Book contents
- The Cambridge History ofAsian American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Early Forms of Expression to the Start of the Twentieth Century
- Part II The Exclusion Era, World War II, and the Immediate Postwar Era
- Part III The Asian American Movement
- Part IV Canons
- 16 The Emergence of Asian American Literature as an Academic Field
- 17 Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and the Impact of Theory
- 18 Heterogeneity to Multiplicity: Building Asian American Literary Critique
- 19 Whose Asias?
- 20 The South Asian American Challenge
- 21 Contemporary Filipino American Writers and the Legacy of Imperialism
- Part V Post-1965 and the Twenty-First Century
- Part VI Twenty-First Century: 9/11, Empire, and Other Challenges to Literature
- Bibliography
- Index
16 - The Emergence of Asian American Literature as an Academic Field
from Part IV - Canons
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2015
Book contents
- The Cambridge History ofAsian American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Early Forms of Expression to the Start of the Twentieth Century
- Part II The Exclusion Era, World War II, and the Immediate Postwar Era
- Part III The Asian American Movement
- Part IV Canons
- 16 The Emergence of Asian American Literature as an Academic Field
- 17 Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and the Impact of Theory
- 18 Heterogeneity to Multiplicity: Building Asian American Literary Critique
- 19 Whose Asias?
- 20 The South Asian American Challenge
- 21 Contemporary Filipino American Writers and the Legacy of Imperialism
- Part V Post-1965 and the Twenty-First Century
- Part VI Twenty-First Century: 9/11, Empire, and Other Challenges to Literature
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Examining Asian American literature from 1968 until the present, what readers encounter is a body of literature and ways of thinking about that literature that have grown rapidly in content, complexity, and contradiction. Within an academic context, the Asian American literary criticism pioneered by Elaine Kim was disruptive in terms of introducing an entirely new body of writers and texts to consider. The emergence of Asian American literature as an academic field, in the end, cannot be separated from the emergence of Asian Americans as a partially excluded and partially included minority in all strata of American life, including literature and the academy. In the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, Asian Americans were mostly excluded from American life and culture, and this exclusion eventually led to a relatively unified and coherent definition of Asian American literature.
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- The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature , pp. 289 - 305Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015
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