A politics of representation: Articulating identities in contemporary Asian-American literature.

摘要

This dissertation analyzes the articulations of racial identity in Frank Chin's The Chickencoop Chinaman, Nancy Kelly's Thousand Pieces of Gold, and Joy Kogawa's Obasan. These texts grapple with the oppressive identities peculiar to specific historical moments, daring to rewrite their realities. All three texts challenge the hegemonic (mis)representation of these racial experiences by demystifying the center--the dominant culture and ideology to which they are subjected. I contextualize each text's particular identity politics and analyze the consequences and implications of such new positionings.; Chin's The Chickencoop Chinaman (1973) borrows the militant stance of the black power movement of the 1960s and 1970s to advance a defiant articulation of Asian manhood in combating white racism. I suggest that this alternative subjectivity presents several difficulties: there is no distinction made between the specificities of African American and Asian American histories; it uncritically endorses patriarchy, and its critique of white racism is directed inward to the Asian American community, thereby localizing the structural problem of racism.; Kelly's Thousand Pieces of Gold (1990), which purportedly deals with women's oppression in the US frontier, is taken to task for its multicultural revisionism. By comparing the movie's narrative with that of the novel by Ruthanne Lum McCunn, I show that the heroine's emancipation is not only procured at the expense of her racial identity but also ironically dependent on a white man. The ultimate failure of the movie's multicultural intentions is an example not only of the phenomenon of the commodification and absorption of cultural difference, but also of the limitations of Anglo-American feminism.; In Chapter 4, I analyze how the official and unofficial efforts in World War II Canada to systematically eliminate an ethnic community are quietly defied in Kogawa's Obasan (1981). Recalling the powerfully loving rituals of family allows the protagonist to desire again the larger ethnic community and its nurturing rituals. The insistence on linking official government policy with its effects on private lives is indicative of Obasan's focus on and understanding of the larger institutional workings of racism.; In conclusion, I analyze my own subjectivity in relation to this project.