This course introduces students to some key moments in the development of Asian North American literature and culture--that is to say, to literary and other cultural texts produced by Americans and Canadians of Asian ancestry. The working hypothesis of this course is that these texts are not stable pre-constituted objects awaiting excavation and recovery; we will instead approach them as part of a history of contestation and critical reformulation that is not yet settled. We will accordingly begin our investigation by reading about the 1968-1969 student strikes at San Francisco State College and UC Berkeley that forcefully inaugurated the Asian American movement as well as an account of what Xiaoping Li calls “Asian Canadian cultural activism.” We will then examine a mix of canonical and non-canonical texts by Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Nam Le, and Richard Fung. As we do so, we will also read and discuss selected critical essays to foreground the politics of the knowledge produced around these texts. We will ask: why should these issues matter to us now?

Students are expected to attend regularly, to read with care and curiosity, and to bring an open mind to course assignments and class discussion. We will reflect on our previously held commonsense ideas and test them against our course readings.