eBook

Race & resistance : literature & politics in Asian America

Nguyen, Viet Thanh

2002

Overview

This book argues that Asian American intellectuals have idealized Asian America, ignoring its saturation with capitalist practices. The idealization of Asian America means that Asian American intellectuals can neither grapple with Asian American ideological diversity nor recognize their own involvement with capitalist practices such as “panethnic entrepreneurship”, the selling of race and racial identity. The book's controversial thesis contradicts the widespread view among Asian American intellectuals — a class that includes academics, artists, politicians, and activists — that contemporary Asian America is a place of resistance to capitalist and racist exploitation. Making its case through a wide range of Asian American literature, which remains a critical arena of cultural production for Asian Americans, the book demonstrates that the literature embodies the complexities, conflicts, and potential future options of Asian American culture and politics.

• Publisher: Oxford University Press,Oxford University Press, Incorporated
• Subject: American literature / American literature -- Asian American authors -- History and criticism / Asian American authors / Asian Americans / Asian Americans in literature / History and criticism / Intellectual life / Literary Studies (American) / Politics in literature / Race in literature
• ISBN: 0195147006, 9780195146998, 9780195147001, 0195146999