scholarly journals A Visual Asian American Diaspora: Belle Yang’s Hannah is My Name (2004) and Guene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese (2006)

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Marwa Essam Eldin Fahmi
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Ethnic Politics ◽  
Asian American Studies ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
Visual Text ◽  
Iconic Signs ◽  
Chinese American Literature

<p>The current study aims at theorizing the question of identity within the framework of postcolonial studies in two visual narratives: Belle Yang’s <em>Hannah is My Name</em> (2004) and Guene Luen Yang’s <em>American Born Chinese</em> (2006). Asian American studies have recently interrogated identity marking a shift from ethnic nationalism to recognition of multiplicity. The study also seeks to counter <em>Orientalist</em> stereotypes in American literature through the analysis and examination of postcolonial Asian American Diaspora to highlight a number of questions: 1) How is the identity of the Asian immigrant’s hybrid visually constructed? 2) How can Asian American visuals be addressed in non-white children’s literature? 3) What nurtures the transnational imaginations of the authors/illustrators in question? 4) What are the ramifications of transnational perspectives on Asian American narratives? 5) What are the nature of belonging and citizenship? The questions are a vehicle to investigate the cultural and ethnic politics of Chinese American literature and to explore new forms of self-identification in American literary discourse. They also yield rich insights into how to practice <em>multiculturalism</em>. What draws the visual narratives in question together is their postcolonial theme of reformulated identity to unsettle dichotomies within Asian American community. Furthermore, the present study explores semiotic systems in terms of image syntax, gestural, spatial and iconic signs to examine the relation between the <em>denotative</em> context of the narrative text and the <em>connotation</em> of the visual text that creates <em>polysemous</em> illustrations and indefinite meaning-making.</p>

Moving Futures

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 502-518
Author(s):  
Angela Naimou
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Essay Review ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
The Us ◽  
Four Books ◽  
African Migrant ◽  
Border Politics ◽  
Critical Refugee Studies

AbstractThis essay-review discusses four books that link refugee migration and border politics to ideas of time. It reads Asfa-Wossen Asserate’s African Exodus (2018), Stephanie Li’s Pan-African American Literature (2018), Aimee Bahng’s Migrant Futures (2018), and Long T. Bui’s Returns of War (2018) as books with distinct objects of analysis, from refugee memory of the US war in Vietnam, to US literary and cultural speculative fictions, to African immigrant writers in the US, to the current so-called African migrant crisis as it affects Europe. It also considers the multiple disciplinary and methodological commitments of these books, as they participate in discussions on migration in such areas as ethnic studies, postcolonial studies, Asian American studies, critical refugee studies, scholarship on literature of African diasporas, economics, history, memory, and human rights. This essay-review considers the gains or limitations of such approaches to the study of migration in contemporary literature and/or culture.

Transpacific Asymmetries

boundary 2 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 89-115
Author(s):  
Chih-ming Wang
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Asian American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Asian American Literature ◽  
Asian American Studies ◽  
Culture History ◽  
Migration Resistance ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critical Interpretation

In honor of the late Masao Miyoshi, whose work has opened a transpacific dimension in Asian American studies, this essay first explores the notion of asymmetry, which is seminal to his critical vision, to build an analytical framework for understanding and evaluating the transnational impulses in recent Asian American literature. Using asymmetry as an analytical lens, it then provides a critical interpretation of Ruth Ozeki’s important novel A Tale for the Time Being (2013) to consider the intricate connections between Asia and North America that are embedded in the subterranean history of war, migration, resistance, and hope. By foregrounding the entangled, even complicit, transpacific transactions in Asian American narratives, this essay will not only speak to the complexities of the transpacific turn in Asian American studies but will also remind us of the importance of Miyoshi’s off-centered approach to questions of culture, history, and politics undeterred by borders.

Hemispheric Approaches to Asian American Literature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald C. Goellnicht
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Asian American ◽  
North American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian American Literature ◽  
Asian American Studies ◽  
Asian North American

Hemispheric approaches to Asian American literature disrupt, supplement, and interrogate the cultural nationalist focus of early Asian American studies, transpacific and transnational approaches to Asian American studies that came to prominence in the 1990s, and the overall dominance of the United States in Asian American studies. These approaches have largely been championed by scholars working in Canada or on Canadian material, by feminist and queer scholars, and by those working on interethnic or interracial approaches between “Asian American” and black/African American, Latinx, and/or Native/Indigenous communities. The term “hemispheric” was preceded by Asian North American, which has been employed from fairly early in the maturing of Asian American literary and cultural criticism. Key also is the scholarly history of hemispheric approaches to Asian North American literature and culture (and to a lesser extent Asian Caribbean and Latin American literature and culture), the cross-border relations between artists and activists of Asian descent in North America, and the U.S. cultural imperialism inherent in this approach as well as its potential to diversify and open up the field of Asian American literary and cultural studies. The hemispheric approach also uncovers some of the limitations of the “transnational” and “diaspora” approaches that currently dominate Asian American studies and emphasize an east-west, transpacific spatiality.

Asian American Literary Reception and Readership

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Bhalla
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Asian American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian American Literature ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Asian American Studies ◽  
Literary Education ◽  
Literary Reception

Asian American literary studies, and multi-ethnic literatures more broadly, have maintained a constant faith in the power of literature as a potential tool of anti-racist education. This faith in literature’s potential is not naïve, since it also recognizes how even the most diverse and ideal literary education can be co-opted by the workings of capitalism and neoliberalism. These fields are founded in an enduring and powerful belief that literature affects the social, cultural, and political esteem of a minority group in the United States. Within the field of Asian American studies, academics, activists, and cultural critics have sought to harness the power of various forms of cultural discourse and literature by mediating the stories told about (and at times by) Asian Americans. As Asian American literature has grown in popularity, there has been increasing attention to questions of who is represented within Asian American literature and who is deemed worthy to produce these representations. Such concerns have over time produced an abiding if somewhat tacit interest in questions of literary reception in the field. In fact, although many of the major literary controversies in Asian American studies have circulated around questions of representation and reception and ushered in paradigm shifts in how the field has conceptualized itself, it is an area that remains understudied. Asian American literary reception study and studies of readership are still emerging and crucial areas of analysis that could pose and posit answers to questions of literature’s possibilities and limitations as a tool of anti-racism in 21st-century America.

Nation, Diaspora, and Asian American Literature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeehyun Lim
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Asian American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The State ◽  
Asian American Literature ◽  
Asian American Studies ◽  
Asian America ◽  
A Site ◽  
Crucial Part

Abstract Read together, Patricia Chu’s Where I have Never Been (2019), Jinah Kim’s Postcolonial Grief (2019), Sze Wei Ang’s The State of Race (2019), and Janna Odabas’s The Ghosts Within (2018) allow for a review of the state and meaning of diaspora and diasporic frames of analysis in Asian American literary and cultural criticism. Approaching these books through the 1990s debate on minority nationalism in Asian American studies shows one prominent direction that critical engagements with transnationalism have taken. While postcolonialism’s place in the 1990s debate on transnationalism and Asian America was tenuous at best, these books suggest that it has become a crucial part of envisioning the critical work diasporic Asian American culture can do. In these books, diasporic frames of analysis lead to recognizing Asian American culture as a site where the unresolved and unaccounted for violence of US nationalism and globalization surfaces and challenges to dominant ideas of race and nation appear. Both as method of inquiry and as historical understanding of twentieth-century US–Asian relations, postcolonialism in these books shows the critical potential of diaspora for Asian America.

British Women Amateur Filmmakers

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes ◽  
Heather Norris Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Aesthetic Judgment ◽  
Visual Anthropology ◽  
Gender History ◽  
Remote Communities ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
And Gender ◽  
British Commonwealth ◽  
Film Making

In the rapidly growing study of amateur film, this groundbreaking book addresses the development of British women's amateur visual practice. Drawing upon social and visual anthropology, imperial and postcolonial studies and British, Commonwealth and gender history, the authors explore how women in Britain and overseas, used the evolving technologies of moving imagery to create visual stories about their lives and times. Locating the making, watching and sharing of women's recreational film-making against wider societal, technological and ideological changes, British Women Amateur Filmmakers discloses how women from varied backgrounds negotiated changing lifestyles, attitudes and opportunities as they created first personal visual narratives about themselves and the world around them. Using non-fictional films and animations, the authors invite readers to view films through different interpretative lens and provide detailed contexts for their case-studies and survey of over forty women amateur filmmakers. Whether in remote communities, suburban homes, castles, missionary or diplomatic enclaves, or simply travelling as intrepid sightseers, women filmed their companions, other people and their surroundings, not only as observers but often displaying agency, autonomy and aesthetic judgment during decades when careers, particularly after marriage, were often denied in film and other professions. Research across Britain on films in private hands and specialist archives, interviews and extensive study of the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers (IAC's) collections enable the authors to reposition an activity once thought of as overwhelmingly male and middle class.

Asian American Studies Now

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Wu ◽  
Robert G Lee ◽  
Gary Okhiro ◽  
Helen Zia ◽  
David Eng ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Asian American Studies

Reflections on the Formation and Future of Asian American Studies

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-128
Author(s):  
Linda Vo
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
American Population ◽  
Asian American Studies ◽  
Regional Economic ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
Academic Trajectory ◽  
Demographic Growth

The ongoing demographic growth of the Asian American population enhances foundational support for Asian American studies; however, it also poses complex challenges for the formulation and direction of the field. Asian American studies has been shaped by transnational and regional economic and political conditions, as well as by the receptiveness and limitations of the academy, which has led to uneven disciplinary and institutional manifestations. This essay specifically analyzes what impact the transforming Asian American population has had on the formation of the field of Asian American studies and how the projected demographic growth will shape its future academic trajectory.

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