VINCE GOTERA

Fall 1996 € 9/23-27 € 10/7-11 € 11/4-8

E-mail: gotera@ac.grin.edu	MWF 1:15-2:05 in ARH 121
Homepage: http://www.grin.edu/~gotera/
Office: Carnegie 103 € Mail Box F-1	Office Hours: MWF 2:15-3:00
Office Phone: 269-3454 € (319) 273-7061	(during three weeks shown above)

Here is a series of questions which Asian Americans often encounter: Where are you from? Where are you really from? Where are your parents from? When are you going back? The editors of Aiiieeeee! -- a landmark 1970s anthology of Asian American literature -- describe this phenomenon as a common tendency to assume that Asian Americans "have maintained cultural integrity as Asians, that there is some strange continuity between the great high culture of a China that hasn't existed for five hundred years and the American-born Asian. . . . Thus, fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-generation Asian Americans are still looked upon as foreigners."

Being treated as a foreigner is much more than a mere annoyance. Historically, anti-Asian prejudices have resulted in bloody "driving-outs" of Chinese American laborers in the late 1800s, the incarceration of Japanese Americans in internment camps during WWII, and laws expressly designed to prohibit Pilipino Americans from marrying European Americans, and attacks on Korean American storekeepers during the 1992 riots in Los Angeles. We're not talking "ancient history." Attacks continue, from the murder of Vincent Chin by unemployed auto workers a decade ago to the "hate crime" slaying of Thien Minh Ly, a young Vietnamese American, this year in California.

We will study how Asian Americans have responded to such oppression by using writing to solidify individual and group identity and uphold basic human dignity. We will study fiction, poetry, drama, and memoirs written by Asian Americans, from Sui Sin Far (born in 1867) to Li-Young Lee (who will give a reading at Grinnell in November). The culmination of the mini-course will be Maxine Hong Kingston's classic Woman Warrior -- half novel, half memoir -- a book which remains controversial, stirring up arguments about the "real" and the "fake" in Asian American culture. How are people's lives reflected in and affected by literature? How do stories, poems, and plays serve to "witness" the times and social attitudes? How do writing and reading help people to survive from day to day? What lies ahead for Asian Americans? For all Americans in a multicultural world?

TEXTS

Shawn Wong, ed. Maxine Hong Kingston

Asian American Literature The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

REQUIREMENTS

Participation Reading Journal Paper

1-credit 40% 60%

2-credit 30% 40% 30%

Our main mode in class will be discussion. Your active participation in the course is expected and valued. Also, please try not to miss any classes at all during the three weeks we will meet. Since we are meeting only nine times, missing even one or two sessions will adversely affect your chances of doing well in the course.

The journal consists of (handwritten or typed) loose-leaf sheets turned in at each meeting in response to the assigned reading(s). I will not grade on grammar, unity, mechanics, etc. What I will look for in the journal is passion, intensity, engagement -- that is, a forceful indication that you are intellectually and emotionally interacting with the works we are reading. The typical entry should be 2 or 3 pages (more if needed, but be kind). In the course schedule, I occasionally suggest possible directions for entries, but feel free to write about what you want.

For students enrolled for two credits, the paper is a 6-8 page response to Kingston's Woman Warrior as well as one piece in our anthology, Asian American Literature. The objective of this paper is for you to demonstrate your command of the literature and how it reflects and comments upon the realities of Asian American life, as well as your own relationship to the culture and literature of Asian America.

E-MAIL DISCUSSIONS

To enable interchange during the periods separating our scheduled meetings, I have instituted "AsAm-L" -- an e-mail discussion list. As a member of the class, you are automatically subscribed to this list.

Using Dreams or your own mail software, you can send a message to everyone in the class by addressing "AsAm-L@service.grin.edu"; any replies to messages from the list are also broadcast to all. In effect, this will allow us to continue our discussions outside class even when I am only "cyberspatially" on campus.

If you would like a listing of all our usernames, send a message (with no subject) to "mailserv@service.grin.edu" containing the line "send/list AsAm-L"; such a listing would let you identify others in the class if you wish to talk off the list or "backchannel" by addressing them directly.

To reach me when I am not at Grinnell, call me at the University of Northern Iowa: (319) 273-7061. You can continue to send me messages at gotera@ac.grin.edu -- these will automatically "bounce" to me in Cedar Falls at vince.gotera@uni.edu.

SCHEDULE

23 Sep

Introduction.

25 Sep

FICTION. In Asian American Literature, read "The Americanizing of Pau Tsu" by Sui Sin Far (page 66), "The Romance of Magno Rubio" by Carlos Bulosan (81), and Hisaye Yamamoto, "Las Vegas Charley" (119). Reading journal entries are due on these stories. Obviously, in a three-week course, we cannot discuss all the fiction in this anthology, but I hope you will read all of it at your own leisure. Note: At 11:00 a.m. on Thursday, 26 Sep, in Herrick Chapel, I will make a convocation presentation entitled "Reconciliation and Women's Poetry of the Vietnam War." This topic is germane to our mini-course because, among other topics, I will deal with Vietnamese American poetry. I hope you can attend. As you know, there will be a "convocation lunch" immediately following the presentation.

27 Sep

"The Management of Grief" by Bharati Mukherjee (157), "Intermediate School Hapai" by O. Wini Terada (220), "Waiting for Mr. Kim" by Carol Roh-Spaulding (261), and "Kelly" by Monique Thuy-Dung Truong (288). Please remember to turn in journal entries.

7 Oct

DRAMA. Please read "The Music Lessons" by Wakako Yamauchi (403). Since we are reading an entire play, please write a longer entry (say, 4-5 pages) and focus on a single character or theme.

9 Oct

POETRY. Read poems by Lawson Fusao Inada, Woon Ping Chin, Russell Leong, and Vince Gotera (299-362). Please write your journal entry as a response to two poems.

11 Oct

Please read poems by Marilyn Chin, Kimiko Hahn, Cathy Song, Myung Mi Kim, and Li-Young Lee (363-400). Write on two poems.

4 Nov

MEMOIRS. Please read "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan (40) and "Different Silences" by Traise Yamamoto (45). Also read "No Name Woman," the first section of Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior. In your journal, you might consider Asian American feminist issues -- an important part of our discussion this week. Note: At 7:00 p.m. on Monday, 4 Nov, in the South Lounge, I will present a poetry reading. I hope you can come, since I will read my own poems on Asian American experience along with other works from my book Dragonfly.

6 Nov

Woman Warrior, continued. Read the sections entitled "White Tigers" and "Shaman." In your journal, meditate on reality and surreality.

8 Nov

Woman Warrior, continued. Please read "At the Western Palace" and "A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe." In your journal, you might focus on endings -- what are you bringing away from this course? We will decide as a group when the final paper required of students enrolled for two credits will be due (subject of course to Grinnell's regulations and grade deadlines) as well as how you will submit them -- by snailmail or e-mail or maybe even through your own webpage.

For further information, contact:

Vince Gotera
English Language and Literature
University of Northern Iowa
Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0502

Phone: (319) 273-7061
E-Mail: vince.gotera@uni.edu

I also have a homepage at Grinnell College.

Updated 23 September 1996 by Vince Gotera.
Please send comments and suggestions to: vince.gotera@uni.edu ... Thanks!