Book Description
While the writing of other ethnic women has already been receiving considerable attention, the writing of Asian American women has not. (Un)Doing is the first feminist theoretical work to look at writing by such contemporary Asian American writers as Amy Tan, Fae Myenne Ng, R. A. Sasaki, Gish Jen, and Cynthia Kadohata. Viewing them as feminist and postfeminist writers, Kafka argues that gender asymmetry in all its varied forms and guises is the major issue that they confront. Satirizing this world-wide oppression as "the missionary position," Kafka urges ethnic and women of color feminist critics to focus more on commonalities rather than view differences as impenetrable barriers.
About the Author
PHILLIPA KAFKA is Professor of English Literature and Former Director of Women's Studies at Kean College of New Jersey.
(Un)Doing the Missionary Position: Gender Asymmetry in Contemporary Asian American Women's Writing, Vol. 158 FROM THE PUBLISHER
While the writing of other ethnic women has already been receiving considerable attention, the writing of Asian American women has not. (Un)Doing is the first feminist theoretical work to look at writing by such contemporary Asian American writers as Amy Tan, Fae Myenne Ng, R. A. Sasaki, Gish Jen, and Cynthia Kadohata. Viewing them as feminist and postfeminist writers, Kafka argues that gender asymmetry in all its varied forms and guises is the major issue that they confront. Satirizing this world-wide oppression as "the missionary position," Kafka urges ethnic and women of color feminist critics to focus more on commonalities rather than view differences as impenetrable barriers.
SYNOPSIS
This is the first full-length work of feminist literary criticism of such contemporary Asian American women's writing as Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife, Fae Myenne Ng's Bone, R. A. Sasaki's The Loom and Other Stories, Gish Jen's Typical American, and Cynthia Kadohata's The Floating World.
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
Explores how selected contemporary Asian American women writers
inquire into the power relations that require the feminine to be
suppressed. Representing feminist, allegorical, and post-feminist
approaches, they include Amy Tan, Fae Myenne Ng, Gish Jen, R. A.
Sasaki, and Cynthia Kadohata. They all portray older women, usually
mothers or grandmothers, as suffering and struggling as individuals
embedded with their historical culture before the 1970s, while
daughters or other younger women take the privileges and freedoms won
by feminism for granted.
Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.