The Real and Fake: Methods of Identity and Racial Formation in Asian American Literatures

3 units

The Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston “pen wars” of the 1970’s gave rise to the language of “Real and Fake” Asians in the 1970’s. Ever since, this rhetoric has helped articulate conflicting and dissonant realities of Asian American presence in the Americas. So, who is a “real” Asian and who is “fake”? Why do stereotypes like “banana” and “coconut” exist alongside “model minority”? Is cultural identity real or are we just performing certain identities to fit into social positions? How do we study conflicting racial and identarian positions? What methodologies do we use to study the varying intersections of race and identity in Asian American Studies? This course will address these identarian questions that shape Asian American Literatures. This course will utilize the method of the “real and Fake” to question histories and political attachments that has shaped contemporary conflicting Asian American discourses, such as the conflict over affirmative action and the rise of the Asian American conservative right wing. Overall, the course asks, can the “real and the Fake” operate as a method of historical and literary critique? How do we unpack cis-genderism, heterosexuality, white supremacy, racialization through the “Real and the Fake”? On the contrary, how are contemporary discourses of Asian American hypermodernity, cyborgs, virtual reality, desirability shaped by the “Real and Fake” quality of Asian American racial and identarian discourses? Through these questions the course urges students to come up with their own methodological approaches that participate, intervene, and disrupt the project of the “Real and Fake” construction.