English 267 - ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE

Although we sometimes think only of modern-day authors like Amy Tan or Jhumpa Lahiri when we think of Asian American literature, in fact Asian Americans have been writing and publishing in English since at least 1887. In this course, we read selected Asian American poetry, novels, short stories, plays and films produced from the late 19th century until the present. We consider how works engage with issues that have always concerned Asian Americans, like identity development and racism. Also, we pay attention to how works speak to concerns specific to their period, such as the exclusion acts of the 1880s, the proletarian movement of the 1930s, the decolonization of South Asian and Southeast Asian countries since the 1940s, and the increasing size and diversity of the Asian American population in the late 20th century. At all times, we attend closely to matters of language and form.