Identity, locality, and Chinese American literature (David Henry Hwang, Maxine Hong Kingston, Frank Chin)

This project begins with an investigation of some prevailing dichotomies and impasses within Asian American literary and critical discourses. Historically, Asian Americans have been represented in mainstream culture either as exemplary in their capacity to assimilate and embrace the American Dream or as radically alien and unassimilable, unwillingly caught in the conflict between East and West. In response, Asian American cultural nationalist writings have framed Asian American identities in terms of domestic politics, following Black nationalist discourse for inspiration and expression, reaffirming masculinity as a means of resistance to institutional racism, and highlighting the experience of early Chinese laborers as a gesture to claim America. Though important as part of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s, such a response needs to be reassessed in the moment of changing Asian American demographics and of the current global economy. Starting with an interrogation of the East/West dichotomy, I argue that Asian American identities are not simply developed “inside” or “outside” the U.S. national identity formation, but turn the “inside out.” With a focus on the literary works of Chinese American writers such as David Henry Hwang, Frank Chin, and Maxine Hong Kingston, I suggest that Chinese American identities, situated along various internal borders, define a transnational space within the metropolitan “center” of American life. Such a transnational space is not only informed by U.S. national narratives and their failure to accommodate Asian American experience, but is also conditioned by U.S. political and military intervention in Asia, U.S. immigration policy and history, and the current global economy. In this transnational space, we witness the possibility of creating an alternative to U.S. national identities.