Invisible Subjects: Asian America in Postwar Literature

by Heidi Kim

Overview

Invisible Subjects broadens the archive of Asian American studies, using advances in Asian American history and historiography to reinterpret the politics of the major figures of post-World War II American literature and criticism.

Taking its theoretical inspiration from the work of Ralph Ellison and his focus on the invisibility of a racial minority in mainstream history, Heidi Kim argues that the work of American studies and literature in this era to explain and contain the troubling Asian figure reflects both the swift amnesia that covers the Pacific theater of WWII and the importance of the Asian to immigration debates and civil rights. From the Melville Revival through the myth and symbol school, as well as the fiction of John Steinbeck and William Faulkner, the postwar literary scene exhibits the ambiguity of Asian forms in the 1950s within the binaries of foreigner/native and black/white, as well as the constructs of gender and the nuclear family. It contrasts with the tortured redefinitions of race and nationality that appear in immigration acts and court cases, particularly those about segregation and interracial marriage. The Melville Revival critics' discussion of a mythic and yet realistic diabolical Asian, the role of a Chinese housekeeper in preserving the pioneer family in Steinbeck's East of Eden, and the extent to which the history of the Mississippi Chinese sheds light on Faulkner's stagnant societies all work to subsume a troubling presence.

Detailing the archaeology and genealogy of Asian American Studies, Invisible Subjects offers an original, important, and vital contribution to both our understanding of American literary history and the general study of race and ethnicity in American cultural history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190456252
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/01/2016
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Heidi Kim is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Table of Contents

Preface. Where is Asian America?

Acknowledgments

Introduction. The Black and Blue 1950s

Chapter One. Invisible Man, Invisible Subjects: History and Race erased in the early Cold War

Chapter Two. The Chinese American Adam: History and Universality in John Steinbeck's Eden

Chapter Three. Love and Death in the American Pacific: Myth vs. History in the Melville Revival

Chapter Four. The Foreign Faulkner: The Mississippi Chinese in Faulkner's South

Conclusion. Asian America, Visible

Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

"Blending scholarship in American studies with critical insights from Asian American studies, Kim (Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) not only offers a unique perspective on the "masters of American literature" in their specific social-historical contexts but also dialectically proves the irrepressibility of Asian American presence in American history, culture, and society. Whereas Susan Koshy has explored the Chinese presence in the Mississippi Delta as legal complexity and challenge to the Jim Crow law, Kim critiques and narrates the history of the South with Chinese as complicating and substantiating American South and Asian American experiences. In that sense, Invisible Subjects defines a new approach to the understanding of American literature in relation to Asian American experiences and American experience in the Asia Pacific." —Y. Shu, CHOICE

"What can Asian American studies teach us about 1950s literature? And what can cold war literary culture offer Asian Americanists? Invisible Subjects answers these questions with brilliance and brio, rewriting literary history in an Ellisonian vein. A bold and dynamic scholar, Heidi Kim theorizes the role of race in American literature through fresh interpretations of Faulkner, Steinbeck, and the Melville Revival. Americanists of all kinds would be well advised to read and ponder this important study." —Harry Stecopoulos, author of Reconstructing the World: Southern Fictions and U.S. Imperialisms, 1898-1976

"Marshaling a solid array of readings, Kim demonstrates how the Asian, as invisibly included and invisibly excluded, functions to solidify the racial dynamics of American culture. Her work thus not only re-interprets canonical American literature but also re-defines the parameters of Asian American studies." —Alan Nadel, author of Television in Black-and-White: Race and National Identity

"In the tradition of Leslie Fiedler and Toni Morrison, Heidi Kim brilliantly teases out the latent racial meanings residing in the margins of U.S. literature. She shows us how 'shadowy' Asian figures and over-mythologized Pacific Islanders serve as conduits for restoring Cold War politics to the American canon. A must for Asian American Studies and scholars of Cold War literature." —Leslie Bow, author of Betrayal and Other Acts of Subversion: Feminism, Sexual Politics, Asian American Women's Literature

"Pathbreaking and nuanced, Invisible Subjects compellingly shows how U.S. Cold War consensus culture favored the development of an imperceptible Asian American presence within American literature. With captivating and cogent prose, Heidi Kim eloquently delves into the way the invisible Asian American upsets the ethos of postwar conformity by being the trace of racial and social disparities." —Cindy I-Fen Cheng, author of Citizens of Asian America: Democracy and Race during the Cold War

From the Publisher