I know a lot of people in class who questioned why we read the books we read in class and why all the writers were Chinese. But when you ask someone what they would have chosen instead they have a hard time answering. So now that we all had a chance to do some exploring I thought we could all put in out two censes on what books should stay and what books should go and what we would recommend for this course if/when its taught again.
For me I would say definitely keep Sui Sin Far, because her work is important to Asian American Literature in a historical since and its easy enough to be a good opening for a literature class but challenging enough to keep the reader interested, pulse she made fro great class discussions. Loved her or hated her everyone had something to say.
Next to add a little spice of something different I would recommend Yoshiko Uchida’s Journey to Topaz. She is a Japanese American writers so it breaks away from the having only Chinese writers. It’s not so long a novel that it can be covered in the allotted time. And although it’s technically a fiction book it still talks about the Japanese internment during the World War II, which was a real event. I think this is important because while I can only speak for myself, I did not even know that this terrible thing happened until it came up in late high school. And even then it was spoken of briefly like it was no big deal. I find this striking because I remember learning about the Holocaust in early grade school. I know there were know mass killings involved, so its not the same but it is an important human rights issue that is all to often swept under the carpet and that’s a dangerous mentality because its important to acknowledge these kinds of events and learn form them so we don’t repeat these kinds of mistakes, like many have argued is going on right now at Guantanamo Bay. This book would open up great discussion topics as well teach a lot of people about an event that’s all too often unfairly overlooked. Pulse as an added bonus the book was written for a younger age group so it’s a good way to explore a form of Asian American young adult literature. Those are three great points coved in one book.
Next to break away from the monogamy of an all fiction line up and as a more adult antidote after a young adult book like Journey to Topaz something like the Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking would be great. This is one of those you gota read once in your lifetime kind of books. I always hear great things about it. Plus it’s a great piece to explore race relations outside the US and the a-typical white and black that a lot of people seem to wrongly define racism as. It opens up to discussion about racism as more then just an issue in the US but a global issue that people deal with everywhere.
The only thing I would recommend to stay away from would be Any Tan and The Joy Luck Club not because it’s not a wonderful book but only because it’s already so popular and already widely read, pulse there is a movie and even a play. And a good literature class help students explore something new not something they can just go and watch the movie for and not have to read the novel.
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yea, I would agree that we need a more diverse group of Asian American writers. I do like the fact that for our final assignment that we chose our own novel or book though. I think your on to something. This class should probably explore maybe like one or two famous writings, and then the rest should be relatively unknown. I think that way students would be forced to think harder about what the writings truly mean both for author and the reader because there would be relatively few outside sources to rely upon. Of course I would recommend the book I chose, Clay Walls by Kim Ronyoung for both its intuitiveness, accuracy, and ease of readability.
Very interesting comments. I agree a more diverse book list would reflect more of the Asian American diasporas. The books I chose I did so because I believe they speak to one another more than other books I looked at. For the record though; Native Speaker is by a Korean America and our first text, "Reverse Racism" was by a Thai-American. Also, our secondary sources collection represented a Palestinian (Edward Said), a Vietnamese woman (Trin T. Minh-ha) and a Japanese American (Lawson Inada).
I am very happy to hear about a more diverse selection in the texts you have all chosen.
Dance Dance Revolution by Cathy Park Hong. Although it would be a challenge due to the abstract language the amount of social commentary in the book is incredible. It would definitely be interesting to try and decipher and interpret the various poems throught the book
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