Asian American Literature

English 372 / CRN 86864 / Asian American Literature and Culture

TR 12-1:15 pm / KUY 313

Professor R. Hsu / Office: KUY 512 / rhsu@hawaii.edu

Description:

This course focuses on the work of writers, filmmakers and artists of Asian descent, who live primarily in North America and who engage thoughtfully or critically with the concept of “America”. Asian American writing and popular cultural texts, however, are about much more than the artists’ experiences of various Americas, for these writers, architects, and filmmakers, also draw from multiple cultural and historical heritages beyond those of North America. The syllabus includes a general introduction to the historical and political origins and enduring concerns of Asian America; an understanding of the socio-historical background enriches our appreciation of the connections as well as the productive tensions among the many diverse groups of this pan-ethnic identity.

The main focus of this class will be on the innovative, creative, frequently avant-garde nature of the one-hundred-year plus body of texts classified as Asian American literary and cultural texts. These texts depict and project the myriad configurations of Asian America and America; they challenge and reinvent both terms. We’ll look at books on the turbulent 1960’s, the Civil Rights Movement, and prose narratives that are non-linear and polyvocal, and that have impacted contemporary US literatures.

This class is structured to be primarily a reading and large- and small-group discussion class although there still are writing requirements appropriate to a 300-level course.

Student Learning Outcomes (SLO):

  • Gain an understanding of some of the shared themes as well as the diversity of Asian American writing and art;
  • Gain an understanding of the ways that Asian American literature and identity transform, complement and otherwise engage with various “Americas”;
  • Enhance the ability to think and to discuss and to write independently about literary and cultural texts.

Required assignments include:        completing reading assignments; a weekly blog post on the reading assignments; one 5 to 10-minutes class presentation; one final exam (essay format)

Required texts include:

Aziz Ansari, Master of None (Netflix; Season 1)

Asian American Literature Today webcasts (Library of Congress)

Sesshu Foster, City of the Future (poetry)

Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

Rivas and Lee-DiStefano, editors. Imagining Asia in the Americas. (Selection) (provided by instructor)

Eileen Tabios, Love in a Time of Belligerence (poetry)

Karen Tei Yamashita, Letters to Memory (creative non-fiction)

Hanya Yanagihara, The People in the Trees