The Asian Pacific American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and ArtsGeorge J. Leonard Meeting the challenge of teaching multiculturalism Students-and their teachers-encountering literature and arts from unfamiliar cultures will welcome the special help this book provides. Instructors who are unfamiliar with Asian Pacific cultures are now being asked to explain a reference to the Year of the Rat, Obon Season, or to interpret a haiku. When Amy Tan refers to the Moon Lady or the Kitchen God, what does she mean? Is Confucianism actually a religion? This book answers these and many other questions, for students, teachers, and the librarians to whom they turn for help. Provides sound information on in-demand topics The Companion presents lengthy articles-written specifically for this book-on the topics that unlock the work of a number of contemporary Asian Pacific American writers and artists, for example: Asian naming systems, the "model minority" discourse, Chinese diaspora, Filipino American values, the Confucian family and its tensions, Japanese internment, Mao's Great Cultural Revolution, the Korean alphabet, food and ethnic identity, religious traditions, Fengshui and Chinese medicine, Filipino folk religion, Hmong needlework, and reading Asian characters in English, just to name a few. Covers major contemporary writers The articles are coupled with in-depth studies of the authors most likely to be part of the multicultural curriculum during the next decade, among them Maxine Hong Kingston, Frank Chin, Amy Tan, Younghill Kang, Carlos Bulosan, Jessica Hagedorn, Lawson Fusao Inada, Garret Hongo, David Henry Hwang, Kim Ronyoung, and Cathy Song. Expert contributors This volume was created under the supervision of distinguished Advisory Editors from the Asian Pacific American community. The contributors, a Who's Who of Asian Pacific American humanistic scholarship, are frequently the founders of their disciplines, and most are from the ethnic group being written about. Helps students understand arts and literature Multicultural courses are generally taught by exposing students to literature or arts, with reference to their political, sociological, and historical contexts. This book is designed to help students reading novels, watching films, and confronting artworks with information needs quite different from those of social scientists and historians. |
Contents
Confucius and the Asian American Family | |
My Grandfathers Concubines | |
Japanese American Life in the Twentieth Century | |
The Nisei Go to | |
Food and Ethnic Identity | |
Japanese Food | |
Vietnamese Food | |
Fengshui Chinese Medicine and Correlative Thinking | |
Obon Season in Little Tokyo | |
For Students | |
For Advanced Users | |
Daring to do | |
Other editions - View all
The Asian Pacific American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts George Leonard No preview available - 1999 |
Common terms and phrases
artists Asia Asian American literature Asian Pacific Beijing brother bulgogi California called century Chan Chapter China Chinatown Chinese American Chinese characters concentration camps concubine Confucian Confucius cooking coolie cuisine Dan Gonzales dialect Dim Sum dishes dynasty Emperor English ethnic father fengshui Figure Filipino Filipino American film fish Further Reading George J.Leonard grandma Hawaii Hmong Hong immigrants Issei Japan Japanese American Joy Luck Club Korean American labor language literary living look means Moon mother never night Nisei No-No Boy novel parents People’s percent person Philippines pinyin poem Press Qing Qing dynasty rice San Francisco Sansei slang sound speak story Suzuki Tagalog term things traditional translation United University Vietnam Vietnamese Wade-Giles West Western woman women word writing York