Table Of ContentTRANSNATIONALAsian
American LITERATURE
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EDITED BY
Shirley Geok-lin Lim
John Blair Gamber
Stephen Hong Sohn
Gina Valentino
Transnational Asian American Literature
Transnational
Asian American
Literature
Sites and Transits
Edited by
SHIRLEY GEOK-LIN LIM,
JOHN BLAIR GAMBER,
STEPHEN HONG SOHN,
AND GINA VALENTINO
Alig TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
— Philadelphia
Temple University Press
1601 North Broad Street
Philadelphia PA 19122
www.temple.edu/tempress
Copyright © 2006 by Temple University
All rights reserved
Published 2006
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Transnational Asian American literature : sites and transits / edited by
Shirley Geok-lin Lim ... [et al.].
seme
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-59213-450-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 1-59213-451-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. American literature—Asian American authors—History and criticism.
2. Emigration and immigration in literature. 3. Asian Americans—Intellectual
life. 4. Asian Americans in literature. 5. Immigrants in literature.
I. Lim, Shirley.
PS153.A84T73 2005
810.9’895—dc22 2005049680
Lines in Park-chapter (pp. 236-237, 239) from “And Sing We” and “Food,
Shelter, Clothing” in Myung Mi Kim, Under Flag (Berkeley, CA: Kelsey St. Press,
1999). Used by permission of Kelsey St. Press.
Lines in Park chapter (pp. 244-246, 248-254) from Myung Mi Kim, Dura, New
American Poetry Series 28 (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1988). Used by
permission of Sun & Moon Press.
Linesi n Park chapter (p. 239) from “In a Station of the Metro”, By Ezra Pound,
from PERSONAE, copyright © 1926 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of
New Directions Publishing Company.
Excerpts in Grotjohn chapter (pp. 219-232) from Kimiko Hahn’s “Wax,”
“Morning Light,” “Mosquito and Ant,” “Jam,” “The Tumbler,” “Pine,” “The
Downpour,” “Garnet,” “Guard the Jade Pass,” “Orchid Root,” “Radiator,” and
“Croissant,” from Mosquito and Ant, used by permission of the poet.
Lines in Islam chapter (p. 262) from Agha Shahid Ali, “Postcard from Kashmir”
from The Half-Inch Himalayas © 1987 by Agha Shahid Ali and reprinted by
permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Lines in Islam chapter (p. 262) from Agha Shahid Ali, “Painting a Kashmir
Landscape,” from In Memory of Begum Akhtar and Other Poems (Calcutta:
Writer’s Workshop, 1975). Used by permission of the Agha Shahid Ali
Literary Trust.
Excerpts in Islam chapter (pp. 264-269) from “Beyond the Ash Rains” and “In
Search of Evanescence” from A Nostalgist’s Map of America by Agha Shahid Ali.
Copyright © 1991 by Agha Shahid Ali. Used by permission of W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc.
Excerpts in Zhou chapter (pp. 282-288) from “The Dead Soldier’s Talk,” “The
Execution of a Counter-Revolutionary,” “Promise,” “Again, These Days I Have
Been Thinking of You,” “An Old Red Guard’s Reply,” and “Because I Will Be
Silenced,” by Ha Jin in his Between Silences: A Voice from China (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1990), used by permission of the poet.
Excerpts in Zhou chapter (pp. 289-292) from “An Apology,” “I Sing of an Old
Land,” “June 1989,” and “A Former Provincial Governor Tells about His
Dismissal,” by Ha Jin in his Facing Shadows (Brooklyn, NY: Hanging Loose
Press, 1996), used by permission of the poet.
Excerpts in Zhou chapter (pp. 277-278) from Wang Ping’s “Of Flesh and Spirit,”
collected in Of Flesh and Spirit (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1998), used by
permission of the poet.
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Contents
Acknowledgments
1x
Introduction
SHIRLEY GEOK-LIN LIM, JOHN BLAIR GAMBER,
STEPHEN HONG SOHN, AND GINA VALENTINO
FICTION
Re-Signed Subjects: Women, Work, and World in the
Fiction of Carlos Bulosan and Hisaye Yamamoto
CHERYL HIGASHIDA 29
“Just Another Ethnic Pol”: Literary Citizenship in
Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker
LIAM CORLEY 55
The Cartography of Justice and Truthful Refractions
Found in Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange
RutH Y. Hsu 7S
“Valuing” Transnational Queerness: Politicized
Bodies and Commodified Desires in Asian American
Literature
STEPHEN HONG SOHN 100
Ethical Responsibility in the Intersubjective Spaces:
Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies”
and “A Temporary Matter.”
GITA RAJAN 123
Abjection, Masculinity, and Violence in Brian Roley’s
American Son and Hans Ong’s Fixer Chao
ELEANOR ly 142
viii Contents
IL. MEMOIR/AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Begin Here: A Critical Introduction to the Asian
American Childhood
161
Rocfo G. Davis
The Poetics of Liminality and Misidentification:
Winnifred Eaton’s Me and Maxine Hong Kingston’s
The Woman Warrior
181
KATHERINE HYUNMI LEE
Nation, Immigrant, Text: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s
Dictee
SRIMATI MUKHERJEE 197
IW POETRY
10. Kimiko’s Hahn’s “Interlingual Poetics” in
Mosquito and Ant
ROBERT GROTJOHN 219
ih: “Composed of Many Lengths of Bone”:
Myung Mi Kim’s Reimagination of Image and Epic
JOSEPHINE HockK-HEE Park 239
£2: A Way in the World of an Asian American Existence:
Agha Shahid Ali’s Transimmigrant Spacing of North
America and India/Kashmir
Marmuna Dat IsLam 257
13.
Writing Otherwise than as a “Native Informant”:
Ha Jin’s Poetry
ZHOU XIAOJING 274
About the Contributors 295
Index 229
