This course examines how immigrant experience simultaneously contests and consolidates the meaning and configuration of familial relations in the 20th century U.S. history. To that end, we will focus on the question of how literature functions as an alternative site for narrating history and a place to imagine differences against the rigid understanding of a family as a heteronormative institution formed upon a nuclear, middle class, patriarchal household model. We will also study how not only social and cultural values but also political regimes affect circulation, transfiguration, or rupture of immigrants’ memory of home and family. To develop practices of critical interpretation of these questions in literature, we will study a selection of novels along with other forms such as short stories, memoirs, and film.
Students’ responsibility in this course includes three short papers and one final paper to meet the W-course requirement, besides of a regular contribution to class discussion, a collaborative presentation, discussion-leadings, quizzes, and substantial daily reading.

Course Texts:
Yezierska, Anzia. Bread Givers (1925), ISBN 978-0892552900
Murayam, Milton. All I Asking for Is My Body (1988), ISBN 978-0824811723
Kincaid, Jamaica. Lucy (1990), ISBN 978-0374527358
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior (1976), ISBN 978-0679721888
Trenka, Jane Jeong. The Language of Blood (2005), ISBN 978-1555974268
* Additional readings will be available through library course reserves.