Immigration and Asian American Autobiographical Writing: An Unstraightforward Story

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theresa A. Kulbaga
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Family Identity ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Autobiographical Writing ◽  
Jade Snow Wong ◽  
Identity And Agency ◽  
Carlos Bulosan ◽  
Immigrant Narratives

Asian American autobiographical writing about immigration—from the earliest available examples to the contemporary experiments with genre and form—does not tell a straightforward story. Rather, Asian American autobiographies trouble the sustaining myths of American exceptionalism, the American dream, meritocracy, and belonging and therefore challenge narratives of immigrant striving and success. Immigrant narratives examined in this essay by Maxine Hong Kingston, Jade Snow Wong, Kathleen Tamagawa, Carlos Bulosan, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Kao Kaila Yang, and Shailja Patel, among others, show the contested and constructed quality of national borders. They show that the nation has always been constructed transnationally, through relationships with other countries and cultures and flows of migration that exceed straightforward definition. Examining narratives from various historical periods and cultural traditions brings into view the connections and contradictions among them and shows how each text intervenes in immigration discourse and exercises autobiographical agency. Rather than straightforward stories, then, Asian American autobiographical narratives illuminate the various entanglements of self-representation, family, identity, and agency with imperialism, racialization, nationalism, and global capitalism. Nor does autobiographical writing merely document experience or history. Instead, it actively constructs self, identity, and nation even as it draws on the culturally available narratives that enable and constrain the stories writers tell about their lives. As it does so, it creates new, unstraightfoward narratives and forms.

Agriculture and Asian American Literature

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah D. Wald
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Asian American Literature ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Alternative Food Movement ◽  
Economic Exploitation ◽  
Asian American History ◽  
Carlos Bulosan ◽  
Hisaye Yamamoto

Agriculture is a significant yet understudied theme in Asian American literature. Representations of farming in Asian American literature often respond to and engage with agriculture’s important role in Asian American history. As farmers and as farm laborers, Asian Americans have been pivotal to US agriculture, and this agricultural experience was foundational to the formation of Asian American communities in the period prior to World War II. Additionally, literary representations of agriculture in Asian American literature navigate racialized traditions of American pastoral and Jeffersonian agrarianism. They have often done so in ways that highlight the systems of racial and economic exploitation at work in US society and position US agribusiness in relationship to US colonialism and neo-colonialism. Consequently, Asian American literature’s representations of farming can expose the assumptions around race, property, and citizenship at work in the agrarianism of the 21st-century US alternative food movement. The writings of Carlos Bulosan, Hisaye Yamamoto, and David Mas Masumoto provide case studies of these trends.

Asian-American Men's Acculturation and Gender-Role Conflict

1996 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth J. Kim ◽  
James M. O'Neil ◽  
Steven V. Owen
Keyword(s):  
Gender Role ◽  
Role Conflict ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Gender Role Conflict ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Demographic Questionnaire ◽  
Three Samples ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Relationship Of

There is limited research on Asian-Americans' acculturation and conflicts with contemporary gender roles. This research assessed three samples of Asian-American men's acculturation and gender-role conflict. Differences between Chinese-American, Japanese-American, and Korean-American men's acculturation and the four patterns of gender-role conflict were analyzed. The relationship of demographic and acculturation variables to gender-role conflict was also calculated. Subjects ( N = 125) were administered a demographic questionnaire, the Suinn-Lew Asian Self-identity Acculturation Scale, and the Gender-role Conflict Scale. Multivariate analysis of variance showed no differences between the Asian-American groups on acculturation and the four patterns of gender-role conflict. A canonical correlation analysis indicated one significant variate connecting acculturation with two patterns of issues of gender-role conflict: success, power, and competition and restrictive emotionality. Methodological limitations and research are mentioned.

THE SUINN-LEW ASIAN SELF-IDENTITY ACCULTURATION SCALE: TEST WITH A NON-STUDENT, ASIAN-AMERICAN SAMPLE

1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiretta F. Ownbey ◽  
Patricia E. Horridge
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Initial Study ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
Public Health Services ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Major Trend

Ethnic diversity is a major trend in the United States with Asian Americans constituting a rapidly growing percentage of the population. Consequently, acculturation among Asian-Americans is an important issue since ethnic diversity both offers cultural richness and contributes to challenges for educational systems, public health services, and entities concerned with consumer practices. The Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation (SL-ASIA) Scale was tested with a non-student, random sample (N = 124) comprised of Chinese- and Filipino-Americans 18 years old and older who lived in San Francisco. Resulting data confirmed results of an initial study of the SL-ASIA; the test scores resulted in acceptable reliability measures and the instrument contains items which are promising for accurate measurement of acculturation level among Asian-American populations.

Voluntarist Nationalism with the Idea of Self-Invented Nation: An Aspect of American Exceptionalism

2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-148
Author(s):  
Euikyung Park
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
New Order ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
United State ◽  
Collective Imagination ◽  
Second Chance ◽  
American Nation

Nationalism is never anything less than an invention. Where is there is a national identity that is truly natural? Where a nationalism that has not been forged in the collective imagination of a self-conscious culture? But America's sense of national self-identity is unique even by these standards, for more than any other nation America is self-invented — an express creation of a people who knew itself to be engaged in an act of self-conscious artifice. The conception of the American nation as self-constituted, as a second chance for humanity away f;om Europe's ticking historical clock, is then anything but unproblematic. Yet “the New order of Things” promised by the Great Seal of the United State as an aspect of American excqtionalism still offers hope of a community held together by bonds free of the taint of blood and the repressive hierarchy of kinship.

scholarly journals THE ROLE OF NATIONAL CULTURE IN THE DE-CONFLICITING OF UKRAINIANNESS

2020 ◽  
pp. 129-134
Author(s):  
Liudmyla Sorochuk
Keyword(s):  
National Culture ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Cultural Space ◽  
Hybrid Warfare ◽  
Cultural Revival ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
The World

The article raises the issue of the importance of preserving and increasing the national cultural traditions of Ukrainians, without which one cannot hope for development in the civilization process, because based on cultural and spiritual priorities, a full-fledged sociocultural environment with values is forming. The article considers the essence of national culture as a sphere of spiritual and material possessions that influence the communicative organization of people with specific values and norms of behavior. The role of national culture as a potent factor in the deconfliction of Ukrainians in Ukraine and abroad is underlining. It is known that Ukrainian culture has been leveled for a long time, subjected to censorship bans and ideological pressure, especially during the Soviet period. Our culture has gone through a period of destruction, but now it is a time for national and cultural revival, opportunities for free choice and self-realization of the artist, time for renaissance and development of the ethnocultural heritage of Ukrainians, which is one of the priorities of national revival and preservation. The Ukrainian nation is modernizing, actively creating its cultural space despite the slowdown of the outdated administrative system, economic instability, hybrid warfare, and manifestations of military aggression by Russia. The article examines the peculiarities of the creation of the cultural space of Ukrainians in modern conditions, taking into account the challenges of the globalized world and the threats of the "Russian world". Thanks to the state support and implementation of humanitarian policy programs, the consolidation of Ukrainian societies, and the unification of citizens of Ukraine and Ukrainians in the world around national values and priorities. The core of the unity of Ukrainians is the national idea, the preservation of self-identity, patriotism, and the establishment of the ukrainian nation in the modern world. The emphasis is determined on the fact that national culture has a great potential in establishing Ukraine in the world cultural space and is a consolidating factor in the political unity of society, especially in the current conditions of hybrid warfare and the struggle of Ukrainians against Russian aggression.

Shaping Family Identity among Korean Migrant Potters in Japan during the Tokugawa Period

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Broomhall
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Korean Peninsula ◽  
Fourth Generation ◽  
Family Identity ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Korean Family ◽  
Tokugawa Period ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Tea Ceremony ◽  
Porcelain Manufacture

This chapter considers the management of family through analysis of manufacturing and cultural traditions among Koreans relocated to Japan during the Japanese invasions of the Korean peninsula during the period of the Imjin Wars (1592–98). In particular, it examines the monument created by Jissen, a fourth-generation son of the Fukaumi family who had come to Japan to work in ceramics during the period of the invasions. Potters were particularly desirable labourers during this period and Korean family-run operations were critical to the development of Japanese porcelain manufacture. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Jissen raised the temple monument to his great-grandparents, changing tea ceremony practices had brought Aritaware increased attention from the Japanese nobility, and then from a wider European clientele. This chapter analyses how his monument helped construct the identity of a translocated family, and gave meaning to dynasty, house and household in Tokugawa Japan.

Oceanic Archives, Indigenous Epistemologies, and Transpacific American Studies

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Global Studies ◽  
Asian American Studies ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Indigenous Epistemologies ◽  
Transnational American Studies ◽  
Pacific Studies ◽  
Colonial Archives

As part of the paradigm shift from the transatlantic to the transpacific in transnational American studies, this volume not only offers critical ways in which we rethink American exceptionalism, but it also engages the critical visions represented by New American studies, Asian studies, Asian American studies, and Pacific studies. By calling attention to the “oceanic archives” and indigenous epistemologies, the volume addresses colonialism and imperialism at their roots from both sides of the colonizer and the colonized and articulates what has been central to de-colonial thinking—indigenous epistemologies and ontologies, non-Western knowledge production and dissemination. As the transpacific continues to hold the global spotlight as moments of military, cultural, and geopolitical contentions as well as spaces of economic integration, negotiation, and resistance on national and global scales, we develop transpacificAmerican studies as the new cutting-edge in transnational American studies, global studies, and postcolonial studies.The essays collected in the volume recover the early oceanic archives to remap transpacific movements in different directions and at different moments, interrogate the colonial archives to reinvent indigenous ontologies and epistemologies,explore alternative oceanic archives to develop competing visions and forms of the transpacific. Above all, it speculates upon new directions in which transpacific American studies may pursue.

The Intersections of Latina/o and Asian American Literature

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Thananopavarn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian American Literature ◽  
Latin Americans

Latina/os and Asian Americans have lived in what is now the United States for hundreds of years, yet they are often considered foreign in the national imaginary. Legally, through acts excluding Latina/os and Asians from citizenship, and socially, through targeted anti-immigration rhetoric, both groups have been racialized in the United States as outsiders. This form of racial discrimination, also called “nativistic racism,” forms the basis of several intersections of Latina/o and Asian American literature. Latina/o and Asian American literary works counter nativistic racism by emphasizing multiracial histories within the United States, by drawing attention to racial injustices, and by employing tropes of loyalty and betrayal to highlight the selective ways that the United States has defined citizenship and belonging along racial lines. Latina/o and Asian American texts may also recognize the US military interventions that brought Asians and Latin Americans to the United States as (post)colonial subjects, Cold War allies, and refugees. Some of these texts counter national narratives such as American exceptionalism and Cold War bilateralism; others protest the erasure of military actions overseas from dominant histories of the United States. In addition to suggesting comparative intersections, Latina/o and Asian American literatures also depict literal interactions when Latina/o characters feature prominently in Asian American texts and vice versa. Literature set in California and other areas with high Asian American and Latina/o populations portrays both the significant contact and common political interests between Latina/os and Asian Americans. This long history of contact appears in early texts that center on Asian American and Latina/o farmworkers; it continues in more recent literature featuring Latina/o and Asian American friendships, partnerships, and rivalries. Some Filipino texts emphasize cultural commonalities with Mexican Americans, including Spanish-language surnames and Catholicism. A final intersection of Latina/o and Asian American literature occurs in texts by authors who are both Asian and Latina/o, including Peruvians, Cubans, Mexicans, and other Latin Americans of Asian descent. Written in both English and Spanish, this literature draws attention to the transpacific connections between Asia and the Americas. While it is crucial to acknowledge the historical particularities of Latina/o and Asian American literature, as well as the diversity within each of these groups, recognizing the ways in which these literatures intersect is important to understanding cross-racial alliances of the past and potential solidarities for the future.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Life Writing ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Autobiographical Writing ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Forms Of Life

Autobiography continues to be one of the most popular forms of writing, produced by authors from across the social and professional spectrum. It is also central to the work of literary critics, philosophers, historians, and psychologists, who have found in autobiographies not only an understanding of the ways in which lives have been lived, but the most fundamental accounts of what it means to be a self in the world. The Introduction describes what autobiography means and compares it to other forms of ‘life-writing’. Autobiographical writing is seen to act as a window on to concepts of self, identity, and subjectivity, and into the ways in which these are themselves determined by time and circumstance.

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