Begin Here: Reading Asian North American Autobiographies of Childhood

Rocio G. Davis

ISBN 10: 082483092X / ISBN 13: 9780824830922

Published by University of Hawai'i Press, 2007

About this Item

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Seller Inventory # B9780824830922

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Begin Here: Reading Asian North American Autobiographies of Childhood
• Publisher: University of Hawai'i Press
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 082483092X
• ISBN 13: 9780824830922
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 558 grams

About this title

Synopsis

An analytically innovative work, Begin Here widens the current critical focus of Asian North American literary studies by proposing an integrated thematic and narratological approach to the practice of autobiography. It demonstrates how Asian North American memoirs of childhood challenge the construction and performative potential of national experiences. This understanding influences theoretical approaches to ethnic life writing, expanding the boundaries of traditional autobiography by negotiating narrative techniques and genre and raising complex questions about self-representation and the construction of cultural memory. By examining the artistic project of some fifty Asian North American writers who deploy their childhood narratives in the representation of the individual processes of self-identification and negotiation of cultural and national affiliation, this work provides a comprehensive overview of Asian North American autobiographies of childhood published over the last century. Importantly, it also attends to new ways of writing autobiographies, employing comics, blending verse, prose, diaries, and life writing for children, and using relational approaches to self-identification, among others.

About the Author

Rocio G. Davis is associate professor of American and postcolonial literatures at the University of Navarra.