Ingratitude : the debt-bound daughter in Asian American literature / Erin Khue Ninh.

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Ninh, Erin Khuê, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--Asian American authors.

American literature.

Mothers and daughters.

Fathers and daughters.

Obedience.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 207 pages)

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2011]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Anger and bitterness tend to pervade narratives written by second generation Asian American daughters, despite their largely unremarkable upbringings. In Ingratitude, erin Khuê Ninh explores this apparent paradox, locating in the origins of these women’s maddeningly immaterial suffering not only racial hegemonies but also the structure of the immigrant family itself. She argues that the filial debt of these women both demands and defies repayment—all the better to produce the docile subjects of a model minority.Through readings of Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Evelyn Lau’s Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, Catherine Liu’s Oriental Girls Desire Romance, and other texts, Ninh offers not an empirical study of intergenerational conflict so much as an explication of the subjection and psyche of the Asian American daughter. She connects common literary tropes to their theoretical underpinnings in power, profit, and subjection. In so doing, literary criticism crosses over into a kind of collective memoir of the Asian immigrants’ daughter as an analysis not of the daughter, but for and by her.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

1. The Filial Debtor: Jade Snow Wong

2. Refractions of Harm: Maxine Hong Kingston

3. The Caring of Jailers: Evelyn Lau, Catherine Liu

4. Desirable Daughters: Fae Myenne Ng, Elaine Mar, Chitra Divakaruni

Afterword: The Ending

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Author

Notes:

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley, Spring 2005.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jul 2020)

Other Format:

Print version: Ninh, erin Khuê Khuê. Ingratitude : The Debt-Bound Daughter in Asian American Literature.

ISBN:

9780814759196

081475919X

9780814758854

0814758851

OCLC:

779828464