Tell this silence
Subtitle: Asian American women writers and the politics of speech
By: by Patti Duncan.
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Iowa City
Language: eng
Number of pages: 274
Subjects: American literature -- Asian American authors -- History and criticism.; American literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism.; Asian American women -- Intellectual life.; Politics and literature -- United States.; Women and literature -- United States.; Asian American women in literature.; Asian Americans in literature.; Sex role in literature.; Silence in literature.
Description: "Tell This Silence by Patti Duncan explores multiple meanings of speech and silence in Asian American women's writings in order to explore relationships among race, gender, sexuality, and national identity. Duncan argues that contemporary definitions of U.S. feminism must be expanded to recognize the ways in which Asian American women have resisted and continue to challenge the various forms of oppression in their lives. There has not yet been adequate discussion of the multiple meanings of silence and speech, especially in relation to activism and social-justice movements in the United States. In particular, the very notion of silence continues to invoke assumptions of passivity, submissiveness, and avoidance, while speech is equated with action and empowerment."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [255]-266) and index.
Table of contents: title: The uses of silence and the "will to unsay"; title: What makes an American? : histories of immigration and exclusion of Asians in the U.S. in Maxine Hong Kingston's China men; title: "White sound" and silences from stone : discursive silences in the internment writings of Mitsuye Yamada and Joy Kogawa; title: Cartographies of silence : language and nation in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee; title: Silence and public discourse : interventions into dominant national and sexual narratives in Anchee Min's Red azalea and Nora Okja Keller's Comfort woman; title: Tell this silence : Asian American women's narratives and feminist movement.