Asian Canadian Writing Beyond Autoethnography
Published on 30. August 2008
Book
Paperback/Softback
342 pages
978-1-55458-023-1 (ISBN)
Description
Asian Canadian Writing Beyond Autoethnography explores some of the latest developments in the literary and cultural practices of Canadians of Asian heritage. While earlier work by ethnic, multicultural, or minority writers in Canada was often concerned with immigration, the moment of arrival, issues of assimilation, and conflicts between generations, literary and cultural production in the new millennium no longer focuses solely on the conflict between the Old World and the New or the clashes between culture of origin and adopted culture. No longer are minority authors identifying simply with their ethnic or racial cultural background in opposition to dominant culture.
The essays in this collection explore ways in which Asian Canadian authors (such as Larissa Lai, Shani Mootoo, Fred Wah, Hiromi Goto, Suniti Namjoshi, and Ying Chen) and artists (such as Ken Lum, Paul Wong, and Laiwan) have gone beyond what Francoise Lionnet calls autoethnography, or ethnographic autobiography. They demonstrate the ways representations of race and ethnicity, particularly in works by Asian Canadians in the last decade, have changed have become more playful, untraditional, aesthetically and ideologically transgressive, and exciting.
The essays in this collection explore ways in which Asian Canadian authors (such as Larissa Lai, Shani Mootoo, Fred Wah, Hiromi Goto, Suniti Namjoshi, and Ying Chen) and artists (such as Ken Lum, Paul Wong, and Laiwan) have gone beyond what Francoise Lionnet calls autoethnography, or ethnographic autobiography. They demonstrate the ways representations of race and ethnicity, particularly in works by Asian Canadians in the last decade, have changed have become more playful, untraditional, aesthetically and ideologically transgressive, and exciting.
Reviews / Votes
"The essay collection is noteworthy in its comprehensive analysis of a diverse range of literary texts, and analysis that involves a critical examination of autoethnographic writing in its complicity with and departures from representations of otherness." -- Ranbir K. Banwait -- Canadian Literature 204, 201007 "Beyond Autoethnography offers an impressive set of critical interventions that illustrate the range of scholarship in Asian Canadian literary studies and will be of great interest to scholars and students of contemporary Asian Canadian culture." -- Christopher Lee, University of British Columbia -- Pacific Affairs, Volume 82, no. 2, Summer 2009More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
556 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-55458-023-1 (9781554580231)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Eleanor Ty is a professor and chair of the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. She is the author of The Politics of the Visible in Asian North American Narratives and co-editor with Donald Goellnicht of Asian North American Identities beyond the Hyphen.
Christl Verduyn is a professor of English and Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University, where she holds the Davidson Chair in Canadian Studies and is the director of the Centre for Canadian Studies. Most recent publications include Asian Canadian Writing Beyond Autoethnography, co-edited with Eleanor Ty (WLU Press, 2008), Archival Narratives for Canada: Re-Telling Stories in a Changing Landscape, co-edited with Kathleen Garay (2011), and Canadian Studies: Past, Present, Praxis, co-edited with Jane Koustas (2012).
Christl Verduyn is a professor of English and Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University, where she holds the Davidson Chair in Canadian Studies and is the director of the Centre for Canadian Studies. Most recent publications include Asian Canadian Writing Beyond Autoethnography, co-edited with Eleanor Ty (WLU Press, 2008), Archival Narratives for Canada: Re-Telling Stories in a Changing Landscape, co-edited with Kathleen Garay (2011), and Canadian Studies: Past, Present, Praxis, co-edited with Jane Koustas (2012).
Content
Asian Canadian Writing Beyond Autoethnography, edited by Eleanor Ty and Christl Verduyn
Introduction
I. Theoretical Challenges and Praxis
The Politics of the Beyond: 43 Theses on Autoethnography and Complicity Smaro Kamboureli
Autoethnography Otherwise: Challenging Poetics and Re-Meaning Race in Fred Wah's Creative Critical Writing Paul Lai
Tides of Belonging: Reconfiguring the Autoethnographic Paradigm in Shani Mootoo's He Drown She in the Sea Kristina Kyser
II. Generic Transformations
Strategizing the Body of History: Anxious Writing, Absent Subjects, and Marketing the Nation Larissa Lai
The Politics of Gender and Genre in Asian Canadian Women's Speculative Fiction: Hiromi Goto and Larissa Lai Pilar Cuder-Dominguez
""auto-hyphen-ethno-hyphen-graphy"": Fred Wah's Creative-Critical Writing Joanne Saul
III. Artistic/Textual/Bodily Politics
Troubling the Mosaic: Larissa Lai's When Fox Is a Thousand, Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night, and Representations of Social Differences Christine Kim
Ken Lum, Paul Wong, and the Aesthetics of Multiculturalism Ming Tiampo
Potent Textuality: Laiwan's Cyborg Poetics Tara Lee
IV. Global Affiliations
""Do not exploit me again and again"": Queering Autoethnography in Suniti Namjoshi's Goja: An Autobiographical Myth Eva C. Karpinski
An Ethnos of Difference, a Praxis of Inclusion: The Ethics of Global Citizenship in Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night Miriam Pirbhai
Ying Chen's ""Poetic Rebellion"": Relocating the Dialogue, In Search of Narrative Renewal Christine Lorre
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
Contributors' Bios
Pilar Cuder-Dominguez is Associate Professor of English at the University of Huelva (Spain), where she teaches British and English-Canadian Literature. Her research interests are the intersections of gender, genre, nation, and race. She is the author of Margaret Atwood: A Beginner's Guide (2003), and the (co)-editor of five collections of essays (La mujer del texto al contexto, 1996; Exilios femeninos, 2000; Sederi XI, 2002; Espacios de Genero, 2005; and The Female Wits, 2006). She has been visiting scholar at universities in Canada and the United States: McGill (1997), Dalhousie (1999), Northwestern (2002), and Toronto (2004). Her current research deals with Canadian women's transnational poetics.
Smaro Kamboureli is Canada Research Chair in Critical Studies in Canadian Literature at the University of Guelph and the Director of the TransCanada Institute. Her publications include Scandalous Bodies: Diasporic Literature in English Canada and a new edition of Making a Difference: Multicultural Literatures in English.
Eva C. Karpinski teaches women's life writing, cultural studies, and feminist theory in the School of Womens Studies at York University in Toronto. Her research interests include postmodernist fiction, immigrant autobiography, translation studies, and feminist ethics. She has published articles on John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Raymond Federman, and Eva Hoffman. She is the editor of Pens of Many Colours, an anthology of Canadian multicultural writing. Her article on Angela Carter won the best essay award from Utopian Studies in 2001.
Christine Kim is Assistant Professor of English at Simon Fraser University. Her teaching and research focus on contemporary Canadian literature, feminist theory, print culture and publishing, and diasporic writing. She has published articles in Mosaic, Open Letter, and Studies in Canadian Literature and has an essay forthcoming in Essays on Canadian Writing.
Kristina Kyser is an instructor of Canadian literature at the University of Toronto, where she completed her doctorate in 2004. Her research and teaching interests include literature and ethics and postcolonial theory. She is also interested in interdisciplinary approaches to Canadian literature from the perspectives of philosophy, religious studies, and political science. She has published or presented papers on Michael Ondaatje, Thomas King, Rohinton Mistry, and Yann Martel. She is currently revising her book-length study, Swallowed by the Whale: Bible and Nation in English-Canadian Writing, for publication.
Larissa Lai is Assistant Professor of English at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of two novels, When Fox Is a Thousand and Salt Fish Girl. Her research interests include race, memory, subjectivity, globalization, sexuality, labour, cyborgs, strategy, and borders.
Paul Lai teaches Asian American literature at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He is researching a project on sound and Asian American cultures. His work considers Asian American Studies as a pedagogical practice, an institutional presence, and a theoretical space for addressing social issues. His work explores how things like anthologies, music websites, and comedy routines link screams, cries, melodies, accents, and other sounds to Asian American identities and politics.
Tara Lee holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from Simon Fraser University. Her teaching interests are in Canadian literature and ethnic minority writing. She has published articles on Asian Canadian literature and identity in journals such as West Coast Line, Dandelion, and Cultural Studies Review.
Christine Lorre is an Assistant Professor of English at Universite Paris III--Sorbonne Nouvelle. Her teaching interests are in American studies, literature in English, and translation. She has published articles in journals edited in France (Etudes canadiennes / Canadian Studies, Commonwealth, Journal of the Short Story in English / Cahiers de la nouvelle, Lisa) and as chapters in books published in France (Lectures d'une oeuvre: The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood, Editions du Temps; Les Ameriques et le Pacifique, Universite Rennes 2) and in Canada (Vision / Division dans l'oeuvre de Nancy Huston, Presses de l'Universite d'Ottawa).
Mariam Pirbhai is an Assistant Professorin the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, where she teaches Post-Colonial Literatures and Theory. Her publications includearticles on Indo-Caribbean Literature,Post-Colonial Theory,Multicultural Writing in Canada, and onliteraryfigures such as Salman Rushdie. She is presently working on a book-length study of the theoretical and socio-historical intersections between indentured labourand slavery in Caribbean writing.
Joanne Saul teaches English and Canadian Studies at the University of Toronto. She is author of Writing the Roaming Subject: The Biotext in Canadian Literature (University of Toronto Press, 2006). She is also co-owner of the independent bookstore TYPE Books in Toronto.
Ming Tiampo is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Carleton University in Ottawa. Her research examines questions of cultural translation and transmission in an international context, concentrating on Japan's relations with the West as well as pluralism in Canada. Her current projects include an exhibition on pluralism in Canada, as well as a book that considers the Japanese avant-garde art movement Gutai in a transnational context. She has published and given papers in Japan, Europe, the United States, and Canada, and in 2004-5 was the curator of the award-winning exhibition ""Electrifying Art: Atsuko Tanaka 1954-1968"" at the Grey Art Gallery in New York and at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in Vancouver. She is a founding member of the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis (CTCA) at Carleton.
Eleanor Ty is Professor and Chair of English & Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Author of The Politics of the Visible in Asian North American Narratives (University of Toronto Press, 2004), Empowering the Feminine: The Narratives of Mary Robinson, Jane West, and Amelia Opie, 1796&0150;1812 (University of Toronto Press, 1998), and Unsex'd Revolutionaries: Five Women Novelists of the 1790s (University of Toronto Press, 1993), she has edited Memoirs of Emma Courtney (Oxford 1996) and The Victim of Prejudice (Broadview 1994) by Mary Hays and has co-edited with Donald Goellnicht a collection of essays, Asian North American Identities Beyond the Hyphen (Indiana University Press, 2004). She has published essays on Michael Ondaatje, on Joy Kogawa, on Jamaica Kincaid, on reading romances, on Exotica, and on Miss Saigon.
Christl Verduyn is Professor of Canadian Studies and Canadian literature at Mount Allison University. She publishes on Canadian and Quebecois women's writing and criticism, multiculturalism and minority writing, life writing, and interdisciplinary approaches to literature. Recent books include Identity, Community, Nation: Essays on Canadian Writing (with D. Schaub, 2002), Marian Engel: Life in Letters (with K. Garay, 2004), and Must Write: Edna Staebler's Diaries (2005). Her 1995 study Lifelines: Marian Engel's Writings received the Gabrielle Roy Book Prize.
Introduction
I. Theoretical Challenges and Praxis
The Politics of the Beyond: 43 Theses on Autoethnography and Complicity Smaro Kamboureli
Autoethnography Otherwise: Challenging Poetics and Re-Meaning Race in Fred Wah's Creative Critical Writing Paul Lai
Tides of Belonging: Reconfiguring the Autoethnographic Paradigm in Shani Mootoo's He Drown She in the Sea Kristina Kyser
II. Generic Transformations
Strategizing the Body of History: Anxious Writing, Absent Subjects, and Marketing the Nation Larissa Lai
The Politics of Gender and Genre in Asian Canadian Women's Speculative Fiction: Hiromi Goto and Larissa Lai Pilar Cuder-Dominguez
""auto-hyphen-ethno-hyphen-graphy"": Fred Wah's Creative-Critical Writing Joanne Saul
III. Artistic/Textual/Bodily Politics
Troubling the Mosaic: Larissa Lai's When Fox Is a Thousand, Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night, and Representations of Social Differences Christine Kim
Ken Lum, Paul Wong, and the Aesthetics of Multiculturalism Ming Tiampo
Potent Textuality: Laiwan's Cyborg Poetics Tara Lee
IV. Global Affiliations
""Do not exploit me again and again"": Queering Autoethnography in Suniti Namjoshi's Goja: An Autobiographical Myth Eva C. Karpinski
An Ethnos of Difference, a Praxis of Inclusion: The Ethics of Global Citizenship in Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night Miriam Pirbhai
Ying Chen's ""Poetic Rebellion"": Relocating the Dialogue, In Search of Narrative Renewal Christine Lorre
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
Contributors' Bios
Pilar Cuder-Dominguez is Associate Professor of English at the University of Huelva (Spain), where she teaches British and English-Canadian Literature. Her research interests are the intersections of gender, genre, nation, and race. She is the author of Margaret Atwood: A Beginner's Guide (2003), and the (co)-editor of five collections of essays (La mujer del texto al contexto, 1996; Exilios femeninos, 2000; Sederi XI, 2002; Espacios de Genero, 2005; and The Female Wits, 2006). She has been visiting scholar at universities in Canada and the United States: McGill (1997), Dalhousie (1999), Northwestern (2002), and Toronto (2004). Her current research deals with Canadian women's transnational poetics.
Smaro Kamboureli is Canada Research Chair in Critical Studies in Canadian Literature at the University of Guelph and the Director of the TransCanada Institute. Her publications include Scandalous Bodies: Diasporic Literature in English Canada and a new edition of Making a Difference: Multicultural Literatures in English.
Eva C. Karpinski teaches women's life writing, cultural studies, and feminist theory in the School of Womens Studies at York University in Toronto. Her research interests include postmodernist fiction, immigrant autobiography, translation studies, and feminist ethics. She has published articles on John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Raymond Federman, and Eva Hoffman. She is the editor of Pens of Many Colours, an anthology of Canadian multicultural writing. Her article on Angela Carter won the best essay award from Utopian Studies in 2001.
Christine Kim is Assistant Professor of English at Simon Fraser University. Her teaching and research focus on contemporary Canadian literature, feminist theory, print culture and publishing, and diasporic writing. She has published articles in Mosaic, Open Letter, and Studies in Canadian Literature and has an essay forthcoming in Essays on Canadian Writing.
Kristina Kyser is an instructor of Canadian literature at the University of Toronto, where she completed her doctorate in 2004. Her research and teaching interests include literature and ethics and postcolonial theory. She is also interested in interdisciplinary approaches to Canadian literature from the perspectives of philosophy, religious studies, and political science. She has published or presented papers on Michael Ondaatje, Thomas King, Rohinton Mistry, and Yann Martel. She is currently revising her book-length study, Swallowed by the Whale: Bible and Nation in English-Canadian Writing, for publication.
Larissa Lai is Assistant Professor of English at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of two novels, When Fox Is a Thousand and Salt Fish Girl. Her research interests include race, memory, subjectivity, globalization, sexuality, labour, cyborgs, strategy, and borders.
Paul Lai teaches Asian American literature at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He is researching a project on sound and Asian American cultures. His work considers Asian American Studies as a pedagogical practice, an institutional presence, and a theoretical space for addressing social issues. His work explores how things like anthologies, music websites, and comedy routines link screams, cries, melodies, accents, and other sounds to Asian American identities and politics.
Tara Lee holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from Simon Fraser University. Her teaching interests are in Canadian literature and ethnic minority writing. She has published articles on Asian Canadian literature and identity in journals such as West Coast Line, Dandelion, and Cultural Studies Review.
Christine Lorre is an Assistant Professor of English at Universite Paris III--Sorbonne Nouvelle. Her teaching interests are in American studies, literature in English, and translation. She has published articles in journals edited in France (Etudes canadiennes / Canadian Studies, Commonwealth, Journal of the Short Story in English / Cahiers de la nouvelle, Lisa) and as chapters in books published in France (Lectures d'une oeuvre: The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood, Editions du Temps; Les Ameriques et le Pacifique, Universite Rennes 2) and in Canada (Vision / Division dans l'oeuvre de Nancy Huston, Presses de l'Universite d'Ottawa).
Mariam Pirbhai is an Assistant Professorin the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, where she teaches Post-Colonial Literatures and Theory. Her publications includearticles on Indo-Caribbean Literature,Post-Colonial Theory,Multicultural Writing in Canada, and onliteraryfigures such as Salman Rushdie. She is presently working on a book-length study of the theoretical and socio-historical intersections between indentured labourand slavery in Caribbean writing.
Joanne Saul teaches English and Canadian Studies at the University of Toronto. She is author of Writing the Roaming Subject: The Biotext in Canadian Literature (University of Toronto Press, 2006). She is also co-owner of the independent bookstore TYPE Books in Toronto.
Ming Tiampo is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Carleton University in Ottawa. Her research examines questions of cultural translation and transmission in an international context, concentrating on Japan's relations with the West as well as pluralism in Canada. Her current projects include an exhibition on pluralism in Canada, as well as a book that considers the Japanese avant-garde art movement Gutai in a transnational context. She has published and given papers in Japan, Europe, the United States, and Canada, and in 2004-5 was the curator of the award-winning exhibition ""Electrifying Art: Atsuko Tanaka 1954-1968"" at the Grey Art Gallery in New York and at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in Vancouver. She is a founding member of the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis (CTCA) at Carleton.
Eleanor Ty is Professor and Chair of English & Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Author of The Politics of the Visible in Asian North American Narratives (University of Toronto Press, 2004), Empowering the Feminine: The Narratives of Mary Robinson, Jane West, and Amelia Opie, 1796&0150;1812 (University of Toronto Press, 1998), and Unsex'd Revolutionaries: Five Women Novelists of the 1790s (University of Toronto Press, 1993), she has edited Memoirs of Emma Courtney (Oxford 1996) and The Victim of Prejudice (Broadview 1994) by Mary Hays and has co-edited with Donald Goellnicht a collection of essays, Asian North American Identities Beyond the Hyphen (Indiana University Press, 2004). She has published essays on Michael Ondaatje, on Joy Kogawa, on Jamaica Kincaid, on reading romances, on Exotica, and on Miss Saigon.
Christl Verduyn is Professor of Canadian Studies and Canadian literature at Mount Allison University. She publishes on Canadian and Quebecois women's writing and criticism, multiculturalism and minority writing, life writing, and interdisciplinary approaches to literature. Recent books include Identity, Community, Nation: Essays on Canadian Writing (with D. Schaub, 2002), Marian Engel: Life in Letters (with K. Garay, 2004), and Must Write: Edna Staebler's Diaries (2005). Her 1995 study Lifelines: Marian Engel's Writings received the Gabrielle Roy Book Prize.