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Yoon Dissertation Prefatory Pages (1) Merged CONTESTING AMERICANNESS IN THE CONTEMPORARY ASIAN AMERICAN BILDUNGSROMAN by JI YOUNG YOON A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of English and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment for the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2014 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Ji Young Yoon Title: Contesting Americanness in the Contemporary Asian American Bildungsroman This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment for the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of English by: David L. Li Chair Mary E. Wood Core Member Helen E. Southworth Core Member Jiannbin L. Shiao Institutional Representative and Kimberly Andrews Espy Vice President for Research and Innovation; Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2014 ii © 2014 Ji Young Yoon iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Ji Young Yoon Doctor of Philosophy Department of English June 2014 Title: Contesting Americanness in the Contemporary Asian American Bildungsroman My study examines contemporary Asian American narratives of subject formation through the theoretical lens of the Bildungsroman. A European genre originating in late- eighteenth- and early-nineteen-century Germany, the conventional Bildungsroman is a literary tool whose main objective is to depict an idealized subject’s modern socialization. As Franco Moretti nicely captures in his study of the Bildungsroman, The Way of the World, the genre’s significance is, above all, its successful representation of a reconciliation of an individual’s revolting desires and society’s regulatory demands. While highlighting a harmonious convergence of an individual and society, Moretti points to a white European subject’s becoming a normative citizen in the rise of bourgeois capitalism. American writers of Asian descent have both utilized and transformed the conventional Bildungsroman form to describe their particular subject formation in the United States. The Asian American Bildungsroman differs from the white American as well as the European Bildungsroman, both formally and thematically, mainly because the racial group’s social, political, and economic conditions have been marked by the U.S. exclusion of Asians. Asian American writers’ generic interventions of the Bildungsroman thus exhibit their distinctive formal interventions and textual strategies to respond to legal and social exclusions of Asians in this country. In reading iv four Asian American narratives of subject formation—either novelistic or (auto)biographical in form—I argue the writers invented new versions of the genre, including the communal, the assimilative, the deconstructive, and the competitive Bildungsromane. This dissertation examines how conditions of textual expressions of the contemporary Asian American Bildungsroman have been not only predominantly marked by race but also further affected by class. The significance of the Asian American Bildungsroman is at once its interrogation of the contradiction within the American ideals and its construction of Asian American subjecthood. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Ji Young Yoon GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene State University of New York at Binghamton Chungnam National University, Daejeon, South Korea DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, English, 2014, University of Oregon Master of Arts, English, 2009, State University of New York at Binghamton Master of Arts, English, 2006, Chungnam National University Bachelor of Arts, English, 2004, Chungnam National University AREAS OF SPECIAL INTERESTS: Twentieth Century and Contemporary American Literature Bildungsroman (Coming-of-Age Novel) Asian American Studies Theories of Race, Ethnicity, and Nation PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCES: Instructor of Record, College Compositions, Department of English, University of Oregon, Eugene, 2010 to present Instructor of Record, Introduction to Literature: Fiction, Department of English, University of Oregon, Eugene, 2013 Teaching Assistant, Introduction to English Major, Department of English, University of Oregon, Eugene, 2013 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Graduate Teaching Fellowship, English, 2009 to present vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I could not have written my dissertation without the encouragements and helps of several individuals. I am very grateful to David L. Li, my Advisor, for the critical attention that he has given to my work since I met him. I believe that this project began when I was taking Dr. Li’s seminar in my second year at the University of Oregon during which we read Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Blu’s Hanging, one of the four Asian American Bildungsromane this dissertation examines. Since then, his expert guidance helped me create a scholarly argument about the literary tradition of the Asian American Bildungsroman. I want to thank Mary E. Wood who contributed substantially to the development of my dissertation. Every time I finished a chapter, she gave me an abundant amount of comments and pointed me to the right books that I needed. I also benefited greatly from the insights of Helen E. Southworth and Jiannbin L. Shiao, who encouraged me at the critical stage in the revisions of my work. I will be always grateful for my committee’s mentorship and kindness. vii For all my family— through blood, law, happenstance, or choice. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION: INTERROGATING AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC IDEALS, THE POSSESSIVE INDIVIDUAL, AND THE ABSTRACT CITIZEN IN THE CONTEMPORARY ASIAN AMERICAN BILDUNGSROMAN.......................... 1 II. (RE)CLAIMING HISTORY, LIES, AND DISPOSSESSION OF A “[S]TEPDAUGHTER OF A PAPER SON” IN BONE: FAE MYENNE NG’S COMMUNAL BILDUNGSROMAN....................................................................... 39 III. SINGING A “PAEAN TO RACE TRANSCENDENCE”: ERIC LIU’S ASSIMILATIVE BILDUNGSROMAN AND THE LOGIC OF DILUTION ........ 83 IV. NEITHER EXCLUSIVELY “ASIAN” NOR “AMERICAN”: DECONSTRUCTIVE NARRATIVES OF LEPROSY AND HAWAIIANNESS IN LOIS-ANN YAMANAKA’S BLU’S HANGING ............................................. 121 V. DEMYSTIFYING THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE AMERICAN DREAM: THE OPPULENT ASIAN AMERICAN SIBLINGS’ COMPETITIVE BILDUNGSROMAN IN AMY CHUA’S BATTLE HYMN OF THE TIGER MOTHER ............................................................................................................... 166 VI. EPILOGUE............................................................................................................ 202 REFERENCES CITED................................................................................................ 207 ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: INTERROGATING AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC IDEALS, THE POSSESSIVE INDIVIDUAL, AND THE ABSTRACT CITIZEN IN THE CONTEMPORARY ASIAN AMERICAN BILDUNGSROMAN My study focuses on the contemporary Asian American Bildungsroman published during the last couple of decades. A European genre originating in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteen-century Germany, the conventional Bildungsroman is a literary tool whose main objective is to depict an idealized subject’s modern socialization. As Franco Moretti nicely captures in his study of the Bildungsroman, The Way of the World, the genre’s significance is, above all, its successful representation of a reconciliation of an individual’s revolting desires and society’s regulatory demands. “Representing this fusion (of individuation and socialization) with a force of conviction,” Moretti notes, the Bildungsroman shows how “[o]ne’s formation as an individual in and for oneself coincides without rifts with one’s social integration” (16). While highlighting a harmonious convergence of an individual and society, Moretti points to a white European subject’s victorious becoming a normative citizen in the rise of bourgeois capitalism. American writers of Asian descent have at once utilized and transformed the conventional Bildungsroman form to describe their particular subject formation in the United States. The Asian American Bildungsroman, however, differs from the white American as well as the European Bildungsroman, both formally and thematically, mainly because the racial group’s social, political, and economic conditions have been 1 marked by the U.S. history of Asian exclusion. Asian American writers’ generic interventions of the Bildungsroman thus exhibit the distinctive ways in which they respond to legal and social exclusions of Asians in this country. This dissertation examines how conditions of formal expressions of the contemporary Asian American Bildungsroman have been not only predominantly marked by race but also further affected by class. Contesting Americanness in the Contemporary Asian American Bildungsroman is based on three points: Firstly, the Bildungsroman presumes a partial and particular subject as its protagonist who is tantamount to a “possessive,” idealized U.S. citizen living in a raceless and classless society. Secondly, there is an allied relation between the literary space of the Bildungsroman and the geopolitical space of the U.S. nation-state. For both assume the image of a self-made man, being free from aristocratic relations, and valorize the democratic ideals of individual freedom and autonomy. Lastly, the Bildungsroman thus serves as a vehicle to better observe, and challenge, the acclaimed interests of a U.S. national ethos. The Asian American Bildungsroman inscribing the U.S. nation-state’s only partial accomplishment of its promises, is a helpful tool to
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