Dissertation Proposal
(Third
Draft)
Inventing New Asian American Identities in the Age of Transnationalism:
Amy Tan, Gish Jen, Shawn Hsu Wong, and Shirley Geok-lin Lim
Suocai Su
Dissertation Committee: Chair: Dr. Onkey
Committee Members: Dr. McBride, Dr. Nowatzki
July, 2003
In her introduction to An Interethnic Companion to Asian American Literature (1997), King-kok Cheung notes,
A significant switch in emphasis has [also] occurred in Asian American literary studies. Whereas identity politics--with its stress on cultural nationalism and American nativity--governed earlier theoretical and critical formulations, the stress is now on heterogeneity and diaspora. The shift has been from seeking to “claim America” to forging a connection between Asia and Asian America; from centering on race and on masculinity to revolving around the multiple axes of ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality; from being concerned primarily with social and communal responsibility to being caught in the quandaries and possibilities of postmodernism and multiculturalism. (1)
In her article, “The Fiction of Asian American Literature,” Susan Koshy also contends,
We have entered a transnational era where ethnicity is increasingly produced at multiple local and global sites rather than, as before, with the parameters of the nation-state. This dispersal of ethnic identity has been intensified, in the case of Americans of Asian origin, by dramatic geopolitical realignments under way in the Pacific, that have reshaped the political imaginaries of “Asia” and “America” and the conjunctions between these entities. (316)
What Cheung and Koshy point out are
new directions of Asian American literary studies--the shift of focus from
nationalism and American nativity to heterogeneity and diaspora, from claiming
America to building connections between America and Asia, from undue focus on
race and masculinity to the multiple forces such as race, class, gender, and
sexuality in forming new Asian American identities, and from considering ethnic
identity as a product of domestic politics to one that is jointly produced by
local and global powers. However, scholarship in these new directions in the
past few years remains scanty. Most of the focus is geared toward economic,
cultural, and anthropological approaches to transnationalism in the Pacific
region, including the
Identity is a hard term to define. A few definitions that I come across are incomplete and flawed. Longman Dictionary of Psychology and Psychiatry (1984) defines it as “the feeling that we are the same person we were yesterday and last year; a sense of continuity derived from our body sensation, our body image, and the feeling that our memories, purpose, values, and experiences belong to us; a sense of uniqueness and independence”(366). A person is thus defined to experience identity crisis when he or she has “difficulty to establish a clearly defined personal identity and a consistent role in society” (366). The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology (2001) defines identity as “a person’s essential, continuous self, the internal subjective concept of oneself as an individual” (338). These definitions are problematic in that the first one considers identity as a stable and personal matter, while the second considers it as an internal subjectivity. The definition given by Encyclopedia of Psychology (2000) overcomes the above weaknesses. It defines identity as
[A] set of phenomena not easily delimited. On the one hand, identity is a feature of the individual, reflecting an internal process of self-definition. On the other hand, identity engages in a social context and is shaped by the immediate circumstances as well as broader culture. Furthermore, identity can be conceptualized as a process occurring and changing over time. (225)
This definition is better in that
it points out the personal, social, and changing natures of identity, but it is
not a satisfactory one, either. I argue that the above definitions,
particularly the first two, reflect the Western philosophy’s emphasis on a
stable, unchanging, and clearly definable nature of identity. On the contrary, I define identity not as a
single or isolated category within the inner power of the individual, but an
interaction between the individual and the social context he/she lives in. Identity is influenced by many forces such as
race, class, politics, religion, language, gender, and sexuality. These components do not necessarily fall into
neat combinations or unity. There are
constant struggles or conflicts among them. There is also a hierarchy among
them, with some prevailing at certain times and under certain situations. Therefore, identity is never stable or
fixed. Instead, it is changing, fluid,
flexible, heterogeneous, and hybrid. It
reflects the power structure of the involved parties. Asian American identity
is more complicated than the above definitions because in addition to the
features mentioned above, Asian Americans are people who often have to cross
over political, economic, cultural, and linguistic boundaries between or among
nations. What is more, Asian American
identities change as historical relations between Asian immigrants and the
Transnational
or transnationalism is hard to define, too. Both The Blackwell Dictionary of
Political Science (1999) and The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology
(2000) define transnational as the shorthand for transnational corporation,
large business organization operating across national borders. However, transnational is not just limited to
economic activities. The Dictionary
of 20th Century World Politics (1993) expands its range to
include “an enterprise, entity, idea, movement, or religion that crosses
national boundaries and provides some kind of linkage between individuals,
groups, or organizations in one state and individuals, groups, or organizations
in another”(667), but it also ignores other important aspects that this term
should cover. When I use the word transnational
or transnationalism in this dissertation, I use it to refer to several
important concepts simultaneously. I refer not only to the geographical and
economic movements of products and immigrants across borders, but also to the
international or transnational consciousness or experience that enables
immigrants or citizens to cross borders in terms of race, ethnicity, culture,
and nationality. I argue that it is in
the breaking down of ideological borders and barriers like these that Asian
Americans achieve their new identities in literary representations. In other words, under transnationalism, the
control from nation states is greatly weakened; the essentializing notions
about cultural nationalism and national loyalty fall apart and in their places
develop the notions of multiple loyalty, hybridity, creolization, complexity,
and uncertainty of identities. Here I’d
like to invoke Paul Gilroy’s concept of the black
In his book The Black
Though
Echoing
Hall’s notion of cultural identity formation through transformation works well with explaining new Asian American identities, for it emphasizes the role migration and historical contexts play in transforming identities. For instance, in the 1980s and 1990s the political, economic, and cultural contexts for Asian Americans were different from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Therefore it is natural that Asian Americans exhibit new and different identities. I argue that Asian Americans in literary representations of the 1980s and 1990s are much more open-minded, complex, adaptable, and transnational than they were before. As social conditions change, Asian Americans will continue to change. Therefore, Hall’s emphasis on identity formation and contextual change will be an important and effective tool to compare and contrast Asian American identities in the 1960s/1970s and 1980s/1990s.
Gloria
Anzaldua’s argument on the formation of mestiza can also be used to read the
formation of Asian American identities in the transnational age. Concerned with how people living in contact
zones of different cultures form their cultural identities, she argues that
these people have to daily negotiate their identities among the different
cultures, languages, and philosophies. They often face challenges, even
displacement and violence, but they also gain from the constant crossing of
linguistic, cultural, and political boundaries.
She calls these people border-crossers. She writes, border-crossing “provides a hybrid progeny,
a mutable, more malleable species with a rich gene pool. From this racial, ideological, cultural, and
biological crossing pollinization, an ‘alien’ consciousness is presently in the
making”(99). She continues to write,
“The future will belong to the mestiza.
Because the future depends on the breaking down of paradigms, it depends
on the straddling of two or more cultures.
By creating a new mythos--that is, a change in the way we perceive
reality, the way we see ourselves and the ways we behave--la mestiza creates a
new consciousness” (102). Anzaldua’s
mestiza is the transnational consciousness of Asian Americans, because they,
like Chicanos in Anzaldua’s works, are daily crossing all kinds of barriers, no
matter in language, customs, or values.
To use Anzaldua’s lens to read Asian Americans, it is no exaggeration to
say that it is exactly Asian Americans’ embracing of the mestiza that gives
them the power to fight racism and exclusion to succeed in the American
society. A transnational Asian American is an American who has a mestiza.
Gilroy’s, Hall’s, and Anzaldua’s theories all point out that identity is not an individual or internal matter but a social product that is produced by many factors under specific conditions. They call attention to looking for the root causes of identity formation and change from external social factors than from internal and psychological ones. Their theories can serve as important frameworks to read the formation of contemporary Asian American identities. As a people who are formed through the constant negotiation of Asian and American cultures, and who cross political and linguistic boundaries in their daily lives, Asian American identities have been invariably marked by both Asian and American histories, and they change over time. Here a brief review of the Asian American immigration history might throw light on how an understanding of Asian American history is indispensable in understanding the formation of Asian American identities and how this identity takes new contents in the transnational age.
Large numbers of
Asians, mostly Chinese and Japanese, came to the
In the 1980s and
1990s, Asian Americans underwent great changes and these changes call for new
representations. For instance, before the 1960s, the majority of the Asian
Americans were native-born, and Asian immigrants made up about 30 percent of
the Asian American community. However,
since the 1960s, the majority of Asian Americans were immigrants, who made up
70 percent of all the Asian American community.
Asian Americans became the fastest growing ethnic group in the
This
quick review of Asian American history suggests that Asian Americans were not
born but made in American history. When they were considered useful to the
American nation state, they were considered the good Asians that the Americans
could depend on or live with. However, when they were considered a threat to
the American nation state, they were represented by the national media as “the
yellow peril”, exotic, inassimilable, and therefore requiring exclusion. Asian American identity is socially
constructed and reconstructed according to historical conditions of the nation
state. Thus, to understand Asian
American identity, it is essential to understand the interactions between
However, it is not
the aim of this dissertation to trace all the evolutionary stages of Asian
American identities in American history. Rather I focus on Asian American
identity formations in the 1980s and 1990s. To make my discussion easier, I
will often invoke the previous stage of the 1960s and 1970s as a point of
reference for comparison and contrast to flesh out my argument on the 1980s and
1990s. Furthermore, because identity is
a complicated concept encompassing cultural, economic, and psychological areas,
I will mainly focus on the literary construction of Asian American identities. I will concentrate on how contemporary Asian American
writers construct or invent new Asian American identities. Also because Asian
America consists of many Asian ethnicities that are different in languages,
cultures, and ethnicities, I will focus on Chinese American writers and how
they construct new Asian American identities.
There are a few other considerations for this choice. One is that among the literatures by Asian
American ethnic groups, Chinese American literature has seen the greatest
achievements, not only in the number of writers, but also in the noted works
produced such as The Woman Warrior (1976) and Chinamen (1980) by
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Year of the Dragon (1981) by Frank Chin, The
Joy Luck Club (1989) and The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991) by Amy Tan,
and M. Butterfly (1988) by Henry David Hwang. The second reason is that though the Asian
American community has been greatly diversified in the past thirty years
because of immigration from
The literary
construction of Asian American identities correspond to the Asian American
history that I have just outlined above. For example, during the time when
Asians were excluded from the nation state of America, they had a difficult time
to live, let alone to get their writings about their experiences published, but
when the situation improved and when Asian Americans could publish their works,
what they wrote was often conditioned by what the mainstream publishers wanted
them to write. For instance, in the 1940s and 1950s, assimilation became the
main theme of quite many of the Asian American works. During this period the
Because the 1960s and 1970s serve as an important contrasting point to lead to my discussion of Asian American identities in the 1980s and 1990s, I will dwell on how this period came upon and how it affected the literary imagination of the time. In the 1960s and 1970s, because of the historical changes, Asian American identities took on new forms. This was a time when Asian Americans, empowered by the Civil Rights Movement and the black power, began to assert their ethnicity. They wanted to find an Asian American identity that could resist white stereotyping and accurately address the Asian American community.
In terms of
literary productions, a few Asian American writers and critics of this period revealed
in their works and criticism consciousness to construct Asian American, not
oriental, identities in literature, thus participating in the broad social and
political struggle for the legitimate rights of Asians in this country. Here the contributions of Frank Chin and his
co-editors should be mentioned. Tired of the white gaze and determined to find
Asian American heroism through myth and masculinity, they began to collect
Asian American literary works that delineated these proclivities but had been
silenced in history. The result was
their 1974 edition of Aiiieee. In
their landmarking introduction to this anthology, often compared to the
literary declaration of Asian American literature, they proposed what they
thought Asian American sensibilities should be.
They first make a distinction between the Americanized Asian writers and
the Asian American writers. Chin and his co-editors define the Americanized
Asian writers as the Asian Americans who immigrate from
In the 1980s and1990s, often called an age of
transnationalism, Asian American identities take on new characteristics. Other than the features that I mentioned
above--Asian American identities are not born, but are formed throughout the
The second feature
of transnationalism is that with migration of massive immigrants from the poor
and developing countries to the rich and developed countries, with more and
more countries mapping policies to make their countries more diversified and
multicultural, and with the effective employment of media technology, the world
is becoming smaller, and the boundaries of the nation states have been greatly
weakened. The cultural nationalism of the nation state, which used to play a
dominant role in a person’s life, has been replaced by flexibility and
transnationalism. Many people now feel that while they want their citizenship
and nationality in a particular country, they do not want to be confined to
just that. They want to have as much freedom and flexibility as they can
possibly have. Stephen Castles and
Alastair Davidson write that with the rise of global markets, transnational
corporations, and the regional and super-national bodies, the boundaries of the
nation state are eroded. It is a common
thing to see migrants constantly move across boundaries to look for jobs or
security in other countries. Therefore,
the nation state should do whatever it can to protect these migrants and make
it easier for them to acquire citizenship.
The nation state as a new and democratic entity must go beyond its
boundaries to allow a collective of groups, not just the indigenous, to become
citizens. They cite the European Union
as a successful example of transcending national boundaries to achieve unity.
In terms of Asian American studies, as Sauling Wong argues, denationalization
should be introduced as an important perspective to re-conceptualize Asian
American studies. She defines
denationalization as 1) “the easing of cultural and nationalist concerns as a
result of changing demographics in the Asian American population as well as
theoretical critiques from various quarters ranging from poststructuralist to
the queer”(126); 2) the blurring
distinction between Asian American studies and Asian studies; and 3)
a diasporic perspective replacing the domestic, emphasizing “Asian Americans as
one element in the global scattering of peoples of Asian origin in contrast to what
I call a domestic perspective that stresses the status of Asian Americans as an
ethnic/racial minority within the national boundaries of the US” (127). She therefore stresses that an international,
not a domestic, perspective on Asian America would better help situate the
Asian immigrants in the international context and understand how their
identities are formed in this context.
Wong’s argument draws attention to the new features of Asian immigrants
such as their components, educational and technical skills, and the role
technology and media play in their migrations.
Attention to such changes would better help explain how Asian Americans
invent/reinvent themselves in the 1980s and 1990s. She also contends that before the 1990s Asian
Americans like to drop the hyphen between the two terms, Asian-American,
for being suspected of not being faithful enough to American nationalism, but
now more and more Asian Americans begin to like the hyphen that connects the
two words. They do not see the hyphen as
an indication of their disloyalty to the
And finally, transnationalism avoids a clear-cut view and instead takes a comprehensive and complex approach to a phenomenon, which means that a possible array of answers instead of one might satisfy the question. Because clear-cut positions often lead to simplification of things, transnational approach allows for transrelations. As Benzi Zhang argues, transrelation is to see the multiple and simultaneous forces going into the formation of Asian American identities. He argues that as immigrants, Asian Americans traverse boundaries of space, time, race, culture, language, and history, and these different forces merge into a poetics of cultural transrelation. He further argues that often times these different forces do not necessarily form into hybridization or a combination; rather they exist in con-temporalities. Such a view of Asian American identity formation challenges “the locality of a singular cultural dominance by relocating the site of identity formation in a collective of plural inter-relationships”(125). He contends that as the immigrants move to new places, they have to redraw or renegotiate their identities in relation to new circumstances. Zhang’s theory of transrelation, which emphasizes the interaction of the multiple forces in the forming of immigrant identities echoes and goes beyond Anzaldua’s theory of mestiza in that it emphasizes the co-existence of the diverse identities which do not necessarily form into easy combinations or classifiable elements. The messiness, uncertainty, and indefinability are what Zhang emphasizes here.
Using Zhang’s transnationalism as a lens to look at Asian American identities, we can see that many Asian American characters, including Asian American writers, have to constantly negotiate conflicting or uncompromising forces in their lives. Shirley Geok-lin Lim writes, “Much of my writing life is composed of negotiating multiple identities, multiple societies, multiple desires, and multiple genres. I am an Asian, a Westerner, and a woman […]. Singleness of self, the ideal of the autonomous individual, or the pure racialized community, is an impossible project for a multiple immigrant like me” (1). Meena Alexander, another important Asian American immigrant writer, writes, “The old exilic notions are gone. In the blur of returning in the back and forth of this crisscross life, it is the multiple anchorages that count, the holding game” (205). David Henry Hwang, an Asian American playwright, also argues that the key to Asian American identity is not to stay in one place but to always change in light of new circumstances. He writes, “I do not believe that I will become a ‘fully actualized’ Asian American. Indeed such a state would be death, creatively and politically. The only constant in our lives is change, and as we approach the new challenges of the 1990s, we must reevaluate and question old assumptions to progressively harness such change” (x). Lim’s, Alexander’s, and Hwang’s views reflect the sensitivities of Asian American writers to the newly emerging Asian American sensibilities. While Lim and Alexander emphasize what Zhang calls transrelations of identities, Hwang emphasizes the role of change that Hall and Anzaldua elaborate in the above text. Asian American writers who have expressed similar sensibilities of complex and diverse identities in their literary works also include Amy Tan, Jessica Hedgedorn, Bienvendo Santos, N.V.M. Gonzales, Wendy Law-Yong, Li-Yong Lee, Marilyn Chin, Teresa Cha, Myung Mi Kim, Bapsi Sidwa, and Vikram Seth.
However,
it is not the intention of this dissertation to cover all of these
writers. Instead I will focus on four
Chinese American writers. I will start by discussing Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck
Club (1989). For me, this work
turns a new page in the construction of new Asian American identities in the
transnational age. Though in some places in the book the characters still hold
binary notions of things American and Chinese, in general, I argue, these
characters endorse a mixture of American and Asian ethnic identities, which is
a great breakthrough in Asian American new sensibilities, given the
predominance of Orientalism in Asian American literary history in representing
Asian characters and cultures. In this
respect
The next novel I consider is Gish Jen’s Typical American (1991). This novel is important in that it turns a new page in depicting “uptown” Asian Americans. Deeply rooted in the notion that Asian Americans are no different from the whites or any other immigrant groups, Jen’s works delineate how Asian immigrants merge into the American society to fulfill their dreams. Their efforts to make the best use of what different cultures can offer them provide a good site where Gilroy’s and Anzaldua’s theories can work well. In Jen’s novels like Typical American and Mona in the Promised Land (1996) Jen describes her characters as most capable of crossing economic and cultural boundaries to achieve their maximum development, though not without criticism from the author for their greed and vanity. In this novel, a Chinese American family, lured by American materialism and suburbian cultures, learns a lesson from their misreading of what it means to be typical Americans. With humor and irony, Jen demystifies the typical American dreams--working hard, buying a house in the suburbs, and living a typical middle class life-- and critiques the Chinese family’s complicity with them.
The third novel I want to deal with is Shawn Hsu Wong’s American Knees (1995). Wong’s novel is of great significance in my argument in that Wong provides a good site through which readers can read the weakening of Asian American cultural nationalism and rise of a transnational literary imagination. Wong is one of the co-editors of Chin who edited the 1974 and 1991 editions of Aiiieeee, which advocate Asian American cultural nationalism. Through a comparative study of this work to Homebase (1979), we can see Wong’s change from a cultural nationalist to a transnationalist. In this novel, one of the most important issues is interracial marriage. According to Harry Kitano and his research colleagues, in 1984, 49.9 percent of Japanese Americans, 30.2 percent of Chinese Americans, and 19.2 percent of Korean Americans marry outside of their own group. Kitano also finds that there is an increase of intra-ethnic marriages within the Asian American communities due to the growing similarities in socioeconomic attainment and their common cultural and immigrant experiences (Fong 243). This novel, through delineation of an interracial marriage between Raymond, an Asian American man who is obsessed with ethnicity, and Aurora, a Eurasian woman who is flexible, satirizes the esssentialized notions of identity and ethnicity that Gilroy also criticizes in The Black Atlantic. Aurora’s total ease with her mixed European and Asian blood also exemplifies Anzaldua’s theory that mixed descendants can have more power sometimes than the pure-blooded because of their mestiza. Wong also focuses on empowering Asian men and women sexualities that are often shunned in Asian American literary works. Gloria Chun gives a good summary of the novel when she writes, “The novel follows the trajectory of one who moves beyond the identity politics of the 1960s and eventually comes to embrace a more pluralistic and fluid notion of ethnic identity. Through this encounter with Aurora, he comes to reevaluate the meaning of being Asian American”(143). Overall, Wong’s notions of mixed identities, human love, passion, gender, sexuality, and interracial marriage differentiate this novel from other novels that describe Asian sexuality in negative and stereotyped lights, and they will be the focus of my discussion on this novel.
My last work focuses on Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s Among the White Moon Faces (1996). This work is of particular importance in understanding the transnational perspective in inventing Asian American identities in that Lim herself is transnational, and her personal experience provides a lived example of how she crosses linguistic, cultural, and racial boundaries to form her identities in the migrating process. A Chinese-Malaysian-American, she was born into Chinese parents and grew up in Malaysia. She later settled in the US but constantly travels back and forth between the US, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. In this memoir, Lim describes herself as a character whose identities go beyond just American citizenship. While her American national identity is important, it is just one component of her many identities that are intersected by race, class, gender, and sexuality. She is a daughter, girl, woman, mother, university professor, immigrant, Asian, and feminist. These different positions complicate her identities so that they cannot be nailed down as one. Lim’s experience is an incarnation of a typical transnational Asian American. It exemplifies how Gilroy’s, Hall’s, Anzaldua’s, and Zhang’s theories of mixed and transnational identities are formed and reformed in historical contexts and migrations. A contrastive study of this novel with Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter (1945) would also make Lim’s transnational vision prominent.
However, transnationalism not only impacts how Asian American writers construct their new characters, it also impacts the literary devices they use to represent these characters. Many of the literary devices that they use are unconventional, and they challenge the traditional ways to write Asian characters. For instance, Tan uses a very colloquial English style and shifting points of view in The Joy Luck Club. The colloquial and easy-to-follow style makes this work accessible to more readers. It makes it one of the most popular English novels in the U.S. It stays for nine months in the New York Times bestseller list. The hardcover edition is printed twenty seven times and sold 275,000 copies (Wong “Sugar sisterhood” 174). By employing shifting points of view, Tan avoids focusing her attention on one or two characters. Instead, she distributes her attention almost equally to the four daughters and four mothers. She gives each of them opportunity to reveal their history and emotion. In other words, she makes each one of them the focus of attention until finally what the readers get is an image of a community than some individuals. In Jen’s work, she successfully uses an ironic and humorous tone to demonstrate that the Chinese immigrant family, like every other family, is vulnerable to materialist temptations and they will not realize them until they make the same mistakes as others do. Through an ironic and humorous tone, Jen not only reveals the weak spots in all human beings, she also critiques the Chinese immigrant’s greed and fraud. The playfulness of her style and the short sentences also make her work a light read, thus weakening the over-serious and didactic tone that often accompanies the description of ethnic identities. In Wong’s novel, he uses very explicit and graphic details to describe Asian American sexuality, especially his empowerment of Asian American masculinity, overthrowing the shyness that many Asian American writers have in dealing with such a topic. Wong’s bold and plain treatment of Asian American sexuality also resists the Anglo-American writers’ demasculinization and overfeminization of Asian characters. Wong demonstrates through his characters that the Asian characters are as sexy and passionate as the white people. The same direct and passionate treatment of gender and sexuality is also used by Lim whose unconventional and plain delineation of her sexuality overthrows the stereotyped treatment of Asian women as passive, asexual, and subservient. Through the use of some poignant and emotion-charged images and language, Lim portrays the painful and confusing experiences of growing up as a woman, both in Malaysia and the U.S.
Overall, through the discussion of how the four Chinese American writers invent/reinvent new identities in their novels--whether it is description of national or ethnic pride, or of treating Asian Americans just like other Americans, or of describing the weakening of racial purity and the increase of interracial and intra-ethnic marriages, or of describing the formation of identities through traveling across cultures or boundaries, Asian American characters and their writers have crossed boundaries and revealed the vitality of their identities. They are the transnationals in the new age, overturning stereotypes and rewriting their new histories and sensibilities.
The research on this topic is of great significance to the understanding of Asian Americans and their literatures. First, transnationalism provides an effective perspective to deconstruct and critique both American nationalism and Asian American cultural ethnocentrism. Steven Vertovec argues, “Transnationalism presents possibilities of unfixing identities--particularly nation-derived ones--and arriving at new, cosmopolitan perspectives on culture and belonging”(580). It is to be understood that identity is often employed by nation states to control their borders. It is an invented social construct that exerts power over who can become citizens. With this understanding in mind people could launch a critique against the essentialist and exclusive nature of the nation state and the absolute view of ethnic uniqueness. Critiques of both of these tendencies is of great significance today when the US is making policies to make the country more multicultural and multiethnic. Whenever some rightists or leftists claim the so-called nationalism or ethnic uniqueness, people should critique them and point out that there is nothing natural about the claiming of the nation state; neither is there any absolute ethnicity that gives it power to dominate the other ethnicities. People should be aware of the power that both claims employ. The American national state in the past has exerted oppressive power over immigrants, particularly the Asian immigrants, on when they are Americans and when they are not. Equally the Asian American cultural nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s has landed Asian Americans as exclusionists and male chauvinists. In critiquing Asian American cultural nationalism, Lane Hirabayashi and Marilyn Alquizola write, “Cultural nationalism highlights ‘unique’ cultural traits based on language, history, and values. Ethnic specificity is thus the hallmark of cultural nationalism, requiring the militant promotion of a unique ethnic identity (not the singular form here), as well as the prioritization of cultural preservation and ‘community control’”(357-358). They further argue, “We can no longer rely upon the exhausted tropes of cultural nationalism, whether there be ‘ethnic specificity’, the essentialized unity of ethnic specific experience, ethnic solidarity, or even the ‘community’” (361). Thus a transnational consciousness would help to keep both the American nationalism and Asian American ethnic centrism off the essentialist traps.
Second, the study of the relationship between transnationalism and Asian American identity would help people to better understand Asian Americans today. In the transnational age, because of their power to cross economic and cultural barriers and their abilities to integrate differences, Asian Americans play more and more important roles in the Asian Pacific region. Changlin Tien, the late chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, says that Asian Americans are best positioned to break down boundaries standing in the way of US-Asian political and business matters (Hu-Dehart). Because of the positions Asian Americans occupy in the transnational age, they should continue, on one hand, to keep them open, flexible, and international. On the other hand, they should continue to critique American nationalism and Asian American absolutism so as to make the US a multicultural nation for every one.
Third, the study of transnationalism and Asian American identity would help people to better understand Asian American literature. For years, even today, Asian American critics often pay undue attention to those Asian American works such as The Woman Warrior (1976) or Jasmine (1989) that express a clear cut American nationalist sentiment, while they ignore a large number of works whose representations of Asian Americans go beyond the clear-cut categorizations. Because these works often devote to the construction of complex, hybrid, and sometimes uncertain characters whose categorization goes beyond classification and boundaries, they are often ignored or not paid enough attention. In the case of Jen and Wong, their works reflect or invent the most recent Asian American identities, but they are not welcomed as warmly as The Woman Warrior or Jasmine because their characters do not fit in with the stereotyped images of the Asians: exotic, clumsy, and lacking of human quality. For instance, Jen’s use of Ralph Chang who often invokes American values to justify his material pursuit has a hard time with some readers, for they feel uncomfortable with seeing him described just as other ordinary Americans who do not have Orientalist features and who appropriate the American values for their interests. Equally, Wong’s affirmation of Asian American masculinity and femininity alienates some readers who think the male image most Chinese men should take is the desexed Charlie Chen or the female image most Chinese women should take is the passive Suzie Wong. Unpopular or unwelcome as they are, these new characters make a fuller picture of Asian American community, for it tells readers that Asian American community not only has characters that fit the stereotyped models of Kingston’s and Mukherjee’s works, it also has more various and diversified characters, all of whom makes the Asian American community a fascinating and diverse place to live.
The last but not least, the study of such a topic will contribute to the study of other ethnicities and ethnic literatures. We know that African Americans, Chicano Americans, and Native Americans share similar experiences in American history. Their identities have been the negotiated results between their ethnic identities and the mainstream society. Therefore, a discussion of how Asian Americans are formed would help African Americans or Latino Americans or Native Americans to understand their histories and identities. It is thus easier for the ethnic groups to form alliance against racism, injustice, or unemployment. Such a broad alliance does good not only for Asian Americans but also for people of all races. Therefore, a study of Asian American representations in the 1980s and 1990s contributes to the scholarship of ethnic studies, national studies, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies.
However,
transnationalism also has its own limitations, which should by no means be
ignored. While I acknowledge that transnationalism has helped to form an open,
heterogeneous, hybrid, and flexible Asian American identity, it must be pointed
out that transnatioanlism often brings problems such as homogenization, fragmentation, dislocation, self-division,
instability, alienation, and marginalization.
For instance, while some people like Lim can afford to cross linguistic,
racial, and cultural borders, a lot of Asian Americans who do not have such
privileges cannot cross borders. Limited
by their education, language, and cultural knowledge, their making use of the
transnational era is more limited than the other well-educated and
culturally-prepared middle class people.
What is more, some people might want to float in the international sphere
and do not want to be nailed down by national identity, while others,
particularly those poor immigrants, want to claim a nationality or root so that
they can have a safe shelter. Thus an
awareness of what both transnationalism can and cannot do to Asian Americans
who are differentiated by class, gender, and sexuality is important. Today when Asian Americans are still fighting
for racial equality, poverty, and unemployment, it is even more important for
them to claim America than to float as an international citizen. Sauling Wong wants Asian American scholars to
ask the following questions on transnationalism: “[…][w]here denationalization
comes from and where it is headed. To
what extent do we want to denationalize our field? To what extent do we want a
diasporic perspective to supersede a domestic one” (141)? Lisa Lowe also writes, “ ‘Hybridization’ is
not the ‘free’ oscillation between or among chosen identities. It is the uneven process through which immigration
communities encounter the violences of the US state, and the capital imperatives
served by the United States and by the Asian states from which they come, and
the process through which they survive those violences by living, inventing,
and reproducing different cultural alternatives” (82). To be aware of these
problems in reading contemporary Asian American characters would enable readers
to have a fuller understanding of what transnationalism means to the whole
Asian Americans.
Here is an outline of the dissertation:
Introduction: In my introduction I lay out the theoretical framework for the dissertation. I employ Gilroy’s theory of the black Atlantic, Hall’s theory of cultural identity and diaspora, and Anzaldua’s theory of border-crossing to read the formation of Asian American identity. I further put my discussion of Asian American identity in Asian American history to demonstrate that identity is not natural or inherent but a social construct invented and reinvented in American history. I then move on to discuss how Asian American literature constructs Asian American identities in the era of transnationalism. Because I entitle my dissertation as “Inventing New Asian American Identities in the Age of Transnatioanlism,” I devote quite some space explaining what I mean by transnationalism and how it impacts on constructing Asian American literary characters. I define transnationalism as not only crossing over of physical boundaries but also of linguistic, cultural, and racial boundaries. I argue that the formation of Asian American identity is a constant negotiation of these boundaries so as to expand their public spheres. I also define transnationalism as the reduction of the power of nation state and the embracing of transnational, hybrid, uncertain, and flexible citizens. Finally, I discuss the importance of my project in critiquing essentialist views on nationalism and ethnic identity formation and in having a more accurate picture of Asian American communities and literatures in the 1980s and 1990s.
Chapter 1. The Joy Luck Club and Anti-Orientalist Discourse: In this chapter I focus my discussion on how Tan constructs heterogeneous and hybrid contemporary Asian American characters and how Gilroy’s and Anzaldua’s theories can be used to read them. Most importantly I discuss how Tan deconstructs Orientalist representations of Asian immigrant families and cultures and gives her characters power to both embrace America and Asia. This embracing of both American nationality and ethnic pride is the impact of transnatioanlism and multiculturalism on people’s perceptions of race, ethnicity, and nationality. I argue that this is a great breakthrough in Asian American literature, for it breaks down binarism in ethnic representations. I further compare and contrast Tan’s work with The Woman Warrior. I also discuss the literary techniques that Tan uses to describe her transnational characters.
Chapter 2. Typical American and Construction of “Uptown” Asian America: In this chapter I discuss how Jen constructs an “uptown” Asian America, where the Chinese have moved out Chinatowns and into the suburbs. I argue that the greatest contribution of Jen is her efforts to write the Asians out of the exotic and inassimilable Orientals and make them just like the other Americans who want to move to the suburbs and live a middle class life. Jen’s characters gladiate with power to make the best use of cultural differences to achieve their potentials, something that Gilroy and Anzaldua imply in their theories. I also discuss Jen’s literary devices to describe her characters.
Chapter 3. American Knees and Asian American Gender and Sexuality: In this chapter I discuss how Wong constructs Asian American characters who satirize their own obsession with cultural nationalism and endorse new perspectives to look at race, identity, and gender. I argue that Gilroy’s deconstruction of ethnic essentialism is an effective tool to read Wong’s treatment of race in this novel. I also pay particular attention to how Wong develops his ideas on interracial marriage, gender, and sexuality from his first work Homebase (1979) to this work. I argue that Wong rewrites Asian American men and women by overthrowing all stereotypes on Asian gender.
Chapter 4. Among the White Moon Faces and Diasporic Asian American Identities: In this chapter I discuss how Lim constructs a diasporic identity that forms its characteristics through crossing borders and negotiating places and cultures. Lim is a perfect example to include in this dissertation because she is herself a transnational character and her memoir highlights the many components that go into the formation of her floating and diasporic identities, which contrasts with Wong’s The Fifth Chinese Daughter. Lim is also a literary critic who pushes for using a transnational perspective to read Asian American works.
Conclusion: Toward a Critical Stance on Transnationalism and Asian American Identities: I pull the four works together and further discuss the connection between transnationalism and formation of contemporary Asian American identities. I argue that the study of the close connections between the two is of great significance to critique American nationalism and Asian American cultural essentialism, to help people to better understand Asian Americans today, to equip readers with a transnational lens to read Asian American literature, and to contribute to other ethnic studies like African American studies, Chicano American studies, and Native American studies. I also briefly discuss the problems with transnationalism by looking at Bone by Fae Ng. Bone is an appropriate text in that it presents a totally different picture than what we have discussed in the four works. In this novel, Ng depicts a Chinatown family who, unable to take advantage of what transnationalism can offer, is confined to the Chinatown life style in the 1990s. Confined to limited living space and toiling in the sweatshops, this Chinatown family has nothing to gain from transnationalism-- technology, crossing of boundaries, and enjoying of the flexible and hybrid identities. Supplemented from this perspective, readers can have a balanced and critical picture of how transnationalism works in the Asian American community in the new millennialism.
I expect to get the dissertation done by May, 2004, but no later than July, 2004. Here is a brief schedule:
June, July, August, 2003: Collecting, reading, and analyzing primary and secondary materials;
September: Finish Introduction;
October: Finish Chapter 1;
November: Finish Chapter 2;
December: Finish Chapter 3;
January, 2004: Finish Chapter 4;
February: Finish Conclusion;
March and April: Revision, Submission, and Defense.
May, 2004: Graduate.
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