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Japanese-American Literature through the Prism of Acculturation delves not only into the painful past of Japanese immigrants and their immediate descendants but also illustrates a wide array of Japanese customs that the immigrants brought with them as their rich cultural legacy.
List of contents
Introduction
1. Maps of Meaning and Cultural Contextualisation: Cultural Studies from a Critical Perspective
2. Ethnic Negotiations: Japanese Americans within the Ethnic Paradigm
3. ‘The Others’ in the American Land: Japanese Immigrants and Their Descendants through the Lens of Postcolonial Studies
3.1. Japanese Americans and Hybrid Cultural Identities within a Liminal Space
4. Acculturation Theory and Its Premises
5. Evocation of the Past as a Mirror for the Present: Japanese-American Works of Literature and Their Authors
6. Age in Cultural Contexts: Issei versus Nisei Generation Gap and Family Life
7. Ethnic/Social Status Dichotomy: Physically Japanese, Culturally American
7.1. Language Use and Communication
7.2. Education
7.3. Occupation
8. Cultural Distance: Split Identities and Ethnic Schizophrenia. An Outward Culture Perspective
8.1. Festival Celebrations, Customs and Cuisine
8.2. Culture and Etiquette
8.3. Sartorial Code
8.4. Dance
9. Within and beyond Assimilation: Collectivistic versus Individualistic Cultural Value Orientations. An Inward Culture Perspective
10. Gender Paradox: Male Authority in a Matriarchal Society
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the author
Małgorzata Jarmołowicz-Dziekońska, PhD (Faculty of Philology, University of Białystok, Poland), dedicates her research work to the relationship of literature and culture by exploring their textual intersections and mapping their locus within the matrix of the contemporary literary criticism. Her major fields of academic interest comprise ecocriticism, postcolonial and cultural studies with a focus on ethnicity and identity formation in the context of immigrant narratives.
Summary
Japanese-American Literature through the Prism of Acculturation delves not only into the painful past of Japanese immigrants and their immediate descendants but also illustrates a wide array of Japanese customs that the immigrants brought with them as their rich cultural legacy.
