Narrating Nationalisms Ideology and Form in Asian American Literature [Hardcover]

This book rereads five major works by John Okada, Louis Chu, Frank Chin, and Maxine Hong Kingston in order to reconceptualize the relationship between the past and present of post-WWII Asian American literary history. Drawing on work in cultural studies, postmodern and poststructuralist theory, social history, and neo-pragmatism, Ling offers fresh perspectives on the cultural politics and formal strategies of texts too often seen in recent criticism as devoid of complexities and fraught with totalizing implications. In challenging uncritical adoption of posthumanist views of history, agency, and identity in Asian American cultural criticism, this pioneering book opens an approach to Asian American literary texts that simultaneously registers their rich specificity and relatedness to works before and after.

Jinqi Ling'sNARRATING NATIONALISMSliberates Asian American literature from the ideological strictures of academic postmodernism. Ling demonstrates how ideas about race, gender and class in the second half of the 20th century are shaped by Asian American writers in their works, as the writers themselves are consciously shaped by their social and political conditions. This is a vital text for understanding imagination and ideology in the formation of Asian American literature. -- Russell C. Leong Editor,Amerasia Journal, UCLA

Narrating Nationalismsis a valuable and original intervention into Asian American cultural controversies. The study engages in a tactful yet provocative manner with the current debates on Asian American cultural production, particularly the debates regarding the nature of its oppositional status vis-a-vis dominant American culture. Deploying relevant and erudite concepts on linguistic and cultural phenomenon to explore, elucidate and re-claim selected Asian American literary productions, it is marked by a syncretic and synthesizing power, clarity, and nimbleness.

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