Asian Literature in the Schools

[CJF]

Not too long ago, the "beloved" Amy Tan strolled by my Fresno City College campus for a talk about her new novel.

Don't ask me about the novel or Tan. I saw her movie, and my opinion of it is predictable.

But anyways, we were given a list of other literary works by "Asian American authors" to read. There were certain things that struck me about the list:

a. 80-90% of the authors were Asian females.

b. A third of those females had western last names exclusively or attached to their Asian maiden names.

c. Most of the books main character was a heroine from reading much of the synopsis'.

With those points being said, why is Asian literature dominated by feminists? Is it because that is what white publishers want? Is it because only feminists write well:p ? Is it because these women do "favors" for the publishers? Is it because these books generally have pro-white/western anti-opressive Asian messages?

[minbo]

Asian American literature is dominated by the "Amy Tan" school for a few reasons.

1) Because she is a minority and a woman, for people overwhelmed by "white male guilt", backing her viewpoints gives them a double helping of pat themselves on their backs happiness. This happens for most minority women in many fields, such as news anchor spots. Minority women do have it tough, and even with this extra "leg up", as specific minority groups, they still are far from parity with the "white male" power structure. I do not begrudge these isolated individuals that benefit their success. Even though the "Amy Tan/Asian Female with cultural/identity issues oppressed by the male hierarchy" authors seem to be everywhere, those women who have made it are still isolated individuals out of the larger body of "Asian Female" writers that all deserve recognition as well, just like the "Asian Male" authors are often ignored. "Asian Female" authors is an even smaller subsection of the even more oppressed "Asian Females", even though they have also been disproportionaly successful in the TV news anchor catagory.

2) Printing books is an expensive process, so publishers are by nature very peculiar cautious beasties with herd tendencies, just like Television program directors and music labels. If they see one book with a hit, they then open their wallets to publish and push buttload of similar books. Just look at all the histories mysteries that were published after Dan Brown made it big with The DaVinci Code. Following the path of least resistance, they will continue to mine a vein till they exhaust it. It is like drugs, until there is no market, they will continue to push and sell the stuff down the throats of the American people, unless they find another drug of choice more lucrative to jump onto. Until another Asian author with a distinct style or subject matter/viewpoint that is easily coinable somehow accidentally makes it big, the product class of AA lit will continue to be dominated by the last big hit. Amy Tan.

[nskripchun]

^ditto what minbo said.

To be add another twist to the discussion... did any of you read Asian / Asian American literature as students in primary, junior high, and high school?

Growing up there was pretty NOTHING available to read except "The Joy Luck Club" when I was in honors lit class in HS and I really hated it.

[CJF]

^ditto what minbo said.

To be add another twist to the discussion... did any of you read Asian / Asian American literature as students in primary, junior high, and high school?

Growing up there was pretty NOTHING available to read except "The Joy Luck Club" when I was in honors lit class in HS and I really hated it.

Fortunately, we weren't forced to read Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club:D

We were forced to read works of a communist feminist. Daughter of the Chilean? dictator, Allende, who wrote feminist/commie books about the Chilean revolution.

These books I greatly enjoyed. There wasn't any self hating in it either like you find in the Tan's stuff (from what I've heard at least)

[Ike]

I've already written this in another thread, but here's my experience with Amy Tan in high school.

Joy Luck Club was required reading for my 11th grade English class, and my middle-aged Irish male teacher presented us with the critique that JLC didn't depict any positive Asian male characters, and he said that he himself didn't like the book.

I wrote my book report on how the main character's father is a positive Asian male character. I was in that stage where rebellion trumped truth-seeking, but really, it's gotta be pretty obvious if an Irish guy can see it.

Edit: And that was the only piece of Asian-American literature we read.

[awong]

the only ones I've ever read were by lawarance yep, like dragonwings back in elementary school, which I enjoyed. I read one last year that I forgot to read and I also enjoyed it, it took place in the 20th century, just cant remember which decade, but a lot of it I actually could relate to even though the main character was female.

[CJF]

I've already written this in another thread, but here's my experience with Amy Tan in high school.

Joy Luck Club was required reading for my 11th grade English class, and my middle-aged Irish male teacher presented us with the critique that JLC didn't depict any positive Asian male characters, and he said that he himself didn't like the book.

I wrote my book report on how the main character's father is a positive Asian male character. I was in that stage where rebellion trumped truth-seeking, but really, it's gotta be pretty obvious if an Irish guy can see it.

Edit: And that was the only piece of Asian-American literature we read.


If an Irish guy noticed no positive AM characters, you know the book doesn't have positive AM characters. Yet she's treated as a folk hero by many librarians and female teachers.:rolleyes:

[CJF]

off topic

but did anybody read this book in middle school about a viet guy who falls for a white girl whose brother is a skin head, and his cousin is a viet gangster and they clash etc. Takes place in Houston in the '80's.

Sort of a Romeo and Juliet type of story and wasn't the greatest work, but one of the few Asian books with a teenage male as the main character.

NVM, found it

Shadow of the Dragon by either some Asian lady who married a white or white lady, lol

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51F6A6ZQN7L._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg

[Dialectic]

I've already written this in another thread, but here's my experience with Amy Tan in high school.

Joy Luck Club was required reading for my 11th grade English class, and my middle-aged Irish male teacher presented us with the critique that JLC didn't depict any positive Asian male characters, and he said that he himself didn't like the book.

I wrote my book report on how the main character's father is a positive Asian male character. I was in that stage where rebellion trumped truth-seeking, but really, it's gotta be pretty obvious if an Irish guy can see it.

Edit: And that was the only piece of Asian-American literature we read.

Damn, that's an awesome middle-aged Irish male teacher! It's always so gratifying to hear about competent high school English (or any subject) teachers. CJF, never heard of the book, sounds kinda cool. We actually had a recovering Viet gangster one our forum for a while ... he was called Vinh tha Azn Crazy. I think we still have his Feature up in our Features section. He never followed up on it like he originally intended, but he was a cool guy to have around and had a great heart.

[Makulita]

Oh what the fuck, I read that book CJF. I damn near forgot about it.

I can't remember for shit except it sucked ass how Sang Le got killed by the main character's girlfriend's skinhead brother. Dumbass Hong didn't know Sang was right there, in front of her, painting apparently awesome watercolors of her.

And the dragon on the cover always bothered me, it looked more like a cat.

---

Back when I was just budding into the fucked up Asian American politics I immediately made a beeline towards the most visible Asian American author I knew, Auntie Tan.

And... the books were okay. I even bought a couple copies (The Bonesetter's Daughter and The Hundred Secret Senses), and just accidently kept my school's copy of Joy Luck Club. HSS's main character was kinda spoiled, downright stupid actually. But I'm fucked because I'm in a similar situation as her, still though.

The thing that bothered me most about Auntie Tan's books were those really strange, try hard, orientalizing ways of trying to be "poetic" about actually really deep, heartfelt feelings. I can't think of anything off the top of my head specifically but she'd go out of her way to make a painful-omfg-I-gouge-out-my-eyes obvious Chinese cultural metaphors for... I dunno, the discomfort of an unusually heinous bowel movement. Referring to things like "mother-taste" and phoenixes flying down mountains to save girls from vindictive townspeople wtfever.

[xian]

As pointed out above, there's nothing wrong with feminist literature. It's duplicitious, self-hatred or indulging quasi-feminist literature that's the problem. Remember, our mainstream feminist movement failed because it was disinterested in women of color as a group and was only geared toward middle class and above white women, and those who were able to assimilate into that group.

Stuff I liked? Shawn Wong, Frank Wu, Ozeki (although some of her Asian characters are a little caricatured), Ogawa, and crap, I'm getting a block. I might need to check my shelf. I remember clearly a Meena Alexander story about a drunk white guy harassing a mother and child on the bus and the other passengers doing nothing until AFTER he left and then saying, "Don't hate all white people because of this". That was pretty good.

Otherwise, I read the non-fiction more: Ron Takaki, Iris Chang,etc.

[CJF]

Oh what the fuck, I read that book CJF. I damn near forgot about it.

I can't remember for shit except it sucked ass how Sang Le got killed by the main character's girlfriend's skinhead brother. Dumbass Hong didn't know Sang was right there, in front of her, painting apparently awesome watercolors of her.

And the dragon on the cover always bothered me, it looked more like a cat.

---

Back when I was just budding into the fucked up Asian American politics I immediately made a beeline towards the most visible Asian American author I knew, Auntie Tan.

And... the books were okay. I even bought a couple copies (The Bonesetter's Daughter and The Hundred Secret Senses), and just accidently kept my school's copy of Joy Luck Club. HSS's main character was kinda spoiled, downright stupid actually. But I'm fucked because I'm in a similar situation as her, still though.

The thing that bothered me most about Auntie Tan's books were those really strange, try hard, orientalizing ways of trying to be "poetic" about actually really deep, heartfelt feelings. I can't think of anything off the top of my head specifically but she'd go out of her way to make a painful-omfg-I-gouge-out-my-eyes obvious Chinese cultural metaphors for... I dunno, the discomfort of an unusually heinous bowel movement. Referring to things like "mother-taste" and phoenixes flying down mountains to save girls from vindictive townspeople wtfever.

ROFL. what's funny is I bet some stupid white people think all Asian people talk that way, with all these metaphors and analogies with dragons and different mythical animals, hahaha.

[topdawg]

Nothing out of the usual Auntie Tan curricula here in my high school days. We also touched on Maxine Hong Kingston and her (in)famous Women Warrior..

I haven't heard of guys like Frank Chin until I am in college. And only in ASA classes do we study those men at all.

The situation is pretty much summed up by many here already: quasi-feminist Asian American works sell because they play right into the general white readership that expects "oppressive oriental patriarchy" that props up the western "free" minds and liberal thinking.

It was however quite relieving to know that many students in my ASA classes were quite in-cue with things like the selling out phenomenon in AA literature, and are quick to link the issues with the larger imbalance in the AA gender dynamics.