Single Author: Karen Tei Yamashita

Brief introduction to Karen Tei Yamashita:

Yamashita is the author of six books: Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (1990) Brazil-Maru (1993), Tropic of Orange (1997), Circle K Cycles (2001) I Hotel (2010), and a book of her plays, Anime Wong: Fictions of Performance (2014). A seventh books is on its way. She has also written numerous essays and short stories. Since the publication of her first novel, her writings have steadily gained critical attention and respect and also adoption in college courses in north America, in Japan, Okinawa, in the People’s Republic of China, in Taiwan, Brazil, and in countries such as the UK, France, Austria, and Ukraine. Her novels are credited by scholars with inaugurating the transnational turn in Asian American literary studies–a major new direction in this area. Her writing has received many awards. Recently, she was awarded a US Artists Ford Foundation Fellowship; she is Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is currently the co-holder with Bettina Aptheker of the UC Presidential Chair for Feminist Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC, Santa Cruz.

Course description:

This course provides the rare opportunity to undertake close readings of writing that is singular, boldly innovative, and that has fundamentally changed the ways that readers might conceive the workings of fiction and storytelling, of time and space, of an individual’s relation to her past–is the past to be found in the future? Yamashita’s work defies simple classification: the tag of postmodernism minimally captures her blending of memoir, comics, history, short story, storyboards, performance, and more. Her particular use of magic realism enriches her narratives, as well as her careful incorporation of Christian, Islamic, and Buddhist iconography, philosophical traditions from China and Japan, and the writings of revolutionaries like Marx and Mao or modernist writer, Paul Valéry.

The course focuses on Yamashita’s abiding interest in the following topical clusters:  social justice; environmental crisis; formulations of the collective; human migration. We may be able to do a Skype session with the author on her published work and her forthcoming, seventh book. Course material includes an introductions to the main currents of Asian American literary and cultural history.

Reading list includes:

Brazil Maru; Tropic of Orange; Circle K Cycles; I Hotel; Anime Wong (selection); “Borges & I”; “Gentlemen’s Agreement” (Books ordered through the UHM Bookstore)

Assignments:

One research paper (8 to 10 pages, double-spaced); one or two in-class presentation(s) (5 to 10 min., each); three forum posts (min. 500 words, each)

Student Learning Outcomes:

  • Develop a general understanding of the history of Asian American (north American) literary and cultural history;
  • Develop an understanding of the diverse and complex sources of Asian American literature and culture;
  • Develop an in-depth understanding of the works of Karen Tei Yamashita (fiction, essays, plays) in terms of her incorporation of the narrative elements of history, memoir, performance, magic realism, folklore;
  • Strengthen the ability to undertake close readings of texts;
  • Strengthen the ability to analyze texts in both oral and written formats.