This ground-breaking edited volume includes chapters which explore the past, present and future position of Chinese American authors within the framework of what Harold Bloom identifies as the Western literary canon. These selections, which simultaneously represent the exciting transnational turn in American literary studies, not only examine whether or not Chinese American literature is inside or outside the canon, but also question if there is, or should be, a literary canon at all. Moreover, they dissect the canonicity of Chinese American literature by elucidating the social, political and cultural implications of inclusion in the canon. Ultimately, however, this collection is designed as a preliminary step towards exploring the impact of Chinese American literature on the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant-dominated American literary world, and probing the by-products of both cultural fusion and cultural collision.
About the Author: Tanfer Emin Tunc is an Assistant Professor in the Department of American Culture and Literature at Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey. She received her BA, MA and PhD in American History, and an Advanced Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies, from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA, and specializes in women's history/literature; gender, sexuality, and reproduction; feminist/cultural theory; and American ethnic history/literature. In addition to numerous book chapters, book reviews, and reference book entries, she has published over twenty full-length articles on topics as diverse as reproductive health, women's history, consumer culture, and American literature. Her books include Technologies of Choice: A History of Abortion Techniques in the United States, 1850-1980 (VDM, 2008), The Globetrotting Shopaholic: Consumer Spaces, Products, and their Cultural Places (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), and The Theme of Cultural Adaptation in American History, Literature, and Film: Cases When the Discourse Changed (The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009). Elisabetta Marino is Assistant Professor of English Literature at the University of Rome, Tor Vergata, Italy. She has published a book on the figure of Tamerlane in English and American literature (Tamerlano; Rome: Sun Moon Lake, 2000), and edited the proceedings volume of the 2001 Asia and the West Conference, a conference organized by Professor Lina Unali and held at Tor Vergata (Rome: Sun Moon Lake, 2002). Together with Dr Simal Gonzalez, she edited a collection of essays entitled Transnational, National, and Personal Voices, New Perspectives on Asian American and Asian Diasporic Women Writers (Munster: LitVerlag, 2004). In 2005, Dr Marino published Introduzione alla letteratura bangladese Britannica-Introduction to British Bangladeshi Literature (Rome: Sun Moon Lake, 2005) and in 2006, translated poems by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, which were collected in the volume Talismans/Talismani (Ibiskos: Empoli, 2006). In 2007, she edited the second volume of the e-book New Asian American Writers and News from UK, Italy and Asia: Literature and the Visual Arts.