ABSTRACT
Meeting the challenge of teaching multiculturalism
Students-and their teachers-encountering literature and arts from unfamiliar cultures will welcome the special help this book provides. Instructors who are unfamiliar with Asian Pacific cultures are now being asked to explain a reference to the Year of the Rat, Obon Season, or to interpret a haiku. When Amy Tan refers to the Moon Lady or the Kitchen God, what does she mean? Is Confucianism actually a religion? This book answers these and many other questions, for students, teachers, and the librarians to whom they turn for help.
Provides sound information on in-demand topics
The Companion presents lengthy articles-written specifically for this book-on the topics that unlock the work of a number of contemporary Asian Pacific American writers and artists, for example: Asian naming systems, the "model minority" discourse, Chinese diaspora, Filipino American values, the Confucian family and its tensions, Japanese internment, Mao's Great Cultural Revolution, the Korean alphabet, food and ethnic identity, religious traditions, Fengshui and Chinese medicine, Filipino folk religion, Hmong needlework, and reading Asian characters in English, just to name a few.
Covers major contemporary writers
The articles are coupled with in-depth studies of the authors most likely to be part of the multicultural curriculum during the next decade, among them Maxine Hong Kingston, Frank Chin, Amy Tan, Younghill Kang, Carlos Bulosan, Jessica Hagedorn, Lawson Fusao Inada, Garret Hongo, David Henry Hwang, Kim Ronyoung, and Cathy Song.
Expert contributors
This volume was created under the supervision of distinguished Advisory Editors from the Asian Pacific American community. The contributors, a Who's Who of Asian Pacific American humanistic scholarship, are frequently the founders of their disciplines, and most are from the ethnic group being written about.
Helps students understand arts and literature
Multicultural courses are generally taught by exposing students to literature or arts, with reference to their political, sociological, and historical contexts. This book is designed to help students reading novels, watching films, and confronting artworks with information needs quite different from those of social scientists and historians.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|37 pages
Fundamentals
chapter 1|11 pages
Reading Asian Characters in English
chapter 3|6 pages
Asian Naming Systems
part II|130 pages
The Family and the Self
chapter 9|4 pages
Being Nisei
part III|128 pages
Roots, Traditions, and Asian Pacific Life
chapter 27|26 pages
Maoism and Surviving the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
part IV|34 pages
Asian Pacific Culture
part V|216 pages
Literature
chapter 36|3 pages
The Beginnings of Chinese Literature in America
chapter 54|6 pages
Cathy Song and the Korean American Experience in Poetry
part VI|71 pages
The Arts