Transpacific Imaginations
History, Literature, Counterpoetics
WW Norton · Print & ebook · March 4, 2008
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- Who it’s for
- Yunte Huang traces how Pacific encounters and Asian American writing shape American literary history.
- Themes
- Transpacific literary connections, Asian American literature, Poetry as cross-cultural dialogue
- Genres
- Comparative Literature, Asian American Lit Crit, Asian American Poetry
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Start with this bookAbout this book
Transpacific Imaginations is a study of how American literature is enmeshed with the literatures of Asia. The book begins with Western encounters with the Pacific: Yunte Huang reads Moby Dick as a Pacific work, looks at Henry Adams’s not talking about his travels in Japan and the Pacific basin in his autobiography, and compares Mark Twain to Liang Qichao.
Continue reading
Huang then turns to Asian American encounters with the Pacific, concentrating on the "Angel Island" poems and on works by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Araki Yasusada. Huang’s argument that the Pacific forms American literature more than is generally acknowledged is a major contribution to our understanding of literary history. The book is in dialogue with cross-cultural studies of the Pacific and with contemporary innovative poetics. Huang has found a vehicle to join Asians and Westerners at the deepest level, and that vehicle is poetry. Poets can best imagine an ethical ground upon which different people join hands. Huang asks us to contribute to this effort by understanding the poets and writers already in the process of linking diverse peoples.
Pacific Literary Crossings
Yunte Huang traces how Pacific encounters and Asian American writing shape American literary history.
Come here for
- A reading of Moby Dick as a Pacific work
- Comparisons of Mark Twain and Liang Qichao
Expect
- Attention to the Angel Island poems
- Readings of works by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Araki Yasusada
Where it sits
| Asian American Lit Crit | 70% |
|---|---|
| Comparative Literature | 64% |
| Asian American Poetry | 24% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Asian American Lit Crit
- Pop Culture Studies
- Asian American Studies
- Authors
- Yunte Huang
- Publisher
- WW Norton
- Published
- March 4, 2008
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Transpacific literary connections · Asian American literature · Poetry as cross-cultural dialogue
- Reading lane
- Asian American Lit Crit