Asian American Literature

The themes below will be the ones available for the short answer section of the exam.

• generations (diference between)
• identity
• ability/achievement
• biracial identity
• stereotypes
• family
• history
• relationships
• parenthood/motherhood
• economics/class
• opportunities
• power
• food
• male/female (gender)
• fake/real
• shame
• childhood
• culture
• tradition
• past/modern
• immigration
• language
• jobs
• definition of “American” or “America”
• fertility

The final exam will consist of three parts, listed below.  Be prepared to write about each of the texts that we’ve read for class. (I’ll provide a list of the texts for you to choose from)

I. Quote Identification (4 questions, 5 points each)

This will look exactly the way it did on our first exam: I’ll provide you with a quote from a class text, and I’ll ask you for the author and the title of the text.

[Tip: Read the quote carefully for clues: writing style; description of notable events, character names, time period, important themes or ideas in the text, etc.]

II. Short Answer (4 questions, 10 points each)

This will look very similar to the section on the first exam.  I’ll give you a list of themes (see below), and I’ll ask you to write about 4 of them.  For each, I’ll ask you to provide three kinds of information:

1. an example of the theme in a text (be specific here—paraphrase a quote, describe a scene, etc.)
2. an explanation of the ways that the scene represents the theme
3. the importance of that representation (i.e., what can we learn about the theme from its representation?)

III. Essay Questions (2 questions, 20 points each)

I’ll give you 3 questions and ask you to answer 2.  For each, you’ll need 3 examples from different texts to support your answer.  I’ll be looking for a thesis that answers the question, specific examples, and language that explains how your examples support your answer.  Topics to prepare are below:

1. the connection between Asian America and America
2. the variety of different ethnicities (e.g., Chinese American, Japanese American, etc.) that make up the group “Asian American”
3. Asian American experiences and stereotypes

Excerpt from a Greg Pak interview about Robot Stories:

Now there’s another issue raised by your question — is there a reason I was attracted to robot stories as an Asian American? Now I always was interested in robot fiction largely because robots, of course, are cool. And because of the notion, noted above, that talking seriously about robots opens up very interesting and dramatically compelling questions. But if I consider it deeply, I think there’s something else going on regarding race. I don’t think of it in terms of Eastern/Western cultural questions. Instead, I think of it in terms of how Asians are perceived in the United States. I didn’t think of this consciously when writing or making the film, but it’s interesting that stereotypes about Asians parallel stereotypes about robots — both are often negatively depicted as emotionless, faceless technicians, an army of efficient machines destined to take over people’s jobs. And “Robot Stories,” with its commitment to emotionally honest storytelling, overturns those stereotypes about both robots and Asians by humanizing both its human and android characters.

How ’bout them apples?

Excerpt from filmmaker Eric Byler’s review of Robot Stories:

This beautifully abstract portrayal of human loneliness is made all the more powerful by the fact that the writer/director portrays the male android himself. The social isolation and sexual objectification depicted in “Robot Love” is not unlike that of ethnic minorities growing up in homogenous communities– Hapas in particular come to mind because of Pak‚s and Kim‚s mixed heritage. Many biracial children grow up, not just a minority, but a singularity among their peers. When they escape to a larger city or to a university, they at last encounter others who have similar ethnic make-ups and similar life experiences. The stir of emotion that can result is not unlike Archie the I-Person banging his hand against that glass wall. “Robot Love” is my favorite of the four accomplished vignettes that make up Robot Stories, and the most poetic expression of biracial isolation I have ever seen.

Just like your midterm blog portfolio, your final blog portfolio will consist of three parts:

1. A numbered list of all of your blog posts, with titles of the post (22 TOTAL)
2. A numbered list of your sets of comments. Include the date posted, the title of the post, and the name of the person’s blog on which they’re posted (11 sets, or 22 total)
3. A reflective essay that uses information from your posts and comments

Your reflective essay is designed to surface and articulate what you’ve learned over the course of the semester by looking back on and analyzing your own writing during this time. Your essay should answer either or both of these questions:

What have you learned about Asian Americans over the course of the semester?
AND/OR
What have you learned about yourself as a reader, writer, and thinker over the course of this class?

To answer these, you should refer to the writing that you’ve produced over the course of the semester: your blog posts and comments, your exam, your paper. With the above questions in mind, read back over your writing and locate particular sentences and passages that attest to your learning. In your paper, you’ll quote these and analyze them. In what ways do they show what and how your ideas have changed? What terms, concepts, and phrases provide evidence of the complex ways that your thinking has progressed and shifted over the course of the semester? How do they provide evidence that you can use to answer the questions above?I’m looking for a deep engagement with your own writing here. For that reason, please plan to use no more than six quotations or short passages from your writing for the essay.

TIPS:

• Please provide an introduction that contains your main idea(s). [Example: in this paper, I'll show how I focused on the ideas of immigration and identity throughout the semester. This affected both the ways that I thought about Asian Americans and the ways that I think about myself as an American citizen.]
• You may, of course, use the “I” voice in your paper.
• You may feel free to use a chronological approach (ex., “when I first started this class, I thought Asian Americans were ____. My first blog post contains this comment: “______.” Here, you can see the ways that I was dedicated to x idea. All I could associate with x idea was___. In a blog post three weeks later, however, there is a marked shift in my language and tone. “______…”). You may also choose a different kind of structure if it makes sense to you (you could arrange it by theme: “these three quotes show the ways that my thinking changed about Asian America. These two show the ways that I am a writer that needs a number of drafts to shape a complicated argument”.)
• Be as specific as possible.
• Concentrate on a comprehensive analysis of your passages, just as you did in your paper.

FINAL BLOG PORTFOLIO DUE MONDAY, 4/28 IN CLASS

Portfolio will be graded as follows:

2 points for each blog post: 44 possible

1 point for each set of comments: 11 possible

Reflective essay: 45 points possible

In preparation for watching the film Robot Stories in class on Monday, please read (and blog about) the following article:

Feng, Peter X.  “The State of Asian American Cinema: In Search of Community.”  Cineaste, 00097004, 1999, Vol. 24, Issue 4

The article can be located, in pdf full text, in the library databases (academic search premier, to be exact).  In addition to blogging about the article, please print it out and bring it to class with you for discussion on Wednesday, 4/23.

The article should give you some ideas about what to look for when watching Monday’s film…

By my count, you should have 9 sets of ( or 18 separate) comments by the end of this coming week (4/3).

Please make sure that you’re documenting your comments—that you know where they are!

Native Speaker was published in 1996, and so one of the fundamental cultural events that is in the background is the Los Angeles riots in 1992. Find out more about this from the Korean American perspective here.

[Note: link has been fixed!!]  Since we talked about the importance of food earlier, here is some information about a term you’ll see over and over again in this section of the class: kimchi (also spelled “kimchee”). The Korean Overseas Information Service has an extensive description of this archetypal Korean dish here, which discusses both its nutritional content and its cultural importance. (In fact, in the site’s list of “symbols of Korea” kimchi ranks #2.

It’s noteworthy that the food has such significant value as a Korean symbol that it is used as an identity shorthand for all kinds of groups and products. A camp for Korean adoptees, for example, is called Kamp Kimchee. There is a group of Korean American bloggers who call themselves the “Kimchee Mamas.” The 2001 Hyundai coupe (Hyundai is a Korean car company) was described by an auto magazine as “the new kim-chee-crazy muscle car.”

The first in a number of links that will give you additional information about Chang-rae Lee, author of Native Speaker: here is is web page at Princeton University.

Here’s the bibliographic information about the Murayama novel, in MLA form:

Murayama, Milton. All I Asking for Is My Body. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988.

Page Numbers:

The first section of your handout, with the title “All I Asking for Is My Body” begins on page 27 and ends on page 29.  The next part of your handout skips to page 78—which has “16″ printed at the top (which is the chapter number).  The handout ends on page 103.  Please number your pages accordingly, and cite the page number in your paper.

• Experience of Reality
• Identity
• Immigration
• Stereotypes (e.g., FOB)
• Difference between men and women
• Culture—Japanese American and Japanese [issei/nisei]
• filial duty/piety
• family
• identity crisis of nisei (American or Japanese?)
• citizenship
• traditional culture and values
• shame
• segregration (internment camps or plantation camps)
• class
• writing styles, Japanese (poetic) vs. American (ascerbic/blunt)
• opportunities of Nisei