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Unfastened: Globality and Asian North American Narratives

Online ISBN:
9781452946368
Print ISBN:
9780816665075
Publisher:
University of Minnesota Press
Book

Unfastened: Globality and Asian North American Narratives

Eleanor Ty
Eleanor Ty
Professor and Chair, Department of English and Film Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University
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Published:
13 April 2010
Online ISBN:
9781452946368
Print ISBN:
9780816665075
Publisher:
University of Minnesota Press

Abstract

Unfastened examines literary works and films by Asian Americans and Asian Canadians that respond critically to globality—the condition in which traditional national, cultural, geographical, and economic boundaries have been—supposedly—surmounted. This book reveals how novelists such as Brian Ascalon Roley, Han Ong, Lydia Kwa, and Nora Okja Keller interrogate the theoretical freedom that globalization promises in their depiction of the underworld of crime and prostitution. It looks at the social critiques created by playwrights Betty Quan and Sunil Kuruvilla, who use figures of disability to accentuate the effects of marginality. Investigating works based on fantasy, the text highlights the ways feminist writers Larissa Lai, Chitra Divakaruni, Hiromi Goto, and Ruth Ozeki employ myth, science fiction, and magic realism to provide alternatives to global capitalism. The text notes that others, such as filmmaker Deepa Mehta and performers/dramatists Nadine Villasin and Nina Aquino, play with the multiple identities afforded to them by transcultural connections.

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