Unfastened: Globality and Asian North American Narratives
Eleanor Ty
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 ac ... More
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.
Keywords:
globality,
Brian Ascalon Roley,
Han Ong,
Lydia Kwa,
Nora Okja Keller,
disability,
marginality,
science fiction,
magic realism,
global capitalism
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2010 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780816665075 |
| Published to Minnesota Scholarship Online: August 2015 |
DOI:10.5749/minnesota/9780816665075.001.0001 |
