Lost in transnation : alternative narrative, national, and historical visions of the Korean American subject in select 20th-century Korean American novels / David S. Cho.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cho, David S., 1972- author.

Series:

Asian American studies ; Vol. 1.

Asian American studies ; Vol. 1

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--Korean American authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

Korean American literature--United States--History and criticism.

Korean American literature.

Korean Americans in literature.

American literature--Korean American authors.

United States.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

viii, 176 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Peter Lang, [2017]

Summary:

This volume examines the engagement, with national-histories, citizenship, and the larger transnational contexts in the narrative plot lines in selected twentieth-century Korean-American novels. Critics have often expected, or even demanded, that the Korean American novel present the ideal and coherent American citizen-subject in a linear bildungsroman plotline. Many novels-Younghill Kang's East Goes West, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee, Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life, to name a few-do deal with the idea of an "American density" however, they consistently problematize such identification through multiple and conflicting national memories, historic eras, and geopolitical terrains. The novels are typically set in contemporary America, but they often refer either to the regional context and era of Japan's colonization of Korea (1910-1945) or the Korean War (1950-1953). The novels' characters are "lost in translation," contextualizing the multiple and multiply-interrelated national contexts and time periods that have formed immigrants and Korean Americans in the twentieth century. Book jacket.

Contents:

The geopolitics of narration: an introduction to the historical, national, and narrative "disidentifications" of the Korean American subject in select 20th century Korean American novels

Race, nation and migration: early 20th century narrative, national, and global, "disidentifications" in Younghill Kang's East goes West

The cosmopolitics of the 20th century Korean American subject: narrative, national and temporal "leaping" in Change-Rae Lee's A gesture life

"A circle within a circle, a series of concentric circles": tracing and exposing the manifold subjectivities of the Korean, Korean American, female in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781433112720

1433112728

OCLC:

820553390

Publisher Number:

99974362931