(Un)Doing the Missionary Position: Gender Asymmetry in Contemporary Asian American Women's Writing

by Phillipa Kafka

Overview

While the writing of other ethnic women has already been receiving considerable attention, the writing of Asian American women has not. (Un)Doing is the first feminist theoretical work to look at writing by such contemporary Asian American writers as Amy Tan, Fae Myenne Ng, R. A. Sasaki, Gish Jen, and Cynthia Kadohata. Viewing them as feminist and postfeminist writers, Kafka argues that gender asymmetry in all its varied forms and guises is the major issue that they confront. Satirizing this world-wide oppression as the missionary position, Kafka urges ethnic and women of color feminist critics to focus more on commonalities rather than view differences as impenetrable barriers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313301612
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	06/11/1997
Series:	Contributions in Women's Studies , #158
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

PHILLIPA KAFKA is Professor of English Literature and Former Director of Women's Studies at Kean College of New Jersey. A pioneer in Ethnic American Studies since 1976, she is author of The Great White Way: African American Women Writers and American Success Mythology.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Amy Tan, The Kitchen God's Wife: "Chasing Away a Big Stink"
Fae Myenne Ng, Bone: "Nina, Ona, and I, We're the Lucky Generation"
Gish Jen, Typical American: The Rise and Fall and Rise of the House of Chang
R(uth) A. Sasaki, The Loom and Other Stories: "There Has Got to Be More to Life Than That"
Cynthia Kadohata, The Floating World: "I Like the Diabolical Quality, the Clarity of Admitting I Want"
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Explores how selected contemporary Asian American women writers inquire into the power relations that require the feminine to be suppressed. Representing feminist, allegorical, and post-feminist approaches, they include Amy Tan, Fae Myenne Ng, Gish Jen, R. A. Sasaki, and Cynthia Kadohata. They all portray older women, usually mothers or grandmothers, as suffering and struggling as individuals embedded with their historical culture before the 1970s, while daughters or other younger women take the privileges and freedoms won by feminism for granted. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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