies in the Asian Diaspora, published by Duke University Press.