Amy Tan has established a reputation as a major novelist of not only the Asian American experience but the universal experience of family relationships. With the publication of her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, which touched the hearts of millions of readers, Tan joined the ranks of major...

Amy Tan has established a reputation as a major novelist of not only the Asian American experience but the universal experience of family relationships. With the publication of her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, which touched the hearts of millions of readers, Tan joined the ranks of major contemporary novelists. Adapting her brand of Chinese traditional talk story as a vehicle for exploring the lives of the mothers and daughters at the center of her novels, Tan allows readers to experience the lives of her characters from multiple perspectives in parallel and intersecting narratives. In this first full-length study of her work, E.D. Huntley explores the fictional worlds Tan has created in her three novels, The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, and The Hundred Secret Senses. Examining the characters, narrative strategies, plot development, literary devices, setting, and major themes, Huntley explores the rich tapestry created in each of the novels.

Expounding the view that the feminist movement has both encouraged and enriched literature by women, Katherine Payant examines a large body of immensely popular but, for the most part, critically neglected fiction of the period from the late 1960s through the early 1990s, relating these writers and...

Expounding the view that the feminist movement has both encouraged and enriched literature by women, Katherine Payant examines a large body of immensely popular but, for the most part, critically neglected fiction of the period from the late 1960s through the early 1990s, relating these writers and works to the women's movement and feminist theories. The study concentrates on popular fiction, which is seen as evidence of the widespread influence of feminism and as a vehicle for dissemination of "mainstream" feminist ideas. Chapters dealing with the 1970s and 1980s survey relevant feminist theories and tie them to representative novels. Chosen for special focus in individual chapters are Marge Piercy, Mary Gordon, and Toni Morrison, who reflect divergent perspectives on feminism. Written in accessible prose, this work will deepen the appreciation of readers of these novelists and increase their understanding of the effect of social movements on the arts.

Since the 1970's, when Maxine Hong Kingston began publishing her prize-winning books, we have seen an explosive growth in Asian American literature, a literature that has won both popular and critical acclaim. Literary anthologies and critical studies attest to a growing academic interest in the...

Since the 1970's, when Maxine Hong Kingston began publishing her prize-winning books, we have seen an explosive growth in Asian American literature, a literature that has won both popular and critical acclaim. Literary anthologies and critical studies attest to a growing academic interest in the field. This book seeks to identify the forces behind this literary emergence and to explore both the unique place of Asian Americans in American culture and what that place says about the way Americanness is defined.

The author is preoccupied with how the sense of the nation is disseminated through the practice of reading and writing, and he argues that Asian American literature is a productive discursive negotiation of the contemporary contradiction in American citizenship. By analyzing the textual strategies with which literary Asian America is represented, the book shows how the "fictive ethnicity" of the nation continues to exert its regulatory power and suggests how we can work toward a radical American democratic consent.

Through nuanced readings of exemplary texts, the author delineates how Asian American literary production has become a site for the creation of Asian American subjects and community. The texts range from Kingston's enigmatic Tripmaster Monkey to the seductive cunning of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club; from Bharati Mukherjee's romantic Jasmine to the geocultural ambivalence of David Mure's Turning Japanese; and from the transvestic subversion of David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly to the transpirational tropes of David Wong Louie's Pangs of Love.

Imagining the Nation integrates a fine appreciation of the formal features of Asian American literature with the conflict andconvergence among different reading communities and the dilemma of ethnic intellectuals caught in the process of their institutionalization. By articulating Asian American structures of feeling across the nexus of East and Wes

Young compares and contrasts the histories of African-American and Chinese-American women, then analyzes each group's response to the stereotyped images that have become a part of American cultural history. Her vehicle for this study is fiction from writers as diverse as James Fenimore Cooper...

Young compares and contrasts the histories of African-American and Chinese-American women, then analyzes each group's response to the stereotyped images that have become a part of American cultural history. Her vehicle for this study is fiction from writers as diverse as James Fenimore Cooper, William Wells Brown, Ambrose Bierce, and Frank Chin, and from Euro-American, African-American, and Chinese-American writers who created the dominant stereotypes. Young examines the response to these stereotypes in the writings of key African and Chinese-American women writers such as Linda Brent, Frances Harper, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Sui Sin Far, Chang Hua, and Amy Tan.

As a distinct area of literary study, Asian American literature now enjoys a level of critical recognition that was unimaginable when academic interest in the field began modestly some 25 years ago. Part of this recognition stems from the increasing contributions of Asian American novelists, whose...

As a distinct area of literary study, Asian American literature now enjoys a level of critical recognition that was unimaginable when academic interest in the field began modestly some 25 years ago. Part of this recognition stems from the increasing contributions of Asian American novelists, whose works continue to capture growing levels of popular attention. This reference book provides alphabetically arranged entries for 70 Asian American novelists. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and provides a short biography, a discussion of major works and themes, an overview of the novelist's critical reception, and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. In addition, the volume concludes with a selected, general bibliography.

Asian Americans have made significant contributions to American society. This reference work celebrates the contributions of 166 distinguished Asian Americans. Most people profiled are not featured in any other biographical dictionary on noted Asian Americans. The Chinese Americans, Japanese...

Asian Americans have made significant contributions to American society. This reference work celebrates the contributions of 166 distinguished Asian Americans. Most people profiled are not featured in any other biographical dictionary on noted Asian Americans. The Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Filipino Americans, Korean Americans, South Asian Americans (from India and Pakistan), and Southeast Asian Americans (from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam) profiled in this work represent more than 75 fields of endeavor. From historical figures to figure skater Michelle Kwan, this work features both prominent and less familiar individuals who have made significant contributions in their fields. A number of the contemporary subjects have given exclusive interviews for this work.