This article extends the terms of debate in Western feminism by analyzing the gender politics within Asian American cultural studies. On account of historical "emasculation" of Asian American men (exclusion laws, labor restrictions, cultural stereotyping, etc), Chinese American male writers feel the need to reassert manhood through heroic literary portrayal. I urge these writers to recover a cultural space without denigrating the "feminine" and to redefine heroism by transcending binaries.
Through a comparison of Chinese and Chinese American (auto)biographical accounts, this article facilitates a transpacific literary exchange that tracks cultural persistence and diffusion, offers a transnational perspective on the alleged absence of indigenous Chinese autobiography and the controversial use of fake "Orientalist" material in Chinese American life-writing, and highlights the need for bicultural literacy in grappling with this literature. Contesting Frank Chin's categorical condemnation of autobiography (as a Western Christian contraption laden with self-hatred), I trace its manifestations in transpacific texts and the convergences in those texts: melding of autobiography and biography, salience of maternal legacies, and interdependent self-formation. Unlike the Chinese authors who lavish compliments on their forebears, however, the Chinese American authors do not scruple to disclose unseemly family secrets or to defy the boundaries between history and fiction—practices that some Asian American critics find vexing. I demonstrate that the critical qualms about Chinese American life-writing have to do with the politics of representation and that bicultural literacy can obviate cultural misreading.
Through a comparison of Chinese and Chinese American (auto)biographical accounts, this article facilitates a transpacific literary exchange that tracks cultural persistence and diffusion, offers a transnational perspective on the alleged absence of indigenous Chinese autobiography and the controversial use of fake "Orientalist" material in Chinese American life-writing, and highlights the need for bicultural literacy in grappling with this literature. Contesting Frank Chin's categorical condemnation of autobiography (as a Western Christian contraption laden with self-hatred), I trace its manifestations in transpacific texts and the convergences in those texts: melding of autobiography and biography, salience of maternal legacies, and interdependent self-formation. Unlike the Chinese authors who lavish compliments on their forebears, however, the Chinese American authors do not scruple to disclose unseemly family secrets or to defy the boundaries between history and fiction—practices that some Asian American critics find vexing. I demonstrate that the critical qualms about Chinese American life-writing have to do with the politics of representation and that bicultural literacy can obviate cultural misreading.
This article extends the terms of debate in Western feminism by analyzing the gender politics within Asian American cultural studies. On account of historical "emasculation" of Asian American men (exclusion laws, labor restrictions, cultural stereotyping, etc), Chinese American male writers feel the need to reassert manhood through heroic literary portrayal. I urge these writers to recover a cultural space without denigrating the "feminine" and to redefine heroism by transcending binaries.
This article compares the reclusive ideal extolled by Chinese poet Tao Qian (T'ao Ch'ien or Tao Yuan Ming) and the solitude that Ralph Waldo Emerson regards as a prerequisite to self-trust. Tao Qian and Emerson are fathers of Chinese and American pastorals respectively. Both the Chinese poet and the New England sage disparage the social, economical, and political pressures that curtail individual spirit and enforce conformity. Both deem nature to be at once salubrious and edifying, and discern correspondences between ecological and moral well-being. Their differences are no less pronounced. Tao Qian, who considers the countryside to be essential to solitude, is content to lead a self-effacing pastoral existence. Emerson, who sees nature as ancillary to the divine spark within each human being, avers that the enlightened soul can find solitude anywhere. While Tao Qian believes that he can only be true to his high-minded nature by literally removing himself from the world of affairs, Emerson never shirks his responsibility as a public intellectual and continues to weigh in with a piece of his mind concerning pressing social and political issues.
This article compares the reclusive ideal extolled by Chinese poet Tao Qian (T'ao Ch'ien or Tao Yuan Ming) and the solitude that Ralph Waldo Emerson regards as a prerequisite to self-trust. Tao Qian and Emerson are fathers of Chinese and American pastorals respectively. Both the Chinese poet and the New England sage disparage the social, economical, and political pressures that curtail individual spirit and enforce conformity. Both deem nature to be at once salubrious and edifying, and discern correspondences between ecological and moral well-being. Their differences are no less pronounced. Tao Qian, who considers the countryside to be essential to solitude, is content to lead a self-effacing pastoral existence. Emerson, who sees nature as ancillary to the divine spark within each human being, avers that the enlightened soul can find solitude anywhere. While Tao Qian believes that he can only be true to his high-minded nature by literally removing himself from the world of affairs, Emerson never shirks his responsibility as a public intellectual and continues to weigh in with a piece of his mind concerning pressing social and political issues.
