This course will examine the historical currents that necessitated the emergence of Asian American literature, in conjunction with a consideration of the difficulties and possibilities inherent to defining an “Asian Pacific American” literary sensibility. Asian American populations have been deeply impacted by restrictive immigration legislation and American foreign policy, putting its peoples in a unique position for defining Americanness. How do artists with an Asian ancestry challenge a country that ostensibly celebrates diversity yet looks with suspicion on the foreign? The course material is organized thematically, and not regionally. In other words, texts have not been chosen based on the particular ethnic affiliation of the authors. Rather, each work has been selected based on its illumination and/or contestation of themes and images commonly used to define an Asian American experience, such as fraught parent-child relationships and the incompatibility between East and West. We will be reading short pieces by Carlos Bulosan and Jhumpi Lahiri, and books by Chang-Rae Lee, David Henry Hwang, and Annie Choi.

Happy Birthday or Whatever: Track Suits, Kim Chee, and Other Family Disasters [Paperback]
• Annie Choi\ Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks (April 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061132225 0061132225
• ISBN-13: 978-0061132223 0061132223

Native Speaker
M. Butterfly