"Extravagant" Texts: Experiments in Asian American Writing

We examine Asian American writings that are difficult, complex, and/or experimental: texts that are, in Maxine Hong Kingston's phrase, "extravagant." By looking at works that explicitly challenge the generic conventions with which much Asian American literature is usually linked--autobiography, the Bildungsroman, ethnography, realism, and sentimentalism--we try to arrive at a more expansive sense of what the ends of Asian American cultural politics might be. Enrollment limited to 20. Not open to first year students.