ENGL 229 - Asian-American Literature, 1946-present

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

This course considers such topics as memory, identity, liminality, community, and cultural and familial inheritance within Asian-American literary traditions. May consider Asian-American literature in relation to other ethnic literatures.

Topic for 2025/26a: Asian American Movements. (Same as ASIA 229) What we now call “Asian American literature” began to take shape in the 1970s, during a period marked by multiethnic struggles for self-determination in the United States. Reflecting the broader Asian American Movement’s use of “strategic essentialism,” which intentionally downplayed national, cultural, and linguistic differences among various Asian groups in the U.S. for political purposes, Asian American literature initially referred to works that conveyed a shared experience of being Asian in America. However, writers soon confronted the contradictions in this creative endeavor. This introductory course thus conceives of Asian American literature as a complex conceptual framework rather than a distinct archive. Focusing on the theme of “movement,” we explore how narratives from Asian diasporic writers have reshaped dominant racial and aesthetic forms in the United States. We examine a range of literary genres, including naturalist writing, early migration autobiographies, realist short stories, modernist poetry, internment memoirs, pan-ethnic anthologies, journalistic publications, postmodern novels, postcolonial “literatures of exile,” graphic novels, and diasporic “narratives of return.” By moving through the expansive history of Asian American literature, we analyze the evolving stakes—both creative and critical—of this diverse body of writing and collectively envision the future questions it has already started to address. Texts may include Sui Sin Far’s Mrs. Spring Fragrance, Younghill Kang’s East Goes West, Jose Garcia Villa’s Doveglion: Collected Poems, Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart, Mine Okubo’s Citizen 13660, Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter, Louis Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine, Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters, Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker, and lê thi diem thúy’s The Gangster We Are All Looking For.

This course satisfies the REGS requirement for the English major.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS