Masking Selves, Making Subjects

This is a comprehensive study, situating Japanese-American women's writing within the theoretical contexts that provide a means of articulating the complex relationships between language and the body, gender and agency, nationalism and identity. Through an examination of post-World War II autobiographical writings, fiction and poetry, the author argues that these writers have employed the trope of masking - textually and psychologically - as a strategy to create an alternative discursive practice and to protect the self as a subject. The interdisciplinary approach offers an in-depth reading of a number of genres, including film and travel narrative. Looking at how the west has sexualized, infantilized and feminized Japanese culture for over a century, the book examines contemporary Japanese-American women's struggle with orientalist fantasy. The author shows how masking serves as a self-affirming discourse that dynamically interacts with mainstream culture's racial and sexual projections.