Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes chronicles the blossoming of Asian American art and anticipates the growing democratization of American art and culture. Pairing work by twenty-four contemporary Asian American visual artists with responses provocatively drawn from cultural critics, other artists, activists, and intellectuals, this book explores themes of geographical movement, the sexuality of Asian bodies, colonization, miscegenation, hybrid forms of immigrant cultures, the loss of home, war, history, and memory. Elaine H. Kim's historical introduction charts the trajectory of Asian American art from the nineteenth century to the present, offering a comprehensive account of artists, major artworks, and major events. Commentaries by writers, artists, and cultural activists examine the work of visual artists such as Pacita Abad, Albert Chong, Y. David Chung, Allan deSouza, Michael Joo, Hung Liu, Yong Soon Min, Manuel Ocampo, PipoNguyen-Duy, Roger Shimomura, Carlos Villa, and Martin Wong. Prominent artists and critics such as Homi K. Bhabha, Luis Camnitzer, Enrique Chagoya, Gina Dent, Ellen Gallagher, Arturo Lindsay, Kobena Mercer, Griselda Pollock, Jolene Rickard, Faith Ringgold, Ella Shohat, Lowery Stokes Sims, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie offer thought-provoking reflections on each artist. Sharon Mizota's extended captions further elucidate the paintings, graphics, photography, installations, and mixed-media constructions under discussion. As a set of dialogues, simultaneously visual and textual, Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes encourages the cross-cultural conversation that is shaping the emerging art of Asian Americans and of the United States in general. Alternately personal, intellectual, aesthetic, and political, these essays and the art they consider provide unique perspectives on both the past and the future of American art.

Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes: Conversations on Asian American Art

Kim, Elaine H.

Machida, Margo

Mizota, Sharon

History

University of California Press

Viewing current Asian American racial formation in relation to international cultures and global geography, the essays in New Formations, New Questions break new ground in Asian American studies. This special issue of positions confronts questions of what it is to be Asian and how that differs from being Asian American. It exposes many challenges Asian Americans face in defining their niche in this country as it makes some acute, if not disturbing, observations of what it means to be American.In one essay, the status of Asians born in America both before and after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act is compared, with particular attention directed toward the exploitation of Asian immigrants as a source of cheap physical labor. In another piece, the link between America’s colonization of Asian countries and international sex tourism is explored. As these essays make clear, the United States easily exploits Asians and Asian Americans as it simultaneously enforces distinctions that render Asians linguistically, culturally, and racially “foreign.” Also included is an essay based on a series of interviews with Filipino store owners and workers in Southern California; analysis of the Christian Ecumenical perspectives on the Asian sex tour industry and the activities of ECPAT, a group established to end child prostitution in Asian tourism; and an account of a South Asian woman’s attempt to unionize taxicab drivers in New York City.Contributors. Anuradha G. Advani, Enrique Bonus, Oscar V. Campomanes, Y. David Chung, Allan DeSouza, Gayatri Gopinath, Helen Heran Jun, Laura Hyun Yi Kang, Peter Kiang, Elaine H. Kim, Min-Jung Kim, Lisa Lowe, Eithne Liubheid, Long Nguyen, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Eliza Noh

Positions East Asia Cultures Critique (Vol. 5 Number 2)

Politics & Social Sciences

Lowe, Lisa

Social Sciences

Duke University Press Books

An introduction to the literary works of Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Filipino-Americans, and Korean-Americans, this book focuses on the self-images and social contexts of the nineteenth-century immigrants, their descendants, and the Americanized writers of today. 
Although the book examines the novels, autobiographies, poems, and plays themselves, the social history of Asians in American is a significant backdrop—as Maxine Hong Kingston herself argues it should be. These racially distinctive Americans have confronted in their lives and writings American stereotypes of the "Oriental," racial discrimination, and the cultural gulf between East and West. 
After a chapter on Fu Manchu, Charlie Chan, and other Anglo-American caricatures of Asians, the author turns to a discussion of the first immigrant writers, many of whom were educated aristocrats playing the role of cultural ambassadors, and then to the less privileged, more socially critical generations of writers who followed. 
From works like Flower Drum Song, Eat a Bowl of Tea, The Woman Warrior, China Men, and a host of lesser-known writings, the author shows how portrayals of Chinatown, the Japanese-American family, and the roles of all the Asian-American women and men have changed. Drawing on her personal interviews with Asian-American writers, Kim also conveys their attitudes towards their own group, other Asian-Americans, other racial minorities, and white Americans—a complex mix of bitterness, acceptance, and militance.

Asian American Literature, an Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context

Literature & Fiction

United States

Temple University Press

East to America: Korean American Life Stories

In this collection of powerful, candid oral histories, a wide cross section of Korean Americans renders a portrait of a community grappling with racial tensions, class and gender differences, and differing notions of family and home.

Yu, Eui-Young

The New Press

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Books by Kim, Elaine H.