Asian American Literature (edinburgh Critical Guides To Literature)

Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature Series Editors: Martin Halliwell and Andy Mousley This series provides accessible yet provocative introductions to a wide range of literatures. The volumes will initiate and deepen the reader’s understanding of key literary movements, periods and genres, and consider debates that inform the past, present and future of literary study. Resources such as glossaries of key terms and details of archives and internet sites are also provided, making each volume a comprehensive critical guide. Adams ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE Key Features • The first readily available introductory guide to Asian American literature with a Chronology and Glossary of key events and terms • Discusses a representative range of Asian American literature, providing a sense of the diversity of the field and of its key themes and modes of writing • Provides close readings of key texts in the form of case studies in their cultural historical and critical contexts • Encourages reflection on questions of literary value, canonicity and the scope and purpose of literary studies Bella Adams is a part-time lecturer in American Studies at Liverpool John Moores University and author of Amy Tan (2005). Bella Adams Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 22 George Square Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.eup.ed.ac.uk Edinburgh Critical Guides This critical study of Asian American literature discusses work by internationally successful writers such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Chang-rae Lee, Bharati Mukherjee, Amy Tan and others in their historical, cultural and critical contexts. The focus of this book is on contemporary writing, from the 1970s onwards, but it also traces over a hundred years of Asian American literary production in prose, poetry, drama and criticism. The main body of the book comprises five periodized chapters that highlight important events in a nation-state that has historically rendered Asian Americans invisible. Of particular importance to the writers selected for case studies are questions of racial identity, cultural history and literary value with respect to dominant American ideologies. ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE Edinburgh Critical Guides Bella Adams ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE ISBN 978 0 7486 2272 6 Cover design: Michael Chatfield Adams cover 3.indd 1 3285 349 28/9/07 11:50:03 362 320 281 301 2718 2725 2583 227 200 179 152 132 103 695 w. gray 9 4655 727 652 3285 Asian American Literature Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature Series Editors: Martin Halliwell, University of Leicester and Andy Mousley, De Montfort University Published Titles: Gothic Literature, Andrew Smith Canadian Literature, Faye Hammill Women’s Poetry, Jo Gill Contemporary American Drama, Annette J. Saddik Shakespeare, Gabriel Egan Asian American Literature, Bella Adams Children’s Literature, M. O. Grenby Forthcoming Titles in the Series: Eighteenth-Century Literature, Hamish Mathison Contemporary British Fiction, Nick Bentley Contemporary American Fiction, David Brauner Victorian Literature, David Amigoni Crime Fiction, Stacy Gillis Renaissance Literature, Siobhan Keenan Modern American Literature, Catherine Morley Scottish Literature, Gerard Carruthers Romantic Literature, Richard Marggraf Turley Modernist Literature, Rachel Potter Medieval Literature, Pamela King Women’s Fiction, Sarah Sceats African American Literature, Jennifer Terry Asian American Literature Bella Adams Edinburgh University Press © Bella Adams, Edinburgh University Press Ltd George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in . / pt Ehrhardt by Servis Fi