Christopher T. Fan, "Asian American Fiction After 1965: Transnational Fantasies of Economic Mobility" (Columbia UP, 2024)
Jul 29, 2024
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Author Christopher T. Fan discusses how Asian American literature reflects class and race formations, intergenerational conflicts, arts vs. sciences, and the influence of modernization projects. They analyze works by Ted Chiang, Chang-rae Lee, Ken Liu, Ling Ma, Ruth Ozeki, Kathy Wang, and Charles Yu, exploring themes of economic mobility, trans-Imperial US-Asia political economy, seeking justice through fiction, the engineer's role, post-racial aesthetics, struggles against determinism, and Taiwanese American narratives.
Asian American literature reflects intergenerational conflicts and 'two cultures' tension.
Post-65 Asian American fiction delves into the figure of the engineer and STEM fields.
Chang-Rae Lee's writing explores themes of transimperiality and multiculturalism.
Taiwanese American novels address in-betweenness, national identity struggles, and economic significance.
Deep dives
Challenging Racial Categorization
Chang-Rae Lee's work challenges racial categorization as he transcends his own Korean background and delves into themes of transimperiality and multiculturalism. His writing embodies a transnational framework, reflecting the broader historical processes that shape his works beyond a singular racial identity.
Exploring Post-Racial Aesthetics
Ted Chiang's post-racial aesthetic in his science fiction writing mirrors the ideologies of modernization theory, emphasizing thought experiments over direct racial representation. Despite his deliberate effort to focus on concepts rather than race, Chiang's works still reflect the underlying forces of modernization theory shaping his narrative style.
The Engineer as a Mediating Figure
The engineer emerges as a crucial figure in post-65 Asian American literature, symbolizing the occupational concentration in STEM fields and the model minority stereotype. Through characters like Ted Chiang's father, who was a computer science professor, the engineer symbolizes a blend of professional identity and cultural influences in the literary realm.
Professional Identity in Literary Production
Chang-Rae Lee's role in the literary scene unfolds a poetics of professional identity, entwining style with class anxiety and conflicting cultural forces. By exploring Lee's works like 'Native Speaker' and his unique style, his writing reflects the complexities of post-65 Asian American literature and the dynamics of professional concentration and selection in the literary landscape.
Professional Identity in Asian American Literature
Asian American author Cheng Rui Lee's professional journey is analyzed in relation to his literary work centered on the trope of mismatch, where characters grapple with conflicting social, professional, and racial identities. Lee's fiction delves into themes of identity, history, and societal organization, notably in his novel 'On Such a Full Sea'.
Deprofessionalization and Disappointment in Post-65 Asian American Fiction
Post-65 Asian American fiction explores themes of deprofessionalization and disappointment amidst economic shifts, particularly focusing on Taiwanese American writers grappling with upward mobility limitations and unfulfilled ambitions. The portrayal of technical expertise, economic success, and racial abjection reflects a nuanced narrative of professional identity formation within the Taiwanese American community.
Taiwanese American Identity and Semiconductors
Taiwanese American novels navigate themes of in-betweenness and national identity struggles, intertwined with the backdrop of Taiwan's historical ambiguity and economic significance, notably in the semiconductor industry. Charles Yu's work captures the dreams and disappointments of post-65 Taiwanese American immigrants, reflecting on STEM careers, unmet aspirations, and the complexities of Taiwanese national identity.
After the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act loosened discriminatory restrictions, people from Northeast Asian countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and eventually China immigrated to the United States in large numbers. Highly skilled Asian immigrants flocked to professional-managerial occupations, especially in science, technology, engineering, and math. Asian American literature is now overwhelmingly defined by this generation’s children, who often struggled with parental and social expectations that they would pursue lucrative careers on their way to becoming writers.
In Asian American Fiction After 1965: Transnational Fantasies of Economic Mobility (Columbia UP, 2024), Christopher T. Fan offers a new way to understand Asian American fiction through the lens of the class and race formations that shaped its authors both in the United States and in Northeast Asia. In readings of writers including Ted Chiang, Chang-rae Lee, Ken Liu, Ling Ma, Ruth Ozeki, Kathy Wang, and Charles Yu, he examines how Asian American fiction maps the immigrant narrative of intergenerational conflict onto the “two cultures” conflict between the arts and sciences. Fan argues that the self-consciousness found in these writers’ works is a legacy of Japanese and American modernization projects that emphasized technical and scientific skills in service of rapid industrialization. He considers Asian American writers’ attraction to science fiction, the figure of the engineer and notions of the “postracial,” modernization theory and time travel, and what happens when the dream of a stable professional identity encounters the realities of deprofessionalization and proletarianization. Through a transnational and historical-materialist approach, this groundbreaking book illuminates what makes texts and authors “Asian American.”
Christopher T. Fan is an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine, in the Departments of English, Asian American Studies, and East Asian Studies. He is a cofounder and senior editor of Hyphen magazine.
