Asian American Literature in the International Context: Readings on Fiction, Poetry, and Performance

Abstract

Today the cultural production of America has a scope and variety that is as aesthetically complex and sophisticated as any other literature, yet maintaining a very particular flavor of its own. American literature offers a very rich field of investigation because in it we comprehend transcultural literary phenomena beyond geographic, national, ethnic, and even linguistic boundaries. Recent scholarship consistently points to the need to expand and deepen the approaches to this complex set of concerns and strategies. American writers have been aware for a long time that self-definitions and authentic cultural representation must emerge not from an easy, assimilationalist surrender to labels supplied or inspired by others, but from their own individualistic ways of coming to terms with their specific backgrounds as they learn to accept their share of the burden of personal and social histories they have embraced within the multifarious world that is the United States. The diverse forms within the distinct ethnicities embraced by the term Asian American culture proffer a convergence of old traditions and new cultures, of immigrant translation and historical appropriation, that often finds creative expression in a synthesis of myth and the modern consciousness through the use of innovative forms of perception and renegotiations of cultural heritage in the plural. The remarkable imaginative and narrative contributions of American literature have made their mark outside the boundaries of the United States as well, and in many ways the present collection of essays by international scholars is a result of this fact.

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