Book contents
- The Cambridge History ofAsian American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Early Forms of Expression to the Start of the Twentieth Century
- Part II The Exclusion Era, World War II, and the Immediate Postwar Era
- Part III The Asian American Movement
- Part IV Canons
- Part V Post-1965 and the Twenty-First Century
- 22 Beyond Solitary Confinement: Rethinking the Sociopolitical Context of Local Literature in Hawai‘i
- 23 Contemporary Asian American Drama
- 24 “More Than You Ever Knew You Knew”: The Rising Prestige of Fiction
- 25 Asian American Poetry and the Politics of Form
- 26 The Forgotten War in Korea
- 27 The American War in Viet Nam and Its Diasporas
- 28 Refugee Aesthetics: Cambodia, Laos, and the Hmong
- Part VI Twenty-First Century: 9/11, Empire, and Other Challenges to Literature
- Bibliography
- Index
24 - “More Than You Ever Knew You Knew”: The Rising Prestige of Fiction
from Part V - Post-1965 and the Twenty-First Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2015
By
Book contents
- The Cambridge History ofAsian American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Early Forms of Expression to the Start of the Twentieth Century
- Part II The Exclusion Era, World War II, and the Immediate Postwar Era
- Part III The Asian American Movement
- Part IV Canons
- Part V Post-1965 and the Twenty-First Century
- 22 Beyond Solitary Confinement: Rethinking the Sociopolitical Context of Local Literature in Hawai‘i
- 23 Contemporary Asian American Drama
- 24 “More Than You Ever Knew You Knew”: The Rising Prestige of Fiction
- 25 Asian American Poetry and the Politics of Form
- 26 The Forgotten War in Korea
- 27 The American War in Viet Nam and Its Diasporas
- 28 Refugee Aesthetics: Cambodia, Laos, and the Hmong
- Part VI Twenty-First Century: 9/11, Empire, and Other Challenges to Literature
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter provides a set of contexts for understanding the visibility of contemporary Asian American fiction. It highlights some of the formal features of contemporary Asian American fiction, its tensile recognition of the power of convention even as it strives to tell recognizably different stories; its insistence on the mutual imbrication between aesthetics and politics; its refusal to define itself strictly in terms of racial and ethnic identity labels; and its simultaneous embrace and rejection of ethnic literature's pedagogical promise, in an effort to further develop answers to the question of why Asian American fiction has become so commercially successful and lauded. Asian American fiction's increased visibility can be partially explained by the belief in such literature's ethical influence. In this regard, the pedagogical injunctions of the literary become another key feature of contemporary Asian American fiction.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature , pp. 422 - 436Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015