Asian American Writers – Ichiro Takayoshi

This course reads Asian American fiction, film, and nonfiction from the 1990s to the present, concentrating on writers and filmmakers of East Asian descent. We begin with the family: immigrant parents who gave up a great deal, children expected to succeed, and the quarrels that followed, in Weike Wang's Chemistry and films such as The Farewell , Minari , and Past Lives . Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker , about a Korean American corporate spy whose talent is not being seen, and essays by Yiyun Li raise the question of what it costs, and what it gains, to live in a second language. Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic , a chorus of Japanese picture brides, then opens a unit on history and grievance, in which essayists who disagree sharply, among them Cathy Park Hong, Wesley Yang, and Jay Caspian Kang, are read side by side, along with the Supreme Court's 2023 affirmative action decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard . R. F. Kuang's satire Yellowface leads to the course's closing question: does an Asian American writer have to write about being Asian American? Ted Chiang's science fiction and Everything Everywhere All at Once suggest two possible answers. Students watch about eight films outside class and read about 150 pages a week; class time is given over to discussion and debate. No previous literature coursework is required, and students from every major are welcome. This course fulfills the post-1860 English Major requirement