DESCRIPTION: This course
introduces students to some of the most creative writers, filmmakers and
artists from Asian America. The class is structured to be primarily a reading
and discussion class focusing on the works of authors, playwrights, and
filmmakers of Asian and other cultural heritages and who call Hawai’i and the
United States home. Biweekly response papers are required. These creative texts
explore the myriad configurations of Asian America and America; they challenge
and reinvent both labels. We’ll look at books on the turbulent 1960’s, the
Civil Rights Movement and concepts such as immigration, diaspora,
transnationalism, race, borders, hybridity, ethnicity, and gender, in order to
understand the origins of and changes in Asian American culture and the impact
of Asian American literature on other contemporary US literatures and cultural
and social issues.
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 “local” literature by Hawai’i writers of Asian
descent have similar and different perspectives;
- Gain an
understanding of the ways that Asian American literature and identity
transform, complement and otherwise engage with various “Americas”
Course requirements include:
- One class
presentation (5 to 10 minutes);
- Biweekly response
papers;
- Final exam:
cumulative, multiple choice
Required texts include:
- Bill Cheng, Southern Cross the Dog (novel);
- Derek Kirk Kim, Tune
(web-based graphic narrative)
- Chang-rae Lee, On Such
a Full Sea (novel);
- Josephine Lee, Don Eitel, and R. A. Shiomi, eds., Other Spaces of Asian America: Plays for a
New Generation;
- Shelley Sang-Hee Lee, A
New History of Asian America
- R. Zamora Linmark, Leche (novel);
- Al (Alfred A.)
Robles, Rappin’ with Ten Thousand
Carabaos in the Dark (poetry);
- Albert Saijo, Woodrat Flat (poetry);
- Monique Truong, The Book of Salt (novel);
- Karen Tei
Yamashita, I Hotel (novel)