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What is a Chinese American? A Chinese? An American? Or both? Or neither? These seemingly easy questions are hard to answer in terms of history, culture, ethnicity, and literature. In order to provide an answer to these questions, Chinese American writers transform a historical discourse into a historicist one to review history, an intrapersonal discourse into an interpersonal one to redefine autobiography, and a mythological discourse into a mythopoetical one to rewrite mythology, so as to transform an American Orientalist discourse into a Chinese American one for the reading and writing of Chinese American literature. As a consequence, the question "What is a Chinese American?" is transformed into an affirmation of what a Chinese American is.
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The Author: Joan Chiung-huei Chang is Associate Professor in the English Department at Soochow University in Taipei, Taiwan. She received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Oregon. Her articles on Chinese American literature have been published in several conference proceedings and literary collections.
Relazione
«In tackling the complex issue of identity construction in Asian America, Joan Chiung-huei Chang adopts the perspective of mythopoetic discourse to explore how Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, David Henry Hwang, Andrea Louie, Jade Snow Wong, and Pardee Lowe blend into their texts many of the historical, political, racial, cultural, and sexual contentions. Often attentive to the theoretical and historical ramifications of a given issue, 'Transforming Chinese American Literature' helps bring into light Chinese American writers' challenges to the stereotypical definitions of history, autobiography, mythology, and literary canon. Richly documented and astutely argued, this elegant critical study constitutes an important source for cross-cultural and multicultural dialogue among scholars and students of Asian American literature.»
(Wen-ching Ho, Research Fellow and Head, Humanities Division, Institute of European and American Studies, Academica Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan)
«'Transforming Chinese American Literature' is an important contribution to literary criticism on Asian American writing. Beginning with the historical problem of naming Chinese Americans as Chinese and/or American, the five chapters offer a comprehensive and often elegant reading of the canon of texts by writers of Chinese descent. Lucid and theoretically argued, the readings are witty, packed with cultural knowledge, original, and always useful for both scholars and students. Joan Chiung-huei Chang has written a lively and sturdily historicized study that will vastly enrich our understanding of writers as various as Frank Chin, David Henry Hwang, Maxine Hong Kingston, Andrea Louie, Pardee Lowe, and Amy Tan.»
(Shirley Lim, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara; Chair Professor of English, University of Hong Kong)
