The strange smell of truth : ethnicity, translation, and realism in the Cold War writings of Eileen Chang -- The ironic temporalities of cultural nationalism -- Sound and the subject in The woman warrior and Tripmaster monkey -- Form giving and the remains of identity in A gesture life -- Semblance, shame, and the work of comparison -- Conclusion : the difference Asian America makes
Summary
The history of Asian American literature reveals the ongoing attempt to work through the fraught relationship between identity politics and literary representation. This relationship is especially evident in literary works which claim that their content represents the socio-historical world. This book argues that the reframing of the field as a critical, rather than identity-based, project nonetheless continues to rely on the logics of identity
