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Since the publication of The Woman Warrior in 1976, Maxine Hong Kingston has gained a reputation as one of the most popular—and controversial—writers in the Asian American literary tradition. This book traces her development as a writer and cultural activist through both ethnic and feminist discourses, investigating her novels, occasional writings, and her two-book ‘life-writing project’. The publication of The Woman Warrior not only propelled Kingston into the mainstream literary limelight, but also precipitated a vicious and ongoing controversy in Asian American letters over the authenticity—or fakery—of her cultural references. This book traces the debates through the appearance of China Men (1981), as well as the novel Tripmaster Monkey (1989) and her most recent work The Fifth Book of Peace.
A sian American literature by women is increasingly attracting critical attention as an important sub genre of American literature. Current debates over the literary canon, the changing profile of literary and cultural studies, the increasing presence of women’s and ethnic writing both within and beyond the canon may all explain the increasing popularity of Asian American women’s writing both within the US and beyond its geographical borders. Yet, the critical debate on Asian American women’s writing has barely begun when compared with
popularity as a feminist writer, she deserves recognition as a pacifist writer and activist, and that we need to reconceive of her work as part of an on-going pacifist project. I make the claim that Kingston can be considered alongside other Asian American authors, notably Le-Ly Hayslip, as contributing towards the evolution of an Asian American women’s peace literature. Kingston as poet and peacemaker ‘I have almost finished my longbook,’ says Maxine Hong Kingston in To Be the Poet (2002). ‘Let my life as a poet begin
I want to change the world through artistic pacifist means. (Maxine Hong Kingston, 1991) ‘The beginning is hers’: the political and literary legacies of Maxine Hong Kingston In 1989, Maxine Hong Kingston expressed her pleasure at the blossoming of Asian American literature: ‘Something wonderful is happening right at this moment … Amy Tan published The Joy Luck Club , and Hisaye Yamamoto published Seventeen Syllables , Frank Chin has a collection of short stories, and I think maybe
According to the author, queer as an identification and subjectivity is important to his writing of transnational South Asian art histories. This book talks about new transnational South Asian art histories, to make visible histories of artworks that remain marginalised within the discipline of art history. This is done through a deliberate 'productive failure', by not upholding the strictly genealogical approach. The book discusses authorship by examining the writing about the work of Anish Kapoor to explore the shifting manner in which critics and art historians have identified him and his work. It focuses on the author's own identification as queer and South Asian American to put pressure on the coherency of an LGBTQI art history. It connects formal similarities of abstract work produced in the 1960s in New York City by Cy Twombly and Natvar Bhavsar. The book deals with an art history that concerns facile categories such as South Asian/non-South Asian and black/white, and discusses the works of Stephen Dean, Mario Pfeifer, Adrian Margaret Smith Piper, and Kehinde Wiley. It focuses on practice-led research by discussing 'Sphere:dreamz,; which was produced by queer-identified South Asian women. Continuing the focus, the book looks at the multi-site exhibition 'Mixing It Up: Queering Curry Mile and Currying Canal Street', organised by the author in 2007. It addresses the question of how certain subjects are considered as 'belonging' and others as not; and the role of art in the reconstitution of notions of 'home' and transnational South Asian art histories.
Form: queer zen In the summer of 2012 I participated in the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute programme titled ‘Re-envisioning American Art History: Asian American Art, Research, and Teaching’.1 Margo Machida, one of the pioneers of exploring artworks by artists of Asian descent through a transnational lens, and Alexandra Chang, curator of special projects and the director of global arts programs at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute research centre at New York University (NYU), organized the intensive three-week programme and
campaign promises by fulfillment and identity target Description Promises broken Promises compromised Promises kept Promises addressing black concerns Promises addressing Latino/a concerns Promises addressing Asian American concerns Promises addressing Native American concerns Promises addressing women’s concerns Promises addressing LGBT concerns Promises addressing senior concerns Promises addressing veterans’ concerns Promises addressing the concerns of the poor Total N (%) 129 (24.2%) 146 (27.4%) 258 (48.4%) 31 (5.8%) 26 (4.9%) 9 (1.7%) 13 (2.4%) 23 (4.3%) 7 (1
The election of Barack Obama was a milestone in US history with tremendous symbolic importance for the black community. But was this symbolism backed up by substance? Did ordinary black people really benefit under the first black president?
This is the question that Andra Gillespie sets out to answer in Race and the Obama Administration. Using a variety of methodological techniques—from content analysis of executive orders to comparisons of key indicators, such as homeownership and employment rates under Clinton, Bush, and Obama— the book charts the progress of black causes and provides valuable perspective on the limitations of presidential power in addressing issues of racial inequality. Gillespie uses public opinion data to investigate the purported disconnect between Obama’s performance and his consistently high ratings among black voters, asking how far the symbolic power of the first black family in the White House was able to compensate for the compromises of political office.
Scholarly but accessible, Race and the Obama Administration will be of interest to students and lecturers in US politics and race studies, as well as to general readers who want to better understand the situation of the black community in the US today and the prospects for its improvement.
‘ian culture – she describes it as ‘ kapu ’, or taboo – is very strong here. This clashes with her own sense of herself as an insider by way of her ancestral history, yet she, like her grandparents before her, nevertheless remains externally designated as something of an outsider, not ‘kama‘āina’, a quite charged Hawai‘ian term which translates as ‘native’. Hawai‘ian Asian American critic Stephen Sumida has discussed the politics of the ‘local’ in Hawai‘i at some length in his study of Hawai‘ian literatures, And the View From the Shore: Literary Traditions of Hawai‘i . The
articles solely on The Woman Warrior ; Amazon.com lists 148 critical studies on The Woman Warrior ; while many other books and articles contain sections on the book to a lesser or greater degree. Anthony J. Fonseca observes that Kingston is ‘the most influential Asian American writer of the twentieth century’ and The Woman Warrior is ‘the yardstick against which Asian American writers are measured’. 4 In Compositional Subjects: Enfiguring Asian/American Women Laura Hyun Yi Kang goes even further, describing The Woman Warrior as one of a select few ‘disciplinary