Synopses & Reviews
In Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America, Viet Nguyen argues that Asian American intellectuals have idealized Asian America, ignoring its saturation with capitalist practices. This idealization of Asian America means that Asian American intellectuals can neither grapple with their culture's ideological diversity nor recognize their own involvement with capitalist practices such as the selling of racial identity. Making his case through the example of literature, which remains a critical arena of cultural production for Asian Americans, Nguyen demonstrates that literature embodies the complexities, conflicts, and potential future options of Asian American culture.
Review
" Race and Resistance raises questions about the current project of Asian American studies that are essential considerations for the future development of the field."-- American Literature
Table of Contents
Introduction: A Crisis of Representation
1. On the Origins of Asian American Literature: The Eaton Sisters and the Hybrid Body
2. Wounded Bodies and the Cold War: Freedom, Materialism, and Revolution in Asian American Literature, 1946-1957
3. The Remasculinization of Chinese America: Race, Violence, and the Novel
4. Representing Reconciliation: Le Ly Hayslip and the Emblematic Victim
5. Queer Bodies and Subaltern Spectators: Guerrilla Theater, Hollywood Melodrama, and the Filipino (American) Novel
Conclusion: Model Minorities and Bad Subjects
Notes
Bibliography
Index