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Representation and exceptionalism in...

Shih, David.

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Representation and exceptionalism in the Asian American autobiography (Sui Sin Far, Onoto Watanna).

Record Type:	Electronic resources : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Representation and exceptionalism in the Asian American autobiography (Sui Sin Far, Onoto Watanna)./
Author:	Shih, David.
Description:	185 p.
Notes:	Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 60-07, Section: A, page: 2496.
Contained By:	Dissertation Abstracts International60-07A.
Subject:	Literature, American. -
Online resource:	http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=9938533
ISBN:	0599398329

Representation and exceptionalism in the Asian American autobiography (Sui Sin Far, Onoto Watanna).
Shih, David.

Representation and exceptionalism in the Asian American autobiography (Sui Sin Far, Onoto Watanna). - 185 p.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 60-07, Section: A, page: 2496.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Michigan, 1999.

This dissertation examines five texts from three recognizable moments in Asian American history: that following Chinese exclusion prior to the rise of modernism (1890s--1910s), World War II and the advent of the Cold War (1940s--1950s), and present-day Asian America (post--1965). In order to talk about such a varied body of expression, I read the Asian American autobiographical self as a construction of multiple subject positions articulated in two modes of discourse which I call the "representational" and the "exceptional." How these writers negotiate these subject positions toward the constitution of a viable selfhood, I argue, indexes the historically volatile relation between Asian Americans (and Asia) and the dominant society. I begin by reconsidering the career of the Eurasian writer Sui Sin Far, largely regarded as the "foremother" of Asian American literature. The presentation of her autobiographical essay, "Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian" (1909), problematizes contemporary critical efforts to install her as a literary ancestor of present-day writers. The subject of the following chapter is Winifred Eaton, a Chinese Eurasian who became a best-selling author of historical romances under the Japanese-sounding pseudonym Onoto Watanna. I contend that Eaton's anonymous autobiography, Me: A Book of Remembrance (1915), represents the author's search for a "true" self previously lost to the distorting effects of language. The next chapter focuses on Jade Snow Wong and Monica Sone, two women whose post-war autobiographies Fifth Chinese Daughter (1950) and Nisei Daughter (1953) respond to assimilationist imperatives by presenting the racial self as functions of ethnic and national culture. The final chapter argues that the subject position of the Vietnamese refugee in Jade Huynh's South Wind Changing (1994) resists the literary conventions of autobiographical selfhood, especially as they are deployed toward the constitution of a national identity. A brief Conclusion cautions against the pitfalls of reading Asian American autobiography as part of a larger literary tradition and speculates on the future direction of Asian American autobiographical studies.

ISBN: 0599398329Subjects--Topical Terms:

1017657
Literature, American.

Representation and exceptionalism in the Asian American autobiography (Sui Sin Far, Onoto Watanna).
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245 1 0 $a Representation and exceptionalism in the Asian American autobiography (Sui Sin Far, Onoto Watanna).
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520 $a This dissertation examines five texts from three recognizable moments in Asian American history: that following Chinese exclusion prior to the rise of modernism (1890s--1910s), World War II and the advent of the Cold War (1940s--1950s), and present-day Asian America (post--1965). In order to talk about such a varied body of expression, I read the Asian American autobiographical self as a construction of multiple subject positions articulated in two modes of discourse which I call the "representational" and the "exceptional." How these writers negotiate these subject positions toward the constitution of a viable selfhood, I argue, indexes the historically volatile relation between Asian Americans (and Asia) and the dominant society. I begin by reconsidering the career of the Eurasian writer Sui Sin Far, largely regarded as the "foremother" of Asian American literature. The presentation of her autobiographical essay, "Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian" (1909), problematizes contemporary critical efforts to install her as a literary ancestor of present-day writers. The subject of the following chapter is Winifred Eaton, a Chinese Eurasian who became a best-selling author of historical romances under the Japanese-sounding pseudonym Onoto Watanna. I contend that Eaton's anonymous autobiography, Me: A Book of Remembrance (1915), represents the author's search for a "true" self previously lost to the distorting effects of language. The next chapter focuses on Jade Snow Wong and Monica Sone, two women whose post-war autobiographies Fifth Chinese Daughter (1950) and Nisei Daughter (1953) respond to assimilationist imperatives by presenting the racial self as functions of ethnic and national culture. The final chapter argues that the subject position of the Vietnamese refugee in Jade Huynh's South Wind Changing (1994) resists the literary conventions of autobiographical selfhood, especially as they are deployed toward the constitution of a national identity. A brief Conclusion cautions against the pitfalls of reading Asian American autobiography as part of a larger literary tradition and speculates on the future direction of Asian American autobiographical studies.
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