Bilingual brokers : race, literature, and language as human capital / Jeehyun Lim.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lim, Jeehyun, 1976- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bilingualism and literature.

Bilingualism--Social aspects--United States.

Bilingualism.

Bilingualism--Social aspects.

United States.

Physical Description:

270 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2017.

Summary:

Reading Asian American and Latino literature, Bilingual Brokers traces the shift in attitudes toward bilingualism in postwar America from the focus on cultural assimilation to that of resource management. Interweaving the social significance of language as human capital and the literary significance of English as the language of cultural capital, Jeehyun Lim examines the dual meaning of bilingualism as liability and asset in relation to anxieties surrounding "new" immigration and globalization. Using the work of Younghill Kang, Carlos Bulosan, Américo Paredes, Maxine Hong Kingston, Richard Rodriguez, Chang-rae Lee, Julia Alvarez, and Ha Jin as examples, Lim reveals how bilingual personhood illustrates a regime of flexible inclusion wherein an economic calculus of one's value crystallizes at the intersections of language and racial difference. By pointing to the nexus of race, capital, and language as the focal point of postwar negotiations of difference and inclusion, Bilingual Brokers probes the fault lines of postwar liberalism in conceptualizing and articulating who is and is not considered to be an American. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Cultural Brokers in Interwar Orientalism 33

2 Bilingual Personhood and the American Dream 61

3 Schooling Bilinguals In and against Multiculturalism 91

4 Dormant Bilingualism in Neoliberal America 122

5 Global English and the Predicament of Monolingual Multiculturalism 159.

ISBN:

0823275310

9780823275311

0823275302

9780823275304

OCLC:

960836478