Begin here : reading Asian North American autobiographies of childhood / Rocio G. Davis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davis, Rocío G.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Asian Americans--Biography--History and criticism.

Asian Americans.

Asians--Canada--Biography--History and criticism.

Asians.

Asian American children--Biography--History and criticism.

Asian American children.

Children--United States--Biography--History and criticism.

Children.

Children--Canada--Biography--History and criticism.

Autobiography--Asian American authors.

Autobiography.

Asian Americans in literature.

Children in literature.

Asian Americans--Social conditions.

Asians--Canada--Social conditions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (250 p.)

Place of Publication:

Honolulu : University of Hawai'i Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

An analytically innovative work, Begin Here widens the current critical focus of Asian North American literary studies by proposing an integrated thematic and narratological approach to the practice of autobiography. It demonstrates how Asian North American memoirs of childhood challenge the construction and performative potential of national experiences. This understanding influences theoretical approaches to ethnic life writing, expanding the boundaries of traditional autobiography by negotiating narrative techniques and genre and raising complex questions about self-representation and the construction of cultural memory. By examining the artistic project of some fifty Asian North American writers who deploy their childhood narratives in the representation of the individual processes of self-identification and negotiation of cultural and national affiliation, this work provides a comprehensive overview of Asian North American autobiographies of childhood published over the last century. Importantly, it also attends to new ways of writing autobiographies, employing comics, blending verse, prose, diaries, and life writing for children, and using relational approaches to self-identification, among others.

Contents:

To begin here

The Asian childhood : writing beginnings

Cultural revolutions and takeovers : war as structure

The liminal childhood : biraciality as narrative position

Citizens or denizens : inscribing the tropes of Asian North Americanization

In North America : formulating experience

The childhood for children : the cultural experience of the early reader

Conclusion : rewriting the childhood.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-222) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Aug 2019)

ISBN:

9780824861599

0824861590

9781435666412

1435666410

OCLC:

256467130