Nation, Race & History in Asian American Literature
reflects on the symbolic processes through which the United States constitutes its subjects as citizens, connecting such processes to the global dynamics of empire building and a suppressed history of American imperialism. Through a comparative analysis of David Henry Hwang's
M. Butterfly
, Lois-Ann Yamanaka's
Blu's Hanging
, and Jessica Hagedorn's
Dogeaters
, this study considers the ways in which bodies challenge the categories asserted in nation-building. The book proposes that underwritten by the vast histories of American imperial migrations, there are texts and bodies which challenge and reconstitute the ever-vexed definition of American. In re-membering such bodies, Maria C. Zamora proclaims our bodies as actual living texts, texts that are constantly bearing, contesting, and transforming meaning.
will engage scholars interested in cultural and critical theory, citizenship and national identity, race and ethnicity, the body, gender studies, and transnational literature.