Chapter 10 - Revisualizing Race

Summary

Cultural identities are developed through new critical frameworks for Asian American aesthetics. The shifting demographic changes in Asian America as well as the growth of new literary forms such as graphic narratives shape our critical investments and produce alternative subject formations. Arguing for plurality and flexibility, this chapter looks at the productive ways that experimental forms of literature such as graphic narratives can resist the totalization and commodification of Asian American identity. Rejecting reductive stereotypical representations of Asian Americans and emphasizing the need for a reconceptualization of how we discuss race, graphic narratives challenge existing caricatures and stereotypes, problematize the narratives of race, and offer experimental forms of representation.