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 | | Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America by Viet Thanh Nguyen ISBN-10: 9780195146998 ISBN-10: 0-19-514699-9 ISBN-13: 9780195146998 ISBN-13: 978-0-19-514699-8 Hardcover 2002-03-28 Oxford University Press, USA Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description In Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America, Viet Nguyen argues that Asian American intellectuals have idealized Asian America, ignoring its saturation with capitalist practices. This idealization of Asian America means that Asian American intellectuals can neither grapple with their culture's ideological diversity nor recognize their own involvement with capitalist practices such as the selling of racial identity. Making his case through the example of literature, which remains a critical arena of cultural production for Asian Americans, Nguyen demonstrates that literature embodies the complexities, conflicts, and potential future options of Asian American culture. | ||
Reviews | ||
Excellent Book; Ignore the First Review The first reviewer has not only missed the point; he or she is naive and has almost certainly not read the book. By building on and critiquing the works of his predecessors such as Elaine Kim, Cynthia Wong, Rachel Lee, and Lisa Lowe, Viet Thanh Nguyen offers the most cogent and viable view of Asian American literature that I've read to date. What he critiques is precisely how Asian American intellectuals over-rely on racial identity for self-definition, and how this leads to the canonization of only those Asian American texts that offer "resistance" to the dominant culture. He argues for the reclamation of Asian American texts that employ other "flexible strategies" besides resistance, such as accommodation and assimilation. By the end, he suggests that Asian Americans might even come to be considered white or at least aligned with whiteness in America, which suggests the elasticity of racial categories. This book is far, far from racist. In fact, ideologically, it is the most even-handed of the well-known works of Asian American literary criticism. If you have any interest in Asian American Studies or how to negotiate Asian American identity, you should read this book. And I say this as a Ph.D. student in English, not as someone who has any personal connection to the author. Quite frankly, I resent reviews like the first; they are acts of ignorance and sabotage. | ||
The first reviewer has completely missed the point Yes, I would agree that Japanese Baptists have more in common with American Baptists than, say, Japanese Satanists or Buddhists, but that is an irrelevant digression. For one thing, you cannot tell by looking at someone what beliefs he holds, or whatnot--but you can (at least most of the time) tell the person's race. And that is how we lump people together--not based on what they really believe, but on the superficial side. So this book is not racist; it just points out (accurately) the unpleasant truth. Would you rather have the author sugarcoat everything and make it seem as if we all only care about "what's on the inside" a la Barney the big purple dinosaur? If so, you might want to go back to watching Sesame Street, I think the commercials are about over. | ||
racist Anyone who continues to think of race as a primary characteristic of someone is a racist. This book is racist. Culturally, there are so many divides within any given "race," that it is an illusory category that should be abandoned. It would be much better to look at people in terms of common beliefs. For instance, Japanese Baptists have more in common with American Baptists than either group has with Satanists. It is religion, or the lack of it, that unites or divides people, or at least what it is that they believe. As ML King put it, it's the content of one's character that should be judged. This means what they believe, and how it is enacted through time. Skin color and racial characteristics are meaningless. | ||