ENGL 6420
Studies in
Asian American
Literature*
Dr. Su-ching Huang
(huangsu@ecu.edu)
*This is a DE course, taught fully online.
Students are required to have highspeed
Internet access and an ECU Blackboard
account.
John Lone in M. Butterfly (1993)
Course Description
This course analyzes Asian American texts in their historical contexts, both as historical documents and
as literary texts that are relevant to readers in varied situations. We will begin the semester with a
historical overview of Asian American immigration and its depiction in film and literature. Then we
will examine how Asian American identity has been constructed, from the angles of labor and
immigration, internment of Japanese on the West Coast, sexuality, gender conflict, language, culinary
practice, cultural negotiation and assimilation, and so on.
Required Texts (All texts are available at amazon.com)
Hwang, David Henry. M. Butterfly. New York: Plume, 1988.
Jen, Gish. The Love Wife. New York: Knopf, 2004.
Keller, Nora Okja. Comfort Woman. New York: Penguin, 1998.
Louie, David Wong. The Barbarians Are Coming. New York: Berkley-Penguin, 2000.
Ng, Fae Myenne. Bone. New York: Hyperion, 1993.
Selections from (Available on Bb)
Hagedorn, Jessica, ed. Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction.
New York: Penguin, 1993.
---, ed. Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: At Home in the World. New York: Penguin, 2004.
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior. New York: Random, 1977.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. Unaccustomed Earth. New York: Knopf, 2008.
Lim, Shirley Geok-lin, ed. Asian-American Literature: An Anthology. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC, 2000.
Lim, Shirley Geok-lin. Sister Swing. Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2006.
Films
Carved in Silence (Dir. Felicia Lowe, 1988, 45 min; clips available on Bb)
The Cats of Mirikitani (Dir. Linda Hattendorf, 2006, 74 min, available from Netflix.com)
My America, or Honk If You Love Buddha (Dir. Renée Tajima-Peña, 1997, 87 min, clips available on
Bb)
Rabbit in the Moon (Dir. Emiko Omori, 1999, 84 min, available from amazon.com)
Saving Face (Dir. Alice Wu, 2004, 91 min, available from Netflix.com)