The Politics of the Visible in Asian North American Narratives

Examining nine Asian Canadian and Asian American narratives Eleanor Tyexplores how authors empower themselves represent differences and rescripttheir identities... » 

Examining nine Asian Canadian and Asian American narratives Eleanor Tyexplores how authors empower themselves represent differences and rescripttheir identities as visible minorities within the ideological imaginativeand discursive space given to them by dominant culture. In various ways AsianNorth Americans negotiate daily with birthmarks their shared physicalfeatures marking them legally socially and culturally as visible outsidersand paradoxically as invisible to mainstream history and culture.Ty arguesthat writers such as Denise Chong Shirley Geoklin Lim and Wayson Choy recastthe marks of their bodies and challenge common perceptions of difference basedon the sights smells dress and other characteristics of their hyphenatedlives. Others like filmmaker Mina Shum and writers Bienvenido Santos andHiromi Goto challenge the means by which Asian North American subjects arerepresented and constructed in the media and in everyday language. Throughclose readings grounded in the sociohistorical context of each work Tystudies the techniques of various authors and filmmakers in their meeting ofthe gaze of dominant culture and their response to the assumptions and meaningscommonly associated with Orientalized visible bodies. «