Begin Here: Reading Asian North American Autobiographies of Childhood (Asian American Studies)

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An analytically innovative work, Begin Here widens the current critical focus of Asian North American literary studies by proposing an integrated thematic and narratological approach to the practice of autobiography. It demonstrates how Asian North American memoirs of childhood challenge the construction and performative potential of national experiences. This understanding influences theoretical approaches to ethnic life writing, expanding the boundaries of traditional autobiography by negotiating narrative techniques and genre and raising complex questions about self-representation and the construction of cultural memory. By examining the artistic project of some fifty Asian North American writers who deploy their childhood narratives in the representation of the individual processes of self-identification and negotiation of cultural and national affiliation, this work provides a comprehensive overview of Asian North American autobiographies of childhood published over the last century. Importantly, it also attends to new ways of writing autobiographies, employing comics, blending verse, prose, diaries, and life writing for children, and using relational approaches to self-identification, among others.The book's focus is twofold: First, it analyzes the manner in which Asian North American writers rewrite the inherited scripts of childhood, reading the texts as generic engagements with North American autobiography and examining possible critical approaches. Second, the book examines the autobiographies' performative potential within a wider project of creating a community of readers to produce and preserve cultural memory. These two purposes overlap significantly and stress the need to address the cultural work enacted by these literary texts as well as recognize their specific aesthetic projects as mutually enhancing and intertwined purposes. The author argues that, by attending to the formal strategies of these Asian North American childhoods, we will discern clear community-building strategies as well as identity a powerful means to address the intersection of literary genre and cultural position within the renewed socio-cultural construction of childhood in contemporary American and Canadian societies. Was this product information helpful? Yes No Thanks for your comment! Thanks for your vote! Please write your feedback before submitting. Skip var ugcFeedbackTooltip = new FKART.ui.Tooltip({ nearElement: $("body"), cssClass: "ugc-feedback-tooltip", message: ' ' });